Going it alone

10th October, 2011 By Guy Hoogewerf

I’m wondering if anyone has any comments, I am thinking of going it alone on Hosting, at the moment I use a mixture of Reseller, and Virtual Server Hosting to manage my clients websites… but due to frequent and often repetitive problems which I shall list in a moment I am seriously considering setting up my own servers in a data house somewhere.

It’s a considerable expense and would require some expertise, much of it I already have, the question is whether you clients would be happy about this. I might not be able to provide all the answers.

Current issues:

Reliability – we’re easily meeting our needs with well over 99.9% uptime
Quotas – we’re managing some fairly large websites without breaking barriers, Reseller Hosting often put limits on Bandwidth, Domains and Storage, we’re running between 60 and 80% at any one time… so going alone would alleviate and allow further expansion.
Databases – A core problem at the moment, the current set up has a slow connection to databases, it seems we cannot speed this up and websites that use databases are suffering from this.
Email – reliability for email remains a real problem and Anti Spam filters are not great – they work well, but too much Spam gets through
Costs – current set up, costs more in time than money – big issue, really I should spend a bit more and spent less time sorting problems
Hacking – this has happened and more frequently than I might have hoped – big cause for concern, security is high, but hacking occurs on one or two websites every three months or so… it’s not really acceptable.

Key Concerns in a future set up:

Multiple Servers – we think we need five… one for all websites, one for MSSQL databases, one for MySQL Databases, one for Email and one for Back Up.
Anti-Virus – would need to install quality anti-virus on all servers
Email – would need to invest in a decent email system
Control Panels – most servers come with Plesk these days
Learning curve – need to work on this – am confident

Timing – a lot of research is going on at the moment – Hosting and Managing websites at NComp@ss probably takes up 50% of the business now and so this needs addressing, It is likely something might happen in January.

What this would mean for you – absolutely nothing – I would not change any current structures or pricing… this is about giving you a better service, not making more money… if anything this is about ensuring you get a better deal. My advantage would be to free up more time to build a bigger business.

Going it alone

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