Hi,

I am developing a site for a new company that will run under a medical engineering firm. I'm currently the only employee and am setting up websites and graphics for the company, but working out of the same office as everyone else. We currently have a VPS through iPower to host our site on, and everything is dandy. However we only own one IP address on the VPS, and I want to be in charge of my secondary nameserver, as I will also eventually use it as a secondary MX server. I have never done this before so I have a few questions about it. My previous experience has all been graphic design and web design, not much on the hosting side of things.

1.Is it possible to run a server on a XP desktop just using Apache or similar software (and a dynamic DNS service)?

2. Would it be possible to run this through the company LAN and router to make it accessible via the web without any serious tinkering on their network? (it has to stay up, and I have no idea what kind of routers or firewalls they are using currently). Basically given the standard setup how hard is it to open up the ports on the router(s)? I've done this only on a home router before, so I assume it can't be much different.

3. How do you go about doing it?

Scratch that. I got approval to buy a simple (cheap) dedicated to use as a backup MX server and a nameserver. I guess now my question is what kind people would recommend.

Hi there

Good move on getting the second server approved. Any other way woud be to messy.

Setting up a w2k3 server as a seconday mail and dns server is very easy. Have you thought of what mail program you would want to use? We use Smarter Mail for ours, and it really easy to use and configure, costing is good too. I think that you should get a server with at least 4 IP's. That way you can set up the MX on a seperate IP than the DNS, and give you two for future endevours.

As for getting a dedicated server, i would totally recomend Liquid Web. I can not say a bad thing about them. http://www.liquidweb.com/

If you where after a VPS, not being able to advertise our own services :) (sorry moderators!), i think Ultima Hosts would be a good choice.

Hope this helps!

Cheers

Hugh

Thanks for the reply. We currently use Q-mail for our e-mail. Not the latest and greatest, but it does the trick for us. Liquid Web looks like a great service, but probably a little more then I'm looking for. Allow me to clarify. We have a VPS already with E-mail and domains set-up, and just need a small back-up in case our server decides to act like, well, a server. It'd be a temporary SMTP/MX server, and I'd use it for secondary DNS as well. Liquid web looks great (I'm a fan of any company that puts customer service as a priority), but it's plans are a little overkill for our needs.

One of the other "companies" here is a business advisory firm, and recently a client gave me a full set of server software to "test" for him. It runs great, and as such am probably just going to a buy a box, throw this software on it and let it do its trick. I'm not much of a webmaster/server guy, more of just a web developer. However I love challanges and think it'd be fun to try and set a server up. What do people think about that instead of using a hosting company? What companies offer the best computers for the most competitive prices?