Hi all.. Looking for some help here, i know i am asking a lot here, so any help on this topic would be greatly appreciated. I am weighing up some options.. dedicated servers seem to cost an arm and a leg these days, so i am considering building my own server. I looked into this years ago but never followed through... so lets say i go out and buy a new box.. (i can sort this part out later).. I really am lost in terms of where to begin, but am willing to learn. I am assuming once a new PC / Box was put together that i would install a 64bit version of Ubuntu.. i also guess i would need a new internet connection. Ideally i would like to have cPanel running to make managing my sites easier.. Really do appreciate any help on this topic, i am lost right now.. but i would much rather configure a server myself rather than lease a dedicated server from a company as the costs i am sure would work out cheaper to build my own... Anyways if someone could take the time to explain what i would need to do / point me in the right direction that would be great. Regards, Darren
It can work out cheaper building your own, but you'd need to colocate the server in a datacentre and then be responsible for maintaining your own hardware and software. Very few colocation companies will take on the responsibility of managing your hardware and software. Hardware failures, while relatively uncommon, do occur and your server will be down until it's replaced. If you're close to the colocation datacentre then that is fine, but if you aren't you'll have to provide the colocation company with spare hardware and pay them to replace it - either in advance (a couple of spare drives supplied with the server) or when the incident occurs. There's no guarantee the colocation company will have a direct replacement for YOUR hardware in their stock so you have to supply your own. If you're not close to the datacentre then leasing one is definitely the best option. Don't compare the price of a PC with that of a proper rackmount server. A good rackmount chassis alone is going to cost the same as a half-decent PC. Also, colocation companies will charge you by the U (1.75" in height by 17.2" wide) and the more U's your server takes up the more it will cost you. The average PC case is around 4U high when turned on its side, now consider fitting all the same components into something one-quarter as deep and you'll recognize that a 1U server is a complicated piece of kit. It looks similar (just thinner) but you need to have good cooling, reliable hardware, redudant power (if you can) and fit it all into a box that is 1.75" deep by 17.2" wide if you want your colocation costs to be as little as possible. It might actually work out cheaper just leasing a dedicated server.
"RonBrown" Thank you very much for such a detailed post.. i would leave you positive REP if i could see the REP buttons.. maybe they are not enabled in this forum :S I really do appreciate you taking the time to explain this to me, i am in Australia.. so server location is also a problem for me, as most my targeted traffic is US based i guess i am just better off renting a dedicated server from overseas. I might look into this further once more revenue is coming in however right now i guess i will just have to rent, been running websites for almost 10 years now lol.. yeah a long time.. but still i had no idea just how expensive they are.. even for a crappy dedicated server it seems it will cost an arm and a leg, but with Google putting website loading speed into the SERP's equation now.. i really can't afford to continue using shared hosting. Also i noticed Cpanel licensing is also very expensive so, this will be put on the back burner for now and i will slowly look into this further with a goal of being in a position next year to do this. Seemed a very good idea at the time, but yes you are correct when saying it would be cheaper just to rent (well over a 1 year time frame anyways). Again i would like to thank you for such a detailed reply, not many people around would share their knowledge / take the time to leave a decent reply. Cheers
If you've not managed a server for the internet before then dedicated (or VPS) probably isn't the best option. Shared hosting can still provide massive performance and many people are surprised when they move to a dedicated server or VPS to find that the performance of their site actually decreases rather than increases. There are lots of occassions when moving to dedicated or VPS makes sense, but it isn't the only solution and might not be best for you...only you can decide. Speak to your hosting company. They might have other solutions available such as semi-dedicated (it has lots of names) where they limit the number of sites on a server to a specific (small) number. Other hosts might be able to move your site to more powerful servers while continuing to provide you with shared hosting. We operate a fully virtualized platform where we can easily move sites around, increase performance on demand (more CPU's, more ram, more diskspace being committed), and can continue to provide shared hosting facilities even when sites are pulling in 10's of thousands of visitors per day. Such services might end up costing you more than you are paying, but probably not as much as a dedicated server and you don't have the worry of having to manage everything yourself. If you're happy with your current host, explain to them what you want - more performance but with shared hosting - and see if they can help.
Thanks again mate I have a re-sellers account with hostgator.. (i don't sell any hosting accounts).. but when i moved to HG i thought a re-sellers account would allow me to make as many sites as i wanted to.. I didn't realize a $5 per month hosting account would allow me to use multiple sites / domains.. Really only have about 10 sites worth of a mention these days but i am paying $80 every 3 months, when really i could be using on a "baby-croc" account even. I have clients / contacts running 50+ sites out of a HG "baby croc" account and the performance is better than my "Basic" re-sellers account.. so i figure as i am spending $320 per year that i wouldn't be far off a dedicated / vps option (well this is what i thought before looking into it this week) I have a BF3 site (in my SIG) it's getting 300-400 uniques per day and is generally pretty quite in terms of active posters etc.. but sometimes i see this taking ages to load and am a little worried about load times and google penalizing me for this, the game is a while away yet but this should turn into a massive site, i will need better hosting down the track but if i could move to something better now i think that would be best. I had the privilege to play on a dedicated HG server for a client the other day and wow, it was like working on my localhost, even Cpanel was running awesome.. so this kind of got me thinking about it. my re-sellers Cpanel stats.. usually show all resources almost maxed out.. well the CPU spikes and is generally low, but the memory is always 80%-90% in use, as too are most the other stats... i am contacting HG now and will see what they can do about it (if anything).. very few of my projects would be causing any real load problems... but i would like to know that i wasn't going to get penalized for load times, so what would you recommend for say 10 pretty average sites, i would like to have around 20 decent projects.. that i put a lot of effort into, do you think a dedicated server is overkill for this ? lets say 10 WP blogs, 5 forums and 5 other scripts.. would you think that is time to move to better hosting, or should i wait until the sites are established and are pumping traffic. Again i would like to thank you for your time, made for good reading, and good to hear someone else comment on this.
Well another option for you could be you buy a proper server (the hardware) and the find a data center and collocate it ,, it will work out to be cheap for you