[lug] Coloc / VPS Plus Outside DNS & Email

[Ken MacFerrin]

dio2002 at indra.com wrote:
>>> anybody have thoughts on this subject based upon experience.  both
>>> advantages and disadvantages or something i might be overlooking or
>>> should
>>> be thinking about?
>>>
>> Biggest advantage will be cost and time.  If you only need hosted web
>> services then you don't need to rent a full colo or VPS ($30-100+/mo)..
>> just find a good web host ($7-20/mo).  Also, you'll find that many of
>> the web hosts will provide some level of mail & dns support for any
>> domains you host with them.
> 
> i'm going with my own webserver because i see myself hosting a number of
> sites all with a variety of php/mysql requirements.  i want to be able to
> configure them as i like and use whatever versions i choose at will
> without limitation from a host provider. including space/performance.  i
> figure the flexibility and ability to manage it how i want is worth the
> price differential. although something tells me that it actually will cost
> less in the long run as the number of sites increases..
> 

I think you'd have a hard time justifying this from a pure economic
perspective.  For about $8/month you can buy a web hosting account with
200GB of storage, 2 TB of bandwidth, unlimited domains, php, mysql, cgi,
ssh, ftp, ruby on rails, etc..  This will be on high-end, RAID backed
hardware with multihomed connectivity..  At that price you're spending
less than you would on electricity, let alone maintaining your own hardware.

This of course only makes good sense if you're looking at it from a
business perspective.  It doesn't cover the "because you can" factor or,
as you mentioned, the flexibility and experience of setting up and
tuning your own LAMP stack.  Most folks on this list are probably going
to have a home server or two running 24/7 anyway.

Best advice I can give in this case, is keep any server you have running
publicly exposed web services in a DMZ and away from your home LAN.
Definitely setup mod_security and also check out squid-cache..
-Ken