Apart From Luke (lol) Does Anyone Else Manage Their Own Server?

[Lee]

Im looking at expanding our adclusters again and have started looking at servers that we have to maintain ourselves.

Apart from the obvious time constraints, are there any other things i need to consider when purchasing a server to manage myself?

Regards,

Lee

[desslock]

I run all my websites off of my own server. It is Windows Server 2003, which comes with IIS 6.0.

Several friends help me with some maintenence, but it really is not much. When I first began doing this, I had Windows NT 3.51. This is in many ways a lot easier. If I need help, I can typically ask a friend, and then since I'm familiar with the Windows look and feel, it easy enough to go back and repeat that task.

I bought the Windows Press paperback "IIS 6.0" and it was very easy to read and learn what I needed.

Steve

[Chilihost]

yeah, well, I am answering anyway!!!!!

When you get an unmanaged server, you get exactly that - a piece of hardware with basic software installation and an internet hookup.

Unfortunately, most people that get unmanaged servers think that they are all set. But they don't realise that the day they get the server it is already running out-of-date software. Also unmanaged servers will run like a 3-legged dog until they get optimised. Not to mention that all servers (especially adult) have hundreds if not thousands of hacking attempts on them every day. If you have not secured your server you will be hacked. And if you run into any problems, you will have very limited support to help you get things fixed.

If you take the unmanaged route, you should find somewhere with the ability to purchase additional support when needed. I would also recommend getting in a pro to harden and optimise your server before you make it a production server. And finally, if you are not technically savvy, use your unmanaged server only for sites that you can live without if they go offline for a few days or a week at a time.

cheers,
Luke

[collegeboyslive]

i wouldnt have it any other way, as long as i can remote into our server we can pretty much do what ever we want to it and on it, and of course no waiting for some tech to "get around to it"

[desslock]

Also for me, since I live in Austin, it is easy enough to go out to a bar and run into a friend who works in Dell server support. And the only computers that I buy are Dells, so that way once again, I can easily find help from the common knowledge walking around.

Lee - if you are thinking of running your own server, I would suggest visiting www.sitepoint.com -- they have lively forums for running your own web server as well as keeping hackers away.

Steve

[tombarr]

We run two dedicated servers, one UNIX and one Win2k.

Both are managed. would not have it any other way.

We have many daily hacker attempts on our paysite as well as on our retail sites. firewall maintenance on the IIS box, security issues, redundancy,
backup of information....all of these are critical to keeping down time minimal and security and functionality the highest.

would not go unmanaged for anything unless you just have nothing else to do...as it sometimes can take many hours of your day when a problem arises...

[gaybucks_chip]

I'm in a sorta odd position. I own a small hosting ISP that has a bunch of servers spread out in 3 different data centers. Most of the servers are boxes that we own, but a couple are leased. We do all of our own maintenance, but most of our clients are low-maintenance non-adult customers.

As for Boyfunk and our other sites, we have a couple of leased, unmanaged servers which I (and the techs I employ for the hosting company) maintain. We've been pretty lucky as far as downtime, and are just switching over to a mirrored solution as a preventative measure. But I don't think that it would be practical for us to manage our boxes ourselves if not for the fact that I'm a pretty decent IT guy (though not a high level network admin by any means) and the fact that I have a couple of really sharp network admins/security gurus that work for the my hosting company... and as we grow, it's getting less and less time-efficient for me to mess with *any* server admin stuff, so we may well switch to a managed solution sometime in the next year. That or hire a full-time IT guy.

I think that for the average adult site, having a reliable resource you can reach at any time and knows what s/he is doing is well worth the money... look at it this way... if you pay, say, $300 more a month for a managed box, vs an unmanaged one, over the course of a year, it might cost $3500. You don't have to have a lot of downtime (depending on the size of your site and your sales volume, of course) to lose more than $3500 in direct cash losses, not to mention the damage to reputation with surfers, members, and your affiliates if something catastrophic happens and your entire site goes down.