Poll: I want to start a hosting company...

[Zach]

Anyone with insight about starting a hosting company? I mean actually owning the servers too, bot reselling accounts. I have one and want to build/buy one or two more. They'd be cheaper boxes, but I'm pretty good at sticking to stable hardware (meaning I try not to use crappy leftovers, and buy good stuff). Linux too, no NT.

I welcome email if someone can't post...

I'm mostly interested on who is the best target, high-end websites or cheapo accounts -- and if it's too competative to get business.

Poll about if it's a good idea to host is here also, for kicks!

 

[Windogg]

Going cheap is a awful idea. Hosting a few pages for yourself and a few local places is OK on a basic Linux box but any major hosting company would be running heavy duty UNIX servers w/ Solaris or beefed up versions of Linux.

You systems must be able to withstand a heavy flood of traffic so you would need fast hardware such as SCSI hard drives, multiple NICs for load balancing, and loads of RAM to cache pages. Everything must be fault tolerant to withstand disaster. You'd need UPSes, tape drives, hot spares, and backup servers. All that must be properly moved around with good networking equipment from companies like cisco, Bay Networks, Nortel, and Paradyne.

Not only that but there are huge capital investments in infastructure such as climate control, 3 phase power, halon fire fighting equipment.

You also need to think about purchasing bandwidth. Don't even think about DSL. We're talking OC3 and above for a hosting company. After they you need to acquire IP addresses.

I don't want to discourage you but running on the cheap is fine on paper but what is a failure going to cost you? There are liability issues associated with outages that cause businesses to lose money.

Do a search for for what Anand uses and you get a idea of how serious things can get. Even with that kind of hardware the forums slow down to a crawl at times.

Windogg

 

[Zach]

co-location.

And, I don't see how these $10/month sites with crappy pages can afford to spend so much on system infastructure. I don't even want a huge amnount of customers, I'd cap off to keep load from getting too high... Not that I want to be crappy, but I don't want 1000's of people on my site. I take care of servers that host about 20 people that are outside of the company I work for, and I've come to realize that most of these sites get hardly any traffic, realistally speaking. What do you need to pay for a colocation account? Only 50 customers probably....

You don't think 2-3 lighter boxes could support about 200 sites? The budjet $15-$25 / month kind?

Also, I've seen some of the service contracts, and I think the liability generally depends on what claims you make.. "not responcable for lost data" and other such things are out there.

 

[Windogg]

Have you started a thread in "General Hardware"? I think you'll get better responses there since I'm only guessing based on what I've seen at work. I talked with the guy that handles the intranet servers and things there are pretty beefy. Most traffic actually comes from people just stating their browsers because the startpage is the main intranet page. Everything will be based on what you thing peak traffic will be at any given time. A lot of the really little companies lease their equipment long term so inital cash outflow is not great. My guess is they hope to grow fast enough to be able to afford better equipment before the current crop become obsolete. Plus notice how fast some of those smaller companies appear and disappear.

Windogg

 

[Zach]

I tried generall and didn't do so well.

 

[Zach]

^^

Anyone else that can give me input?

 

[denali]

If you are get going after the non-business user you could get by with what you are talking about. If you are going after the business market take what Windogg said seriously. Most of those companies that don't charge much I'd guess have not gone to the steps Windogg suggests. Just remeber the worst case senerio of any hosting company is to get /.ed.

What ever you do just spell out to the customer what you do and don't do.

One thing WinDogg failed to mention for the really parinoid hosting company is multiple locations so that if one location goes down the other can rollover and the customer won't notice.

 

[goldboyd]

No way 3 boxes can do it, 4-5 minumum.

Boxes:

1. NS1, doesnt have to be anything crazy, but still needs to be a solid, scsi box.

2. NS2, this can be a fairly weak box. just there for backup

3. Mail, should be a semi powerful box, lots of memory, raid 5 w/ hot spare, redundant ps..

4. Web1, your main web box, should gave gobs of memory, smp, raid5/10 w/ hot spare(s), redundant ps, multiple nics...

5. Web2, you should have multiple web boxes, just incase, and for load balancing purposes.

6. Datbase box, most companies are going to want some kind of backend whether oracle, ms sql, mysql...

and thats just boxes, dont forget about facilites, you're going to need a dc that has multiple fiber connections from multiple places, pimped ups's, backup generators, ac, fire prevention, security, monitoring (monitoring software), tech support, engineers, just you isnt going to cut it.... and the list goes on and on and on....

 

[Viperoni]

Go with Intel Server adapters.
Anand uses them
You might wanna use rack mount stuff for space constraints...but the ATX cases are $$$!!!!!!
GL dood!

Sounds like a good plan (linux )

 

[Zach]

I haven't seen any co-locates around that require rack mounting, or give you a discount for using it (which I assumed would be the case, for space-saving). I'd rather use nice mid-tower style cases, so if everything flops I can at least have a few cool-looking home computers...

goldboyd: Isn't that excessive? Considering what the backup services take up, why give a backup service it's own box? I was told by someone with more insight than I (i don't know what he has compared to you though..) that mail1 and ns1 can be on the same server, assuming memory capacity is up there. Also, what about putting ns2 on web1? You will prevent your webserver from having to do DNS lookups accross the network... Add an admin/spare/database box, and you have a nice, tight, 3 box starting position. Later on, the beefy web1 becomes a file serving backend (with RAID5 and more redunancy) feeding other servers what they need so as to prevent the need of having excessive costs inquered by using SCSI RAID on all semi-important boxes?

I was thinking of home-built Athlon servers, using mirrored IDE drives for front-end servers, and either a home-built or (If I can afford it) Dell system for the beginning web1 and later file server.

Considering Windogg and denali's input, I'd probably be targeting home-type users. Personal websites, people with small businesses that don't want to spend too much, stupid l33t kids, etc. I was down when Windogg first made that post, but he's right.. it's just a matter of if I can get enough business from the lower-end crowd though.

 

[Zach]

I thought Anand built some of his own Athlon bozes, at least?.. I remember reading (I think) that they were worried to use that platform, but chose the (I think) MSI board or something... and so on.

 

[Rogue]

I can tell you now that you should not underestimate the situation at all. You only intend to have a few "clients" but that will expand. The 'net is such a huge business that you will exceed your preliminary expectations and will have to expand. Also, don't underestimate the cooling requirements either. Your AC will take a big hit keeping a room full of servers cool enough to stay stable. We currently have 26 servers (and counting) all with multiple SCSI drives and processors. Our AC went out and the room went from about 75 degrees fahrenheight to over 100 degrees in a matter of about 15 minutes. Talk about HOT!!!!

 

[Zach]

I'd be using a co-location facility in the basement of a building downtown.. Cooling's not a problem.