Running your own server

[Maljonic]

I'm not really think of doing this right now, but I wondered what's invovled with having your websites on your own server.

How much do they cost?

Where would you buy one from?

Is it a lot of work to set up with PHP + MYSQL etc? How much stuff needs to be done.

It's all a bit vague because I don't really know what I'm talking about.

I was mostly thinking about the cost, but there's other considerations too. A dedicated sever is often around 90 quid a month, which is quite a lot, so I was wondering about the costs of buying your own server instead and the electricity bill from leaving this machine running all the time and so on. I guess the internet connection might be rather expensive too if you want it to work properly.

What other stuff do you need to consider?

I guess the main advantage of paying someone else for hosting is that all this is their problem, you don't have to worry about upgrading hardware and such. I suppose once you buy a server it's already becoming out of date, same as a PC or Mac, but how often would a hosting company upgrade hardware anyway?

I don't think we've had a pros and cons of owning your own server thread before, so I guess that's what this is.

 

[Ashala]

pro and con's of running your own webserver

Pro
1. learning by doing (since its your own system you have to maintain it all yourself)
2. you get exactly what you want, no restrictions ie. free hands
3. mostly more fun to run stuff yourself
4. you can get quite alot of webserver needed software for free (mysql, apache, protection software)

Con
1. if you dont have ANY software and / or hardware i recon its more expensive to run it yourself
2. you have to maintain it yourself (some see this as a bad thing, others dont)
3. there is quite alot of stuff you have to know about the things your setting up (database, webserver, routing / protection, hardware / software updates)
4. cost, (i THINK, in the long run, that its cheaper to have someone else run it for you, unless you got everything you need (experience and money wise))


this is what i see atm as pro/con stuff, not sure i got it all down tho but this might get you an idea about it

 

[Shovel]

Much of it will depend on the traffic you're expecting. I suspect you can run a very happy server with pretty standard parts and a lot of RAM.

Setting it up running Linux, Apache, PHP, MySQL (or another open source database) will take some research, but is generally easy to do once you get to grips with the configuration files.

And of course, you can always upgrade the machine later.

The only thing I can see being an issue for cost is where to physically put it. Consumer broadband is not suitable for running a webserver (the upload rate is too low) so you would either need to invest in some kind of SDSL Business Broadband connection (which sounds expensive) or alternatively get your box housed in a data centre somewhere (which will incur its own costs).

That could make the whole thing rather less value for money.

 

[Clown]

I say don't do it because then we'll just be bombarded with questions about your server as well as about your websites.