Building a server
- Thread starter Lo_Poly
- Start date
...snip... I can build a PC ...... Chris.
A little off topic, but does this mean you have your PC up and running now ?
---DLR
That meant I know how to build a PC. I didn't mention anything about getting this computer fixed.
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John, what do you mean by "Cowboys"?
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They fail to provide the level of service you should expect. "Cowboys" is a slang term for ripoff scam companies in Britain, sorry if it isn't in the USA and obviously absolutely no slur was intended against anyone who actually tends cows.
Oh the risks of cultural differences between countries!
John
Oh I understand. I've gotten that [rubbish] from several services (whom I won't name).
But thanks for that site... I have it bookmarked.
Cheers. :wave:
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Make your own server...?
Building a server is very similar to a regular peecee.
Obviously high cpu speeds, speedy graphics, and tons of memory are not the priority as would using raid ([SIZE=-1]Redundant Array of Independent Drives) [/SIZE]and having oodles of bandwidth available (which would be determined between you and your ISP). And of course PLENTY of storage (terabytes upon terabytes of RAIDS) which would of course entail several peecees (or a rack) to accommodate the intended content.
And then there's the software - the free Open Source type like Linux, (more than 1 peecee would require a LAN (Local Area Network) which Linux is great at providing, as well as the FTP server), and Apache as your HTTP server (oh no, another peecee), a little bit of hardware (a few switches to connect the peecees in the LAN, probably Cisco), and a T1 connection - ok, a LOT of hardware and, let us not forget the hours of upkeep/updates creating the web pages and the PHP scripts, logins, virus/trojan injection/protection, lions, tigers, and bears - oh my! - yikes - the previous poster may have a more economic solution - find a host instead.
Building a server is very similar to a regular peecee.
Obviously high cpu speeds, speedy graphics, and tons of memory are not the priority as would using raid ([SIZE=-1]Redundant Array of Independent Drives) [/SIZE]and having oodles of bandwidth available (which would be determined between you and your ISP). And of course PLENTY of storage (terabytes upon terabytes of RAIDS) which would of course entail several peecees (or a rack) to accommodate the intended content. And then there's the software - the free Open Source type like Linux, (more than 1 peecee would require a LAN (Local Area Network) which Linux is great at providing, as well as the FTP server), and Apache as your HTTP server (oh no, another peecee), a little bit of hardware (a few switches to connect the peecees in the LAN, probably Cisco), and a T1 connection - ok, a LOT of hardware and, let us not forget the hours of upkeep/updates creating the web pages and the PHP scripts, logins, virus/trojan injection/protection, lions, tigers, and bears - oh my! - yikes - the previous poster may have a more economic solution - find a host instead.LP -
He means go with a reputable company like Rack Space or Network Solutions. The others will take your money and run. Your're better off hosting offsite anyway because they have the backup capabilities and UPS equipment to handle longterm outages. Home users don't usually have that capability.
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If you want to build a server for your own purposes such as file storage and sharing, you can use any general purpose PC. You can load in Linux or Solaris (free), and use SAMBA to allow Windows clients (PCs) to connect. The other alternative is to use Windows Server 2003, which is very expensive.
In my house I've setup a Sun Ultra running Solaris 9. The machine has a 200 gig hard drive and 256 Mb of RAM. I use SAMBA for the Windows clients so they have access to the shared folders on the server. This is probably a rare exception as not too many people have extra Sun workstations lying around thier house.
Keep this in mind...If you plan on hosting yourself, one of the biggest costs for enterprise level servers is the operating system and licenses.
Some versions of Linux are free for the home user, but if you start webhosting with it, you'll need to pay licensing royalty fees, which can be really expensive.
Backup software and antivirus software are quite expensive as well for a server especially if you go the Windows route. I recently priced out Backup Exec for a work server, and the cost of the license for 1 machine was close to $650. This didn't count the agent needed for SQL, which was another $500. The antivirus is expensive too, and is based on the number clients that will be accessing the server. They usually sell it by the seat (client) so you'd end up spending close to $20 per client at the minimum.
The hardware is the least expensive, however, you don't want to chince on parts as servers need to be reliable. You want really fast drives that are either SCSI or SATA. You also would want to use RAID 5 instead of RAID 0 to allow for a parity drive. The access is a little slower, but there's that extra level of protection. I would also recommend a lot of RAM as well. The more RAM a server has, the better it performs because the directory structures are loaded in memory so that they're not called up from disc all the time.
Hope this gives you some insight as well as why it's cheaper and better to host outside.
Good luck with your project.
John
>"He means go with a reputable company like....Network Solutions."
Thanks John, I haven't laughed that hard in years. NetSol is the spawn of the devil but I have to deal with them daily.
Lo_Poly,
Unless you plan on offering the greatest Trainz content ever created or something of the not legal genre ie..MP3s, movies, warez, you don't need to run a server yourself. But be careful of cheap hosting plans, the fine print can bite you badly in the wallet. Most hosting plans have quotas on data transfer. Exceed the quota and the charges per MB can add up quickly. I know of many people that got burned.
Full Disclosure: I work for a ISP that does hosting but not budget rate hosting.
William
Thanks John, I haven't laughed that hard in years. NetSol is the spawn of the devil but I have to deal with them daily.
Lo_Poly,
Unless you plan on offering the greatest Trainz content ever created or something of the not legal genre ie..MP3s, movies, warez, you don't need to run a server yourself. But be careful of cheap hosting plans, the fine print can bite you badly in the wallet. Most hosting plans have quotas on data transfer. Exceed the quota and the charges per MB can add up quickly. I know of many people that got burned.
Full Disclosure: I work for a ISP that does hosting but not budget rate hosting.
William
Obviously check how much disk space and bandwidth they offer and how much they charge.
Also check what server software comes as part of the deal, if you want to get into playing with that which I guess is one of the main purposes of the exercise.
If you want to do anything on the site of a commercial nature where money is involved (such as including adverts or e-commerce), check what they allow you to do and the legal implications.
Also check whether they offer domain name registration. Opinions seem to differ regarding whether domain name registration is best handled by a separate company to the web hoster or not.
In other words, do plenty of research before committing yourself. Finding the best deal for you is all part of the fun!
John
Also check what server software comes as part of the deal, if you want to get into playing with that which I guess is one of the main purposes of the exercise.
If you want to do anything on the site of a commercial nature where money is involved (such as including adverts or e-commerce), check what they allow you to do and the legal implications.
Also check whether they offer domain name registration. Opinions seem to differ regarding whether domain name registration is best handled by a separate company to the web hoster or not.
In other words, do plenty of research before committing yourself. Finding the best deal for you is all part of the fun!
John
robbiehanson
K27K27K27K27K27K27K27K27
I actually run my standard PC as a file server, running Windows XP and Apache Server 2.2. I use it for hosting random files, as my upload speed via server is much better than speed via FTP to a dedicated host.
Of course, a web hosting provider can definitely give you much, MUCH more speed. One consideration, however, is bandwidth--more is better, but it doesn't come cheap!
Of course, a web hosting provider can definitely give you much, MUCH more speed. One consideration, however, is bandwidth--more is better, but it doesn't come cheap!
Just wondering why you would want to build a server or pay for hosting. Unless you intend to serve a huge amount of content there are a ton of free hosting services available. Personally I use Awardspace for hosting my website and Filenet to deliver large files such as CDPs. I've never been hit by bandwidth quotas or the like.
The only tricky bit with free services is that sometimes they decide to stop being free and offer you the chance to pay money! As long as you keep an up to date copy of all your stuff you can move hosts within minutes. Last time I had to do it was at 4 in the morning and it took me 20 minutes from finding my free service had gone to having the whole lot up on an alternative! The key of course is to have a domain registered with a decent supplier so that you can redirect the requests to wherever you are currently hosting stuff. This for me is the only outlay (about £5 a year for multiple domains).
Cheers
Dave
The only tricky bit with free services is that sometimes they decide to stop being free and offer you the chance to pay money! As long as you keep an up to date copy of all your stuff you can move hosts within minutes. Last time I had to do it was at 4 in the morning and it took me 20 minutes from finding my free service had gone to having the whole lot up on an alternative! The key of course is to have a domain registered with a decent supplier so that you can redirect the requests to wherever you are currently hosting stuff. This for me is the only outlay (about £5 a year for multiple domains).
Cheers
Dave
Most free hosting services display intrusive adverts on every web page of your site. Not saying this one does of course.
In Britain most ISP's over some free web hosting space, without adverts. I don't know if that principle also applies in other countries. In most cases you can't run any server-side programs, nor can you include advertising yourself or conduct any e-commerce. This is however an excellent way to host a simple non-commercial web site.
John
In Britain most ISP's over some free web hosting space, without adverts. I don't know if that principle also applies in other countries. In most cases you can't run any server-side programs, nor can you include advertising yourself or conduct any e-commerce. This is however an excellent way to host a simple non-commercial web site.
John
Interesting, William. I use them for the company email, my personal email, and the company website with no problems at all. At one time we used Useractive, but they became part of some other company, and their support is now next to zero! UA went as far as not notifying anyone that they weren't receiving the payments for the hosting service, and just decided to turn off everything. There was something wrong with their billing service, and they refused to recognized it. When we switched to NetSol, the account rep at UA came crying to me, and I told him to bugger off because of their lousy customer service. So maybe you have the bad luck with NetSol that I haven't had yet.
John
Maybe your better off with a network
I have two computers networked and they share the same monitor, internet, and files between them. Costs to network, a few hundred dollars, for K switch to share monitor, router, network cards. Running two computers at the same time increases the number of tasks that can be accoplished at once. The big deal with a server is sharing files among a network. So you need a network of computers to justify a server.:hehe:
I have two computers networked and they share the same monitor, internet, and files between them. Costs to network, a few hundred dollars, for K switch to share monitor, router, network cards. Running two computers at the same time increases the number of tasks that can be accoplished at once. The big deal with a server is sharing files among a network. So you need a network of computers to justify a server.:hehe:
This is the internet age! Mostly I don't need to care where the server is hosted as long as the hosting company provides the services I need. There are some legal issues to consider but I'm hoping the sort of thing that hosting is required for won't run into those issues.
The examples I quoted do not present adverts to the site users, only to the subscriber.
You just need to look harder John. There are free hosts that will allow commerce and also server-side scripting (mostly PHP). This wasn't the case a couple of years ago and it's certainly not restricted to UK ISPs.
Cheers
Dave
You make some good points Dave, including:
John
Agreed 100%. I live in Britain but use a web hosting company based in Utah without any problems.
John
Hi John,
I'm glad you have not had a problem. I have no experience with their hosting products directly but I have seen the hassle they cause their customers when they attempt to move away from them to our hosting. If your domain expires even by as little as a few minutes, they can place a hold on it and force you to pay for another year before allowing you to move it somewhere else. They appear to do as much as they can to retain a customer even to the point of breaking the customer's domain records and then refusing to fix them unless the customer remains with them. I hope this never happens to you.
William
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Those plans suck! Tyler currently has our site hosted with www.bluehost.com We have over 600Gb storage and 6Tb of transfer.
All for the low price of 94$ a YEAR.