Web Hosting Talk : Web Hosting Main Forums : Colocation and Data Centers : A list of what I need to be a Co-lo Dedicated reseller

[Arkansas]

Looking into starting web reselling business and have been reading quite a bit on WHT forum for a week or two. This place is great! Please help me determine if I have everything listed anyone would need to start this business with their own co-lo server and run the business as a 1-5 person business.

1) Server (built by me or someone else with Linux, Win, or Free BSD and shipped to >
2) Co-Location like ServerMatrix (or others)
3) Control Panel Software to manage server (like Hsphere, Ensim Webppliance Pro, Plesk, or Cpanel). Do I understand correctly that the CPS normally includes much of what resellers normally offer and include a Web, Mail, DNS, and Database Server? This can be rented in some cases by some co-lo's or you can buy your own licenses for higher upfront costs.
4) Billing software (included in Hsphere or an add-on to some others - ModernBill, PhpManager, etc)
5) SSL Certificate
6) Merchant/Gateway Account (2CheckOut, PaySystems, etc.)
7) Knowledge to manage server or hire someone to do it.

Others:
> Perhaps some online flash tutorials to help customers (like demodemo offers) to decrease support issues.
> Perhaps some simple web design programs for customers to design their own web sites (unless you are a web designer) like Site Studio that comes with the Hsphere control panel (and there are others)
> Obviously, general business sense and some knowledge of marketing.

>??? what else ??? I haven't started this yet and there are probably many others that haven't yet but want to. We want to know the tools needed to do this with.

I'm sure a lot of what we need is on-the-job training but we want to be as prepared as we can also.

Can some of you pro's that are doing this now tell me what is missing from this list or is inaccurate? Help us out here.

And THANKS!

[JookyBean]

Umm what about switches/routers?

[johnallen]

8) Bandwidth

[Arkansas]

for JookyBean, I understand the switches/routers are normally part of the service the datacenter provides. For example, ServerMatrix says "We will place your server inside our fully redundant datacenter and give you power and network connectivity so that you can have all the redundancies of a fully managed datacenter."

for johnallen, bandwidth is provided by the datacenter and the monthly fee is determined by how much bandwidth I would be allowed. As example, at ServerMatrix it's $50 month for 100G, $100 month for 200G, etc.

I'm not trying to push ServerMatrix's services, I'm sure there are others that provide this kind of co-location service. They are just one I found out about through WHT and I checked out there website info. Any others? Let me know.

Thanks for the feedback. I'm just trying to 'make a list and check it twice, to find out' ... if I left anything off.

[InstallatronPhil]

I think they thought you wanted to colo people's servers

[ffeingol]

As silly as it sounds, power cables and network patch (CAT-5 ethernet) cables.

Your best bet is prob. to just contact the coloc facility that you choose and see what they want/require.

For example, one facility we use provides the patch cables, another requests tha we send them. One facility prefers that we send rails to mount the server on, the other does not want them.

Frank

[Arkansas]

My mistake for not being clear. I am a newbie at this but I have learned a great deal by reading a lot here on WHT. I think I understand the pros/cons of colo vs. renting.

I am considering building and colocating a single server at somewhere like ServerMatrix, etc for running a WebHosting business.

But if I colo as opposed to renting a shared or dedicated server, there are many things that I will need to setup on the server.

I just want to make sure that I think of everything needed on the server to run a WebHosting business such as: O/S (Linux, FreeBSD) with web server (Apache, etc.), Control Panel, Billing software, SSL, Merchant Gateway, and ?????????????.

I operate a computer store so building a solid server is no problem. The management of it is helped also because you can pay $25 monthly (or more) for a managed service plan on a colo server at ServerMatrix.

Any input is appreciated.

[johnallen]

I was making a joke. I guess i'm not very funny.

[rey]

Arkansas,

In addition to what have been listed, my recommendation is to do research on good companies that you can trust. I believe ServerMatrix is one of them. Also, the closer the data center to where you live the better.

Another thing is to consider the network connectivities. Is the data center a neutral facility? If you can get a neutral facility, you will get the benefit of relatively lower price and more choice of providers. Two or more entry points to your router/switch would be better than single entry point. Will you be connected through a managed switch? Would it be 10 or 100mbps port? Is the billing based on 95th percentile or average usage?

Who will be your contact person if you need assistance with your server? How much does it cost per hour? You can also ask them about backup and what is their contingency plan if something goes wrong (power failure, network outage, etc).

If you need more protection, you can also ask them about firewall and extra services that might be offered.