[Bozley]

Hey first time Poster here!!! Looked around for a bit then signed up looks like your a easy going crowd!

Well here is my Question I am freelance web designer up here in Canada (AAAA)(I will make fun of me... for you) and am tired of screwing around with hosting companies where it seems I am just a number not a person and there are always problems.

So I was wondering what I would need to Host my own. According to Apples site an Xserve has software capable of having each website using different domain names (using virtual domains) and even a different IP address. So from what I understand from there web page, I can have different website on the same server example www.Website1.com, www.differenctwebsite.com. Then I would need a lot of bandwidth with high-speed line like faster then the average “high speed” connection right?

Sorry I am not real technical I am just a Designer, so in conclusion could someone basically tell me what I need from start to finish that would be great. I would put about 20 WebPages on it to start. They are pretty basic sites with Home page, Contact page, and a few small videos, flash that kind of thing. (How many web pages could an Xserve handle?)

Any advise in this area would be much appreciated.
Sorry its kind of long!

Thanks Guys

[MallyMal]

Originally posted by Bozley:
Hey first time Poster here!!! Looked around for a bit then signed up looks like your a easy going crowd!

Well here is my Question I am freelance web designer up here in Canada (AAAA)(I will make fun of me... for you) and am tired of screwing around with hosting companies where it seems I am just a number not a person and there are always problems.

So I was wondering what I would need to Host my own. According to Apples site an Xserve has software capable of having each website using different domain names (using virtual domains) and even a different IP address. So from what I understand from there web page, I can have different website on the same server example www.Website1.com, www.differenctwebsite.com. Then I would need a lot of bandwidth with high-speed line like faster then the average “high speed” connection right?

Sorry I am not real technical I am just a Designer, so in conclusion could someone basically tell me what I need from start to finish that would be great. I would put about 20 WebPages on it to start. They are pretty basic sites with Home page, Contact page, and a few small videos, flash that kind of thing. (How many web pages could an Xserve handle?)

Any advise in this area would be much appreciated.
Sorry its kind of long!

Thanks Guys

Yes, you can do all the stuff you asked on an X-serve or basically any other server with a web server installed.

First, I would look for a host that has dedicated hosting plans. Dedicated hosting means that they will rent you a server. This is a good idea because you don't have to worry about buying your own server then finding an Internet connection.

But you said that you were tired of being just a number so you either need to find a different hosting company or buy your own server as you said. If you are still wanting to buy your own then you really need to find yourself a colocation center.

Colocation centers are much cheaper than trying to do this stuff at home. If you colocate all you have to do is buy the server and pay the center monthly or what ever.

If you try to do all of this stuff from home. You will need a RELIABLE high-speed Internet connection that has a really good upload speed, an UPS just in case your power goes out, a way of keeping the X-serve cool, and a rack to put the X-serve in. How do I know this? Because I went through all of this crap a year and a half ago with my X-xerve.
I was paying $219.00 a month for a business DSL when I could have gotten rack space in a colo for $75.00 a month.

If you decide to colo just get VNC so that you can log into the server as if you were right in front of it.

[Bozley]

Thanks for replying

I have done a lot of research on web companies in my Area. (Sherwood Park Alberta)(You’re thinking where the Hell is that) That’s the problem there are web-hosting companies but I don’t think there are collocation centers. I am going to look again but I think I have looked closely at a lot of these companies and I honestly have never even heard of this but that sounds like a better solution if I can find one.

If I try this at home
(I don’t want to give up on my dream of just walking over to the server and fixing a problem myself instead of calling or writing emails to some hosting company)

Could I possibly buy a Power Mac and Mac OSX Server and if this endeavor doesn’t work then I could just keep the Power Mac put Panther back on it, (I thinking I am going to get one anyway). Is that even possible from the looks of Apples site it is. That would deal with the rack issue and the heat and noise (So I’ve heard).

The only problem is the Internet connection do you think I could start with this
http://www.shaw.ca/Tmplt.asp?pageID=771 remember these are just small sites with small number of hits per month (50-100)(3 hits a day).

This is from Telus and if you read near the bottom they say this.
“TELUS offers services from ADSL to Fibre Optics. Naturally, as your business grows, your TELUS Solution can grow with you.”
http://businesscontent.telus.com/web...edBusiness.jsp

They don’t tell me how much but I am going to call and find out….How much bandwidth do you think I need to start?

How do I know this? Because I went through all of this crap a year and a half ago with my X-xerve.
I was paying $219.00 a month for a business DSL when I could have gotten rack space in a colo for $75.00 a month.

May I Ask How many WebPages you hosted on that server at a time and what kind of pages where they? (Streaming video, flash, movies, high traffic)

Thanks again for your reply

[MallyMal]

Originally posted by Bozley:
Thanks for replying

I have done a lot of research on web companies in my Area. (Sherwood Park Alberta)(You’re thinking where the Hell is that) That’s the problem there are web-hosting companies but I don’t think there are collocation centers. I am going to look again but I think I have looked closely at a lot of these companies and I honestly have never even heard of this but that sounds like a better solution if I can find one.

If you can't find a colocation center in Sherwood Park (where the Hell is that? ) could you find one close to it?

If I try this at home
(I don’t want to give up on my dream of just walking over to the server and fixing a problem myself instead of calling or writing emails to some hosting company)

Could I possibly buy a Power Mac and Mac OSX Server and if this endeavor doesn’t work then I could just keep the Power Mac put Panther back on it, (I thinking I am going to get one anyway). Is that even possible from the looks of Apples site it is. That would deal with the rack issue and the heat and noise (So I’ve heard).

Yeah, you can do that. But don't let your dream run your business into the ground.

The only problem is the Internet connection do you think I could start with this
http://www.shaw.ca/Tmplt.asp?pageID=771 remember these are just small sites with small number of hits per month (50-100)(3 hits a day).

This is from Telus and if you read near the bottom they say this.
“TELUS offers services from ADSL to Fibre Optics. Naturally, as your business grows, your TELUS Solution can grow with you.”
http://businesscontent.telus.com/web...edBusiness.jsp

They don’t tell me how much but I am going to call and find out….How much bandwidth do you think I need to start?

Yeah, I think you could get by with one of those two solutions but the question is how reliable is the connection and how well it can sustain the bandwidth it's talking about. As far as bandwidth goes, see if you can get around 10GB of transfer per month. That way it will cover your low traffic sites and any uploading and downloading you may do to maintain the server and site. If you find that you are using less it's cool and means you can add more sites with no trouble, if you find that you are using more than 10GB just bump up your plan.

May I Ask How many WebPages you hosted on that server at a time and what kind of pages where they? (Streaming video, flash, movies, high traffic)

Are you asking how many webpages or how many websites? At the time I had around 15 sites or 75 pages, MySQL database, and a mail server on the server. I had HTML-based, Flash, Audio, Video, and MySQL database sites on it. The highest traffic was for this underground music site that was getting around 30,000 hits per month and pushed around 1-3 GB of transfer per day and yes it used to really bog down the business DSL I used to have. The X-serve had no trouble though.

[Bozley]

Thanks a lot for you help

I think I’m getting over the idea of having my own server after doing even more research; I am going to keep looking for a collocation center cause that truly looks like the best solution. (Unless I can get a seriously wicked deal on a good Internet connection)(Which wont happen)
Sorry you had to make that mistake to know that it was a bad idea, thanks for saving me a lot of trouble and money.

Thanks Again
Boz

[spacefreak]

I'm sort of in the same hunt. I currently manage numerous clients' hosting at Pair networks, but have recently been researching a colocated X-Serve solution.

Here are some companies that I found who provide this service... every deal here is different with regards to how much bandwidth, domains & IP addresses, etc you get with each package.

Ninewire (macwebhosting.com) - $75/month
MacHost - $199/month
Host Solutions - $139/month
XServeHosting - $30/month
InnoTech - $250/month
Digital Forest - $299/month
CharlieHost - $250/month

Does anyone have any recommendations or insight into these colocation providers?