6 replies to this topic

[D-Cal]

Bearing in mind initial costs, is it cheaper in the long run to operate your own server stack, or keep renting?

>> If you go pro, you can manage everything yourself. A blessing and a curse.

On the up side, you have total control.

On the downside, you have to do everything yourself, and can pay a lot for security.
Not to mention, if you use nas/san, your electricity bill will not be friendly.

>> If you keep renting, you don't pay licensing (usually)

On the up side, your ASP(.NET) engine is registered to the company for public use, you don't have the stress of management, and if the servers go down, they're usually replaced promptly with new ones.

On the down side, you're at the mercy of the company, who can up the charge, place ads (sometimes breaking the entire page), send out your data, and share any part(s) of your site with 3rd parties, including hidden pages and passwords (in extreme cases).
There are space limits, throughput limits (and extended charges), and worst of all, the looming threat of the company going into administration, and your site going down with it.

Is the initial cost of setup (sometimes as much as £3000UK) worth the investment?
Is the hassle worth the saving?
And how long will the saving be a saving, before it becomes an expenditure?

Sure, it might cost £1400 to get going, but that becomes a saving as soon as the total you pay to a hosting company exceeds it. Then what?
From that point on, it's generally cheaper to run the whole thing, including server outlay, storage, power, and bandwidth, from your own hq.

What do you think is best?

Look at it from any point of view, and plese give details.

[funkysoul]

good topic..

I voted for rent.. why?
I'm using a sharedserver at www.mediatemple.com and dude.. you have everything you need. If you need something that is out of the contract. go for the dedicated server and you will get a monstermachine with everthing possible on it.

BUT....


Till you are in the position of need a own webserver, you need to create a lot of big sites or some applications that is using a lot of processor power.
And to be honest.. I don't know one!! besides my company's application.. (using 1200 servers worldwide)

[Donna]

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>> If you go pro, you can manage everything yourself. A blessing and a curse.

On the up side, you have total control.

On the downside, you have to do everything yourself, and can pay a lot for security.
Not to mention, if you use nas/san, your electricity bill will not be friendly.

Data Centers have the full control not the Hosting Companies, same as your domain name you don't ever own your domain name your just leasing it from a domain name registrar.

If something does go wrong its usually $70US plus an hour for a technician.

Majority of Places are out sourcing tech calls to India because its cheaper all round but you still pay the full price.

Its cheaper to rent, and less of a headache.

[D-Cal]

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If something does go wrong its usually $70US plus an hour for a technician.

That's a good point, and another upside of private.
If you have the servers, you can go and see what the problem is yourself. No fee.

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Majority of Places are out sourcing tech calls to India because its cheaper all round but you still pay the full price.

Yeah, the companies are squeezing you dry at every opportunity.
If you hire a server, you usually get a good service, and good uptime, but boy, do you pay for it in one off fees etc.

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Its cheaper to rent, and less of a headache.

Thanks for the info.

[MalDON]

But if you know what your doing and you have the need to host the servers yourself. Go do it. It can be a lot cheaper that way because you can have what you want instead of what the hosting company wants you to have. If you need an extra hd installed in a server, it will take you what: 15-20 minutes giving that your slow. But if your just running a small site, go rent.

Edited by MalDON, 15 June 2005 - 08:44 AM.

[Apache]

I went with renting. If there is something seriously wrong with ur server and you just cant find the problem ittl cost u alot of money to fix it

[D-Cal]

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If there is something seriously wrong with ur server and you just cant find the problem ittl cost u alot of money to fix it

That's true, and a valid upside of renting/downside of going pro.

However, not to invalidate your point, I was kind of assuming you would have to be pretty experienced with that side of things, to even think about buying your own servers.

Certainly, that's what I've done, now.

I'm running 2 Red Hat boxes with an 8-bay SAN box on RAID 5.
Can't wait to set it running live. I'll let you know what happens.
***anticipating disaster, but quietly confident... I think***