One of those broad thread questions ahead. :topic:

The background
I host a small, but growing, project (public audio file downloads) and a closed sound-tech pipeline, and have a few semi-large projects ahead. The first two are targeted Europe and North America. The latter projects are targeting Northern Europe. For this I have one dedicated server and off site backup in Germany. Since I got this, friends and network have started punking me for hosting.

Still with me? Thanks!

Anyway, I’ll make it short. I’m finishing my masters in information science over the summer, and thought I might as well set up some kind of friendly hosting for my network. This would allow me to set up:

Get rid of all the hosting bills that have been building up over the years
A failover system for my larger projects
Make both European and US users content
A nice technical setup so I’m able to provide well rounded solutions when finished at university
Perhaps even get a real hosting company running

The question: How do I do this? Actually, HOW WOULD YOU DO IT? ;)



And some rantings to get you going:

[] One European server, and one American + third party management company?

[] Do a little Google? Four/five low end dedicated servers, and something like ISPconfig/webmin …or what about eight VPS :crap:

[] Just the one I have now, and get a Linux and Windows VPS for special setups, and a reseller account with add-on’s (SSL, billing/ticket system, eNOM etc.) and that would be it!?

[] In terms of making a farm, what software to go with? cPanel/WHM or Hsphere … Could Directadmin do the trick?

[] Or just partner up with a hosting firm that already has a US/UK complete hosting solution running.


Thanks for reading… Recommendations, insight and rantings accepted and appreciated. :pray:

One big powerful server with cPanel and external management such as PSM or Seeksadmin

I'm in agreement with Linuxtechie regarding the CPanel (I don't know anything about the PSM or Seeksadmin). But before you do that, before you get heavily invested in third party applications that you may or may not make total use of, I would probably recommend that you first give a reseller account a try. Grab a couple of those friends who want hosting and sell it to them on the cheap, or for whatever would, in total, compensate for your own hosting fees. In other words, get your feet wet before you jump into the pool.

I have no doubt that you're more than able to administer a Web server or two but there's much more involved with hosting than just keeping the servers happy. There's getting used to dealing with customer in a technical support and billing situation. Speaking of which, how do you plan to set up your billing and technical support policy and then implement it? While you're paying someone else to keep your servers up and running, you can otherwise spend that time learning how to run a hosting business.

Please understand when I say the next little bit that I'm not trying to plug the company I work for but what I have to say here is more or less true: Our resold clients are likley to have more time to focus on such things as catering to the needs of their resold clients in ways that they may not be able to if they had to put serious time into supporting their own servers. Granted, they may have less work when they have fewer clients to tend to but if your ultimate goal is to grow the hosting business into something more grand than a few friends and some simple MySpace/"Homepage" type sites, then you may want to be able to count on having that level of experience under your belt when you do move on to your own servers and have to split up your time accordingly.

Still with me? Awesome. :-)

What operating system are you going to use on your own Web server(s)? What supplimental packages are you going to offer? If you're going to offer IIS, which .NET versions do you want to provide to your clients? I would say that it's not unreasonable to offer 2.x and 3.x (now that it's not beta). Are you going to focus on a specifc sect of developers such as ColdFusion or do you want to provide for the use of a larger number of applications such as FrontPage (now effectively defunct) and the Microsoft AJAX framework stuff? What FTP service do you want to use? FileZilla is free of cost. But would you rather pay for a service that you know you're going to get better than decent support for from the developers?

Maybe a Linux/UNIX environment would be better for your needs. You could still install FrontPage extensions but then you'd have access to the wonder and magic that is the .htaccess file (IIS supports it but only for password protection). In my opinion, the relatively higher levels of stability with running Apache on a Linux box would be obvious pretty much right away.

On to an UBER brief overview of the legalities involved: Hire a lawyer. If you're unsure of whether or not what you've written for an hosting contact is binding, hire a lawyer. If you're unsure of your taxation practices, hire a lawyer. If you're not a lawyer, hire a lawyer. Even if you only hire a lawyer to look over your shoulder and proofread what you've already written, it's still a good idea. Any time someone pays you to do something, you had better be sure that your own six is covered 100%. Entirely. For sure. Completely. Hire a lawyer.

How do you want ot promote your hosting business? You could pay for higher standings at a handful of Rate That Web Host sites but you're essentially renting positive praise. Many companies do it just for the sheer exposure which isn't a bad thing. Were I in your position, I would definately think about doing it. If you do, consider how long you can afford to pay for such services and keep it cost effective. You still need to get a return on your investment (I'm sure there's an acronym for that somewhere) so maybe don't flood the market with leased ranking right away. You would participate in banner exchange programs or claim to specialize in supporting 3rd party applications like DotNetNuke (for IIS) or Gallery or PostNuke (Apache, IIS, and others). Did I mention hire a lawyer?

If you go out on your own right away, backups are soooo soo so so so critical. I know you said that you have backups in Germany. That's awesome. How quickly can you get them to your location? Can you retrieve them on a per file basis? Maybe in 50 years of hosting, your company never exists in a building that'll catch fire or feel the effects of a quake that reaches a scale or 7.5. Your clients may have messed up a couple PHP files and cannot, for the life of them, spend the time to code it again when it took them four days to do it the first itme. Do be sure to have as close to daily backups as you can get, even if they're not off-site.

What's this? You want to establish policy now? Well, oaky. How do you handle account cancellations and/or refunds? Can you effectively disable an account without cancelling it then point to your AUP and say "Look pal.. you hosted porn. I had to disable your account. I told you not to host porn, didn't I? I have an Acceptable Use Policy. You agreed to it when you signed up and you broke it. If you want to continue hosting here, pay me what you owe for this billing period's fees and ditch the pr0n. If you don't want to continue hosting here, you still owe me for the first two weeks of your current billing cycle. Chump. Now pay me. Don't make me.. wait for it.. wait for it... Hire A Lawyer." :-D

Good luck to you. I hope that if you decide to start a hosting company that it works out well for you and that you're happy in doing it. Have a great day.