Web hosting requirements etc...

[Chatterjee]

Hey guys,
Here's the situation: I'm starting a web hosting firm here in Houston and wanted to get an impression from the technical community about what requirements would be appealing to web designers/corporations for a good hosting setup.

Here are the requirements I have down so far:

ASP/PHP/ColdFusion support
Database support (both MySQL and SQL Server) (with ODBC and DSN capabilities)
FTP access
SSL

Should I have capped storage space and bandwidth usage? What else should I worry about to set my firm apart from other hosting companies out there?

Thanks in advance!

-S

 

[perry]

Uhh. Try giving away unlimited bandwidth and you WILL lose your shirt. You gotta charge for it since you are charged. There really isn't too much that will differentiate you from other small companies out there, except for your pricing. You gotta make a profit, so you really can't drop the pricing too much. And if you do make it cheap, you'll end up overloading your boxes and losing customers.

Storage space is pretty cheap nowadays, so you could probably increase the amount of space you give with your plans.

Maybe offer both *nix and NT boxes for hosting the site. But that'll increase cost since you'll have to hire both *nix and NT people to watch over the boxes. Probably best to specialize in one area (I really prefer *nix for my hosting accounts).

 

[Zach]

Chatterjee, I'm going to try to start a hosting company soon. How about emailing me so we can talk? I've been wanting to find someone else starting up...

 

[Chatterjee]

To counteract the unlimited web space, I'd probably administer a bandwidth usage cap.

Here's what I want to do... I know a local co-location provider here in Houston and want to dump a box over there and start hosting sites on the box. I've contacted them to learn more about their network topology and will let you guys know to see whether you guys think it's appropriate or not.

-S

 

[Zach]

You'll want more than one box...

 

[Chatterjee]

What do you suggest?

-S

 

[Zach]

I think that I'll be starting with two, adding a third to match them, and then putting a bif fourth as a backend fileserver. You need to consider that most services are meant to have at least two boxes, like DNS and mail servers. Of course, your secondary DNS could be your ISP and your mail could be relying on only one server... but then what if you don't want one machine to have to handle all of what you want to do?

One suggestion I've recieved is to put DNS2 and the webserver as one machine, mail1 and DNS1 on another machine, and put your mail2 and DB on a third box.

I'll be putting a few SCSI drives in one machine to store critical files (home, www, /var/named/ and config files/directories), and then using a seond machine as the webserver. Basically above minus the third box. Then I'll be able to add a second web box, and then make a fourth machine with better filesystem protection and more redundancy as a backend fileserver taking care of the three upfront. The centralized storage of the critical files will make backup and restore easier, and the other machines will be more expendable making any failures easier on me.

 

[Chatterjee]

Hey,

I guess I'd also start out with two machines. (We should talk about the specs on those machines also). As far as DNS servers go, since my machines would be housed within the ISP that I'm co-locating through, I shouldn't really worry since they'll be providing me with a DNS service.

What I'd really like to do is have the sites on one box and a toned down box as a mail server. What will the connection speed where you're housing your servers be? I've still got to find out what the deal is from my ISP.

The question I keep asking myself is how serious do I want to be with my clients web material. Should I guarantee uptime? If so, how do I handle the situation (since most of my guarantee comes from having the ideal hardware setup that will NOT go down under any circumstances). I don't want to have to "reboot" the server every couple of months.

Thoughts on this?

-S

 

[perry]

Are you going to have a web control panel for your clients? Something so they can take care of POP accounts and aliases and autoresponders and whatever else. That will save you some busy work of having to add all those things by hand.

How many clients will you put on one box before you have to lease another (leasing really is the best option for web hosting since technology moves so fast)?

Since you are putting all of those services onto the box, you'll want fairly beefy machines. Client could get on there and do lots of CGI stuff and kill the boxes. I've heard that Cobalt servers a pretty darn easy to take care of, but they aren't good for heavy CGI processing.

Uptime? Hmm. Depends on who your clients are. If they are doing ebusiness, then you want uptime to be as high as possible, because downtime = lost money = unhappy customers = lost customers. You don't have to actually guarantee anything in writing, but try to be as perfect as you can.

 

[Zach]

Relying on your ISP for DNS is a pain! I tried it, and it doesn't work out. Just having the records in front of you to see and verify is worth the time. If you use NT, I'm sure you'll wont have to hard a time with it. For Linux, I haven't found the perfect solution but use a mix of GUI interface (Webmin) and command line.

As far as uptime goes, I woulnd't garuntee.. would you be liable if you did? Try to look and act professional to get customers, and keep them going to keep them I suppose. I'm going to be trying to cater to more 'low end' people until I can make enough money to buy some better equipment, I'm strapped as it is. If it all fails, I'll just sell of the stuff I was using. Most of my 'servers' will be desktop machines with nice hard drives, more memory, and stable settings.... not to mention a couple Intel NIC's in each.

 

[Chatterjee]

Fantastic replies!

Where can I get mail server software that will allow my users to administer their own pop email accounts through a web-based system? That would definitely be something for me to look into...

I don't know what an optimal number of clients per machine is.. I'm thinking 16 to 24 per machine?

Here are potential machine specs.. overkill? not enough? let me know what you think?

Dual PIII 750 Processors
512MB ECC RAM
9.1 SCSI drive (What's a good one?)

What do you guys think?

-S

 

[Rifter]

I would have at least 3 boxes(one for webpages, one database and e-mail, one FTP and DNS) Also check out I-mail, i believe it has web access for the clients to edit there accounts. Also i would go NT, but im biased as i dont really like *nix. But its up to you, just defintaly get more than one box and invest in a good tape backup device.