[SGVLUG] Linux based web-server appliance

[Matthew Gallizzi]

Since the options for setting up your own server have been discussed, I will
talk about paying a hosting company.

As of today, I have been moving my hosting accounts from powweb.com to
1and1.com (developer package). Powweb was great, I was with them for about 6
years. It is $7.99 a month and it saved me the hassle of a lot of different
aspects of running a website. I moved because 1and1 just provides a lot more
(1.5TB of monthly bandwidth, 150GB of space...) and I am going to start a
web project that will most likely consume a lot of bandwidth. Anyways, I
just wanted to let you know that this option is available... Powweb uses
FreeBSD servers and I'm not too sure what 1and1 runs but I know it's linux.
In the end, time is money. If you want to learn, then setting it up yourself
would be your best bet.

On another note, I was the webmaster for San Dimas High School (In the
Bonita Unified School District) and their host is just a typical one like
Powweb if that means anything.

Hope this helps,

Matthew Gallizzi

On 5/18/06, Dustin Laurence <dustin at laurences.net> wrote:
>
> On Thu, May 18, 2006 at 06:36:13PM -0700, Emerson, Tom wrote:
>
> > > -----Original Message----- Of Joel Witherspoon
> > >
> > > I work for a school district and we are looking to host
> > > our own website and many years and dollars with an provider.
> >
> > (I presume you meant "and SAVE many dollars instead of paying a
> > provider...")
>
> Keep in mind that what you'll be doing is trading time and knowledge for
> money.  That's fine, provided both are available.  If not, consider
> getting one of the $10-$20/mo. hosting services and pay them to spend
> time getting the server back up after a hardware failure.  Keep in mind
> that you still have to pay for the bandwidth.  On the other hand, if you
> buy the pipe then you don't have bandwidth charges.
>
> > > Besides the Cobalt servers, what other type of linux based
> > > web server appliances are out there?
> >
> > Any cast-off PC for starters ;)  [Well, maybe not the ones David is
> > using if you expect a significant amount of traffic -- then again,
> > serving plain static pages doesn't take much effort...]
>
> It takes very little to run a website, though it depends on what you
> want to host.  If it is static HTML then you can probably buy an NSLU2
> for $100, install Linux, and pay very little in power as well.  If you
> use an old PC you'll be paying a noticable power bill (for a home--for a
> school it might well be *way* below the noise).  If you want to run a
> Plone site, well, you can probably do it on a not-too-old desktop PC but
> not on a little nas device!
>
> Judging from my own experience at home, if there is money to invest up
> front it will probably pay off in a couple of years to invest in a lower
> power machine (say based on a Via chip or even one of the desktop
> Pentium-M boards).  But I bet logic has nothing to do with it.  If the
> school doesn't question the hundreds or even thousands of dollars a
> month it must take to power a school each month but won't cough up a few
> hundred dollars for hardware, definitely go with cast-off PC gear and
> totally ignore power costs.  That's the hand they dealt you.
>
> > Do you have any metrics from your current site?  [pages and/or bytes
> > transferred per month, day, hour]  Is the site heavy with server-side
> > "stuff" [java/perl CGI's, databases, etc.]  Do your site developers use
> > proprietary design tools (ASP) [I presume not, since you're asking about
> > linux based servers, but it never hurts to check...]
>
> I totally agree with this--the big thing is to get a very good idea of
> what you expect from this server.  Who writes the website?  Talk to them
> first of all!  Know your bandwidth targets and exactly what server
> software you have to run.  Also reliability expectations--if heads will
> roll if there is downtime, then someone has to pay for failover or
> better hardware than old PCs.
>
> If none of these answers are known, then perhaps you don't know enough
> yet to do the job right?
>
> Dustin
>
>
>
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