Heng Chai
31-01-2003, 13:54
This is a PM that jason sent me today. I figured its a good topic to put out to the public.
jason wrote on 31-1-2003 10:07 AM:
ask u to start out at a data centre.. i believe you did some research.. which 1 do u think i can go for quarter rack for a startup business like me and bandwidth is still so call value for money one..?
Startup? It all depends on 2 things.
1. How much $$ you have to burn. The more you have, the better your startup.
Comparisions:
Sharing/getting colocation with another company
vs
Getting direct from ISP
Sharing/getting from another company comes cheap, the cost of the space you actually use + bandwidth only. That comes to about $100-200 per U depending on the upstream, with inforev even offering $88. That's how cheap it can get.
Getting direct from ISP, you can expect to pay from at least $500 per month not including massive setups of $500 and above for a bare 10U with 10mbps shared.
The difference is that, paying cheap means you have to rely on them for everything. If they screw up, you're dead. And the probability of them screwing up is definately higher than the ISP screwing up. Pay more for a good night's rest or pay less and take the risk.
For server, also the same. Buy a P4 Xeon and burn $4000 at a go, or spend $1000 and get a simple 1U server. The difference will come when you have enough customers. I have seen my 1U server crawl even though it has 1GB ram and running a P3-1GHz cpu. And it has less than 100 sites hosted. (That was when I had to move sites to a backup server and move the server to STIX).
2. How much you know. If little or none, how much do you want to spend to hire someone?
Server maintainance isn't your everyday cup of tea. Its not just click here and there and expect things to work. Even installing a good control panel may not get you everywhere. Don't think of pulling off a server just knowing how to use telnet/ssh. Its barely the basics.
If you pay someone to do it, its going to eat into your budget, depending on how much he demands. Chances are you aren't going to hire him for once only, so it might be either a few times a month or long term.
Finally, the easiest and safest way to startup is still getting a reseller account from a reliable provider. It will benefit in the short term while you build up your customer base, get enough cash for expansion plus take time to learn how to handle the server. Then its a good time to expand to either a dedicated server or colocation.
jason wrote on 31-1-2003 10:07 AM:
ask u to start out at a data centre.. i believe you did some research.. which 1 do u think i can go for quarter rack for a startup business like me and bandwidth is still so call value for money one..?
Startup? It all depends on 2 things.
1. How much $$ you have to burn. The more you have, the better your startup.
Comparisions:
Sharing/getting colocation with another company
vs
Getting direct from ISP
Sharing/getting from another company comes cheap, the cost of the space you actually use + bandwidth only. That comes to about $100-200 per U depending on the upstream, with inforev even offering $88. That's how cheap it can get.
Getting direct from ISP, you can expect to pay from at least $500 per month not including massive setups of $500 and above for a bare 10U with 10mbps shared.
The difference is that, paying cheap means you have to rely on them for everything. If they screw up, you're dead. And the probability of them screwing up is definately higher than the ISP screwing up. Pay more for a good night's rest or pay less and take the risk.
For server, also the same. Buy a P4 Xeon and burn $4000 at a go, or spend $1000 and get a simple 1U server. The difference will come when you have enough customers. I have seen my 1U server crawl even though it has 1GB ram and running a P3-1GHz cpu. And it has less than 100 sites hosted. (That was when I had to move sites to a backup server and move the server to STIX).
2. How much you know. If little or none, how much do you want to spend to hire someone?
Server maintainance isn't your everyday cup of tea. Its not just click here and there and expect things to work. Even installing a good control panel may not get you everywhere. Don't think of pulling off a server just knowing how to use telnet/ssh. Its barely the basics.
If you pay someone to do it, its going to eat into your budget, depending on how much he demands. Chances are you aren't going to hire him for once only, so it might be either a few times a month or long term.
Finally, the easiest and safest way to startup is still getting a reseller account from a reliable provider. It will benefit in the short term while you build up your customer base, get enough cash for expansion plus take time to learn how to handle the server. Then its a good time to expand to either a dedicated server or colocation.