Rebellion88

Ok, i was curious about either web hosting or game server hosting, how to set a business for one of these idea's and how their managed etc.. I just was considering expanding to one of these in the future.

Regards,




Dean

STINEHART

Seriously.. by yourself.
You need capitol and a BCS, or someone that has one, and a business plan.

I'm in college still, but took business classes and got certs and first hand knowledge working for different companies, mostly temps.

I have a few different projects and one Liscensed LLC.
You really need to know the basics of business or your doomed.

Rebellion88

Ok so lets just say i got the capital and a possible partnership ownership, do you know how i go about it, i know roughly you can use a data center for colocation. Also have a good Xmas!

Skie

There's a lot to consider when going into web hosting. Search the Web Serving forum, here on TSF, as this has been discussed before.

Basically, you need someone that's very good with sales/marketing. You also need someone that's very good with server administration. If you're good with both, congrats. However, most people aren't. You'll also need to decide how you want to get started. There's 3 main ways to get going.

First, you can get a Reseller account. This allows you to have a low initial investment and you use someone else's servers. Although, you're limited to how many accounts you can set up since you're not the only one using that server. As an alternative to a Reseller account, you can get a VPS (Virtual Private Server) account. This allows you to have your own "virtual" server. You're still sharing the physical server with others, but if someone else gets hacked, it doesn't affect you or your customers (assuming the main server doesn't get hacked).

Second, you can get a dedicated server from a datacenter. With this option, you lease the whole server. The initial costs are still fairly low (compared to owning your own server) since you don't have to worry about all the licensing costs and such, but this is more expensive in the long run. However, if you pick a decent data center, they'll cover any hardware replacement costs as well as any other admin work that's included in your contract (generally a few hours of work per month is allowed).

Lastly, you can buy your own servers. You can get a fairly good server for around $1,000 - $2,500, depending on what your needs are. Then, add on the costs for any licenses (OS (if any), control panel, misc software, etc) and the colocation fees. This path will be the most expensive upfront. However, your monthly costs will be much lower then a dedicated server. This path makes the most sense for the long term (3 - 5 years or more). However, any work that the data center does will cost you. So, if you can, pick a good one that's near you so you can do the work yourself. Make sure you have extra hardware ready for use (hard drives, power supplies, RAM, etc). You don't want your customers to wait for a new hard drive to be shipped to you because the old one failed the night before Christmas Eve.

Each of the 3 have their advantages and disadvantages. Take some time to decide how you want to get start your business. Obviously, if you're going into game servers, a Reseller account probably isn't going to work for you. Do a lot of research to pick the right data center/Reseller host before you sign up. Your customers will thank you for it.

When picking which OS and control panel to use, use something that you or your server admin is familiar with. If your admin knows Linux inside and out, don't go Windows (and vise versa). Knowing how to keep the server secure and updated is vital. For Linux, CPanel seems to be the most popular control panel, although it's not 100% perfect and does suffer from various problems from time to time. Plesk and Ensim are 2 of the other more popular ones. I'm not familiar with Windows control panels, but the only one I know of is Helm.

Also, pick the right billing and help desk software. ModernBill and Kayako's E-Support are what I use. There are several others, but I don't know them off the top of my head. Join some of the various web hosting related forums and see what the customers complain about. Make sure you don't make the same common mistakes. Also see what the other hosts complain about.

There's so much more that I can say, but I'm already writing a book that'll be larger then War And Peace. If you have any specific questions, just ask.

Rebellion88

Different topic but just a quick one, can install linux and windows on the same machine, dual boot, or have 1 hard disk for windows and another for linux?

Skie

You can do either option. But, for web hosting, I don't recommend it. For testing purposes or on a personal computer, you can easily do it to play around with. Check out our Linux forum if you have any specific Linux questions.

Cellus

Just to broaden the scope a little, any fiddling or testing should be done on a test machine and not in production. The last thing you want to do is mess up your production machine and bring it down while you try to find the problem and fix it. If you mess up your test, production is still going.

By the way, if you do intend to have web and/or game server hosting, you should definitely invest in one thing. Redundancy, redundancy, redundancy. Like Skie said, have spare FRUs like hard drives and PSUs on hand because it isn't a matter of if they die but when. Also consider investing in a UPS - it's a lot easier and less time-consuming to restart something when it had time to shutdown properly. While a good power bar can handle some surges and spikes, they certainly can not handle sags or brownouts.

It all takes time of course. Don't expect to get everything perfect out the gate. However if you can prepare as much as possible beforehand, you'll certainly come out far better than if you didn't prepare. You'll have to balance cost with necessity, so it's ultimately up to you.

Chevy

Also, keep in mind the TCO (Total Cost of Ownership).

If you decide to have your own servers/facility:

• Servers
• Replacement Spares
• Power (conditioning, redundancy, and protection)
• Fire Supression
• Backups
• Internet Feed (depending on how much you host, you may be looking at a fairly large pipe)
• Infratructure (cabling, routers, firewalls - cost depends on the outside connection)
• Insurance
• Facilities
• Legal Support (liability statements, contracts for clients, commerce laws by state)
• Merchant account for CC processing (now you're dealing with fraud and chargebacks)