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Posted by hostingder, 08-03-2009, 02:00 AM
I always wanted to know this... What If I wanted to set up my own servers at my house to start a web hosting business. What internet connection would I need? And who to get it from? I live in the United States, Ohio. I have 3 Dell Rack Servers one of them has 4 GB of ram and the other 2 have 512MB each and one of them has 160GB Hardrive and the one with 4GB of ram has a 2x250GB Hardrive the third server only has a hardrive of 80GB. I wanted to set them up start hosting sites but I don't know what type of internet connection to use. That way my team and I wouldn't have to rent servers from other datacenters. Can anyone answer these questions? Thanks, Brad Miller <> Last edited by anon-e-mouse; 08-03-2009 at 06:45 AM.
Posted by HostingASPNet, 08-03-2009, 02:42 AM
Hello, You should check the ISP in your region and find the best price/conditions for you. IMHO it will be much better to rent the servers or start with reseller hosting services. In this way you will have better uptime, support, UPS systems...etc, and in the long terms it will be much better for you... Regards
Posted by hostingder, 08-03-2009, 03:21 AM
Yeah we are currently renting Servers from Softlayer. With the profits of selling hosting and the money I make on my second job is more than enough to buy a small office and a couple more servers and start our own little datacenter.
Posted by Crashus, 08-05-2009, 12:32 AM
Then you need to consider these: 1)Payments for electro-energy and for internet uplinks, they most likely will be hight enough. 2)Good and cold (this is a must!) room for your servers. 3)Very good UPS base which can handle all your servers without external power source for about 12 hours and which can turn off server gracefully at the end of their work. 4)One main and one backup internet uplinks, something like 10Mb/s as main and 2Mb/s as backup will fit your needs for the first few months. Oh and computer store near your office to fast hardware replacement if needed (better buy some additional HDDs and put then in your cage as well) Huh, looks like all from me)
Posted by hostingder, 08-05-2009, 07:40 PM
This will help thanks!
Posted by Xeentech, 08-07-2009, 07:28 PM
If you're wanting to setup a small office with a server room for a small DC, then I'd recommend hiring some one that has done it before. You'll save money from not making the mistakes they made on their first attempt. If you're wanting to own your own hardware and save on fees from renting machine, just co-lo. Your servers will be in a better data center than you'll realistically be able to build, they'll have likely the best peering and connectivity you can get in your area.. and this will all be from day one.
Posted by KmacK, 08-07-2009, 07:59 PM
I would recommend co-loing the hardware. It will be cheaper than paying for Bandwidth and Electric. Plus you get the added benefit of network and power redundancy to reduce outages.
Posted by hostingder, 08-07-2009, 08:00 PM
Do you think it would be easier and cheaper to just rent the servers from Datacenters than just open up a small office with some servers in? please tell me what you think. Thanks,
Posted by gplhost, 08-07-2009, 09:58 PM
If you are to do things seriously, yes, it's going to be cheaper to rent space from a data center. Because seriously means: - fire protection - anti-intrusion (alarms, etc.) - redundant power - redundant network - someone on site 24/7 This is possible only if you invest a lot, and you get some RoI only if you scale it, not with 3 servers. Thomas
Posted by fwaggle, 08-08-2009, 01:34 AM
Yes. Unless your idea of your own "datacenter" is a tin shed with a T1, a ceiling fan, and a generator with wheels on it (slight exaggeration, but hopefully you get my point).
Posted by webhostinghand, 08-08-2009, 11:26 AM
I have my servers at home too however i built them using some left over parts. I will tell you that if you plan on doing any selling aka commercial work. You'll need to get business internet. Because you cannot do anything commercial on a residential network. Plus you'll want a static IP. Ask your ISP how much this could cost. Depending on your choice of specs it could be more then $100 a month. Hope this helps.
Posted by e-Sensibility, 08-08-2009, 02:51 PM
Don't rent the servers, that will get expensive. Buy your own equipment and colocate it. Colocation will allow you to provide a better quality of service to your customers, and will also minimize your upfront investment to prices that are strictly related to improving your business.
Posted by TowerOfPower, 08-09-2009, 02:36 PM
If you're just starting out (or want to test things out), setting up Apache, PHP and MySQL on your home Windows system is not that difficult. You can always rent or co-locate a dedicated server later on. A typical non-fiber, dsl/cable connection should be able to handle thousands or requests per day without much trouble. The only downside here is that some ISPs block incoming port 80 (the http port) on residential lines, and also the latency will be much higher compared to a datacenter hosted server. Last edited by TowerOfPower; 08-09-2009 at 02:40 PM.
Posted by ChrisGeiger, 08-09-2009, 02:43 PM
I built a datacenter in my office and am running 5 cabinets with 42U each. All cabinets have UPS protection and run off redundant cisco routers. It's not hard to build something like this, the only hard thing was getting the good internet. We had timewarner run dark fiber into our building and we now have redundant gigabit links. Although, we don't use this datacenter for customers, only for off-site backups from the datacenters. We have a 5 ton A/C unit to cool the 10x12 room. It takes a lot to build a datacenter in an offce/home. The most important thing is power and cooling, you must have a lot of this or you wont succeed.
Posted by mattle, 08-09-2009, 03:56 PM
seems a little OT here...shouldn't this be in Running a Web Hosting Business? Of course a search would have revealed that the topic of "why shouldn't you run servers from your home" has been discussed to death already...

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