Colocation or not?

[bupati]

Hi,


I've got 4 home server using fast connection and I am hosting around 25 websites. I've been thinking to use colocation service from other company.

I need advise from expert...should I run my servers from my own house? or should I use other company for colocation service to run my hosting company (it's not really my real company, but I just started to do home bussines hosting websites/emails for friends(they pay small fee to me) ).

Is colocation service better than running your your server at home?



Advise please.....


Thanks

[Nokia]

There are dozens of factors to take in to account when deciding to host services yourself or in a data centre.

I would say for you the main factor will depend on what type of web sites you are hosting and who you are hosting them for.
If you are hosting a web site that is integral to someone’s business, and who would be coming to you for compensation for lost profits should the web server go down - then I would certainly start looking for a hosting centre.

On the other hand if you are just hosting some sites for your friends then the extra cost of using a hosting centre may not be worth it also do you have contracts with them and a way of being paid every month.....if they decided to pull out for any reason you would still be in your contract with the hosting centre and still need to pay your monthly fee......

You would also have to take in to consideration the extra charges you would have to push out to the people you host the web servers for, in the UK a half rack of hosting space could cost anything up to £300 per month - obviously you are not going to pay this yourself and would have to jump the price up significantly for your customers…..if they are not going to pay it, then you will have to pay it yourself…..

Some of the benefits of using a hosting centre are that they usually have a UPS, a BGP ISP network for resilience, SLA's they have to meet otherwise they will incur financial penalties and have to pay you some money (usually), someone else to blame if the Web servers went offline due to a power cut / network outage etc…

If you have a UPS at home, ISP resilience and can handle the data throughput then you MAY get away with hosting small web sites from home………….but if you have important web sites and may face being sued if they went down for any reason, it may be better to use a hosting centre.

I have recently set up a VoIP platform in work that we use to provide VoIP services to a large number of companies, although we have UPS, Network resilience, Fibre incoming from the ISP etc and the chance of it going down are very small due to the resilience we have in place – should it go down even for an hour, the amount of money companies would lose from not being able to use their phones would be astronomical and the resulting law suit would put us out of business pretty quickly, the insurance premiums for this are also massive, so I have installed it all in a hosting centre, that way if the network was to go down it would be the hosting centre who is ultimately responsible and not us……and they would be OK in the long run as they would have the relevant insurance……………

It’s all about accountability I suppose.

[r3b00+]

Also, if any of these sites are going to be merchant sites then you also need to concern yourself with credit card details, personal information, security, etc.
Imagine if any of your servers were breached, containing any of this information...you would be wishing you HAD gone the hosting route.
Just something to mull over.

[Nokia]

The security of the servers will be nothing to do with the hosting centre........it is the owners responsibility to secure them with their own firewalls etc.

The hosting centre will only be responsible for physical security of the servers, the network connectivity and the power supply to the servers.........after that you are on your own!

Although there will probably be legal implications of hosting web sites that do store credit card details / personal infomation that you will have to comply with!

[Spyrus]

Im not sure where you are from but one other thing to consider on top of Nokia's excellent post is that in the USA if you are running a company from your home you can itemize your taxes and write off chunks of all your bills (electricity, rent, internet, etc) it will all be based on what percentage of it is used for your business vs personal but its still a deductible.

keep that in mind along with everything else