[lug] Hosting Question

[Ryan Kirkpatrick]

On Fri, 29 Sep 2006 dio2002 at indra.com wrote:

> It seems that serving professionally from home is really impossible unless
> you want to spend a lot of money to get a dedicated line (T1 or something)
> routed to your house.  Anyone out there have any experience with this kind
> of arrangement?

I am hosting several websites out of my basement on a DSL line with good
results. This is how I am doing it:

*) Business DSL line from Qwest, 1Mbit up, 1.5Mbit up, with 16 static IPs,
$80/month, rock solid. None of the server restrictions and other
residential/consumer service drawbacks.

*) Server class hardware, Dual Athlon Tyan motherboards, ECC RAM, RAID5
SCSI, spares on hand, etc...

*) Debian Linux distribution, and virtual servers (currently using
UserModeLinux, looking at others), running many things (mail, web, DNS)
on a single system.

*) UPSs to survive short (<5 minute) outages and cleanly shutdown for
longer outages. And if I didn't live in a town house I would probably add
a generator. :)

Being in the city of Lafayette I only get one or two outages a year that
last more than a few minutes. And since the majority of my users are
local, if the power is out for me, it is probably out for them too. :)

I host small to medium sized sites, both personal, non-profit, and even a
few for-profit. Probably the busiest site I host is for my local Boy Scout
Troop (www.bsa171.org). All of my "customers" are quite happy with the
performance and reliability, and especially with the customer service. :)

I do not host anything large or mission critical (like e-stores,
etc...) that requires 24x7x365 uptime. If I were to, then I would go with
a hosting provider as others have suggested. And going on vacation is a
major difficulty, I don't have pets, but I do have to find a computer
sitter. :(

So, if you want full control, don't mind tinkering with hardware, and are
not big on taking long vacation, it is possible to host websites out of
your basement! TTYL.

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|   "For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain."                    |
|                                            --- Philippians 1:21 (KJV)   |
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|   Ryan Kirkpatrick  |  Boulder, Colorado  |  http://www.rkirkpat.net/   |
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