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Personal vs. Work/Free Server?
akutz asks: "I am sure many of you have asked yourselves this question before: do I run my own server, or take advantage of my employer's hardware and/or free online hosts? I recently brought my own personal server online that provides web, e-mail, source control, and directory services for myself. I like the warm snuggly feeling that all my data is on my box and it is mine, mine, mine. However, I have also just burdened myself with maintaining a server when my employer, The University of Texas at Austin, has plenty of servers that I could use for this very purpose. There are also plenty of free services online that do this, such as Gmail and Sourceforge. So the question is, which is better, running your own server or letting someone else do it for you?"
If it's just my stuff I prefer to run my own, mostly for the learning experience. However if I'm hosting things that a lot of other people use I think it's better to have a company host it. They generally have better uptime, and if they do go down, the blame isn't on me :)
My thoughts exactly. What next, "Which animal has the softest fur, Cats or Dogs!?"
Check the terms of your employment before setting up shop on your company's hardware. Typically business frown on personal use of company resources. Worse, they pretty much pwn whatever is on them.. including your brilliant ideas squirreled away between email love letters and Mexican vacation photos. Roll your own or find a reliable hosting service.
Speak truth to power.
... are you a geek or an end user?
Trolling is a art,
If you host it yourself, make sure taht your ISP has no plans to block the port(s) you plan to use for the servers.
There seem to be a lot ISP now, at least here in Australia, who routinely block port 80, 25 and a host of others.
If you have the ability and it is not costing you much or anything host your own.
I hosted my stuff at my previous employers and it worked great for a couple of years and then our relationship turned sour overnight and I lost about 3 years of work, I had backups but most of them were where I worked, what I did have backups of on my own was outdated etc.
Running your server is more than warm fuzzies, you can do what you want without anyone looking over your shoulder, plus the experience you gain from it could very well be stuff that could be used on a resume or talked about during a job interview. Much of what landed my current job came from the fact I was my own server admin.
The nice thing about Windows is - It does not just crash, it displays a dialog box and lets you press 'OK' first. Reg
You better get written permission before you start hosting personal stuff on the employer's box. If the company policy doesn't allow it, you'll justifiably screwed if/when it is discovered.
I debated this very same issue, you can read my thought on it at my homepage:
http://www.cocacola.com/~robert
The beautiful and special thing about Universities is they often make resources like this available for their faculty, staff, and students plus have a sizable staff to do the management work for you. If you don't mind some of the regulations they enforce, then I'd go that route as it should be the path of least resistence / cost.
Do what I do...do both!
I've got an unused machine in my office at a decent university set up as my mail and web server. Unlimited bandwidth (within reason). Free bandwidth! My own box! On-site administration! Nobody knows! Unlimited email space! ALL THE EXCLAMATION POINTS I WANT!!!
I rent 2 servers and have root access on up to 4. There is nother better than having root access, so when you want to install X you can just apt-get install or yum install or whatever distro you are using instead of waiting for 2 weeks and tech support people to do it for you.
1) Don't run your own Email Server. It's a pain in the rear, and it'll get blacklisted for being on a consumer subnet anyway.
2) If you have a website that you need to guarantee availability for, get a cheap webhost like LunarPages or IPowerWeb. (Note that blogs fall under this category. Don't run your own blog unless the Blogger.com service doesn't meet your needs.)
3) If you have something personal (such as vacation pictures, web scripts for testing, an experimental web app, etc.) run your own server. It's a rewarding experience and can teach you a lot.
4) DO NOT run ANYTHING on your employer's servers, unless you have explicit permission. It was one thing to make quick use of them back when bandwidth was hard to come by. But now that everyone and their dog has server-grade bandwidth, there's no reason to be making illicit use of your employer's server.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
No, no, he asked about what server solution he should be using, not how he should encode his MP3s...
It's time to choose:
a) If you like the challenge of configuring, securing, and running a server, do it yourself.
b) If you just need to use a server and you get what you want...security, access, uptime...somewhere else for free (or at a reasonable cost), then let someone else do it.
I pretty much host everything on my own servers now for a couple of reasons.
1) Most importantly, I learn all kinds of nifty things doing this that I can apply in a workplace environment
2) I don't have to pay anything. My cable connection + comp is expensive enough; I don't need to pay for that all again.
Obviously, if you have no need to learn about hosting servers and also have some extra money to spend, paying for a server is better. This way you have a better guarentee of uptime (assuming you pick a good host) and you usually will get better speeds this way (I only have 384k upload on my connection so downloading from somewhere else is very slow).
mod parent up!!!
(The University I went to had similar policies, including expelling a student for hosting his own business stuff on the comp. sci. server. I don't know what they'd do to faculty or staff who did.)
Even if you love your job, though, consider that you may still want to gripe about it to a friend sometime. Would you be comfortable explaining to your boss why your complaints were sent out through his system?
Keep your own server. It's good practice, in several senses.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
Normal employment can change policies or downsize, but universities are an especially fickle environment - many of them have policies making it easy for students to have websites, and some of them have strong academic-freedom policies about your rights to posting content, but other universities change policies when they change bureaucrats, and some of them occasionally go full-blast wacko shutdown-and-expel-you no-due-process mode when somebody complains about H4CK3RZ or when some application suddenly sucks down 98% of the school's firewall bandwidth, or when the RIAA/MPAA hands them a complaint about EVIL FILE SHARING CRIMINALS, especially if the complaint gets handed to an organizationally incorrect person who doesn't get it (at some universities, that's the legal department, at others it's a random grunt in the computer management; it varies a lot.) It wouldn't happen at MIT, but it's standard operating procedure at many state universities, and I don't know about UT.
So if you're going to use a university server, make sure than not only is it ok under the official policies, but that you have automatically-updating backups to your off-campus home computer.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
I currently have a website that is hosted only because my university has serious bandwidth caps so I can't host off my own machine. Definitely, though, you should opt for as much independance as you can manage, because then you are bound by fewer agreements. I'm not saying you should or would even want to host pr0n, but often times I want to put something up that a certain service would fail at. IE, using sourceforge for pictures of me and my friends, or using gmail for publicly distributed (or even large) files. Free services just have too many ropes tying you down.
Even hosting to a degree, though it has it's benefits (security, ridiculous uptime), has some issues. I'm learning perl instead of Ruby on Rails simply because my host doesn't support Ruby on Rails. Plus, with hosting normally (I at least) run out of webspace but can't even get close to my bandwidth cap (200 gigs? really?) and host-your-own hard drive space is super cheap.
So, my advice is to set up your own box and enjoy the freedom of a truly blank, unrestricted slate.
In general, I think that managing your own server is a great way to go for things like this -- there are other issues of responsibility that come into play when using your company/institution to host it for you. But if you're going to rely on any of the services you set up for yourself while also treating the box like a bit of a toy (or at least a minor concern), then be prepared to have decent backup services in place for anything that becomes important to you.
I've been running a personal server now for about three years, primarily for web/email services with a few other things. I approached it as though it would be a little box to tinker on. But as I've come to rely on the services more -- particularly email -- I find that relying on my own availability and attentiveness isn't as carefree as I had thought. Most things on the machine are easily trashed/rebuilt/restored, but I rely too heavily on the email accounts handled by the machine so each time I hose the machine or just feel like starting fresh, it is becoming more of a hassle without also having a backup mail server in place.
This is a multivariable optimization problem. There is no right answer for all circumstances. Which is why some people host their own sites, some host at their employers' sites, some use colocated servers, some use virtual servers, etc.
For my sideline business, I use a web hosting company because:
Choosing between hosting at home and using a hosting account:
Running your own takes effort. You have to install your own software, keep everything patched, fix failing hardware, accept that it's going to break at some inconvenient time so you have to choose to leave your site down or abandon what you're doing to go fix it, etc.
It's a large investment of time. In return you get to have greater control over the software you use, the posession of your data, the ability to just fix things when they break rather than waiting for tech support, etc.
As for using an employeer... Are you sure they want you to? Who owns your data if you do? If you quit, what happens?
I would appreciate if you didn't use state owned, state maintained servers, bandwidth, and infrastructure for personal use.
I use my own server for a many different reasons.
1. I use it as a file server. I have lots and lots of disk space and I'd rather have that in a room seperate from my desktop. (less noise, less risk)
2. I use it as a media server. I watch mythtv, stream media, and share media files to myself and others with it.
3. I use it for authentication purposes. I can use openafs to share files out onto the internet in a safe manner with authentication taken care of with kerberos. I doubt many people sell system space online for it.
4. I use it for learning purposes. I run Xen on it and run multiple operating systems.
5. I don't use it for email or webserving. I don't paticularly care about that sort of thing. However if I did then I'd use imap and relay the email through my isp's servers and whatnot to avoid blacklisting. I'd be able to more easily aggrigate and sort my email as well as run spamassasin on a seperate machine then my desktop. (my laptop is has a weak cpu and using evolution plugins to filter spam out via spamassasin can take a good hunk of my cpu time)
Web serving is a different beast. My ISP blocks port 80 and thus it's not to usefull for webserving from my home. If I was interested in it I'd use a discount system (small disk space, whatever) for the website's home page and redirect pages and larger files to be served from my home box.
If you just want webserver and email I wouldn't do that myself. It's just silly.. The cost of getting a good service is less then the cost of hardware and electricity you'd spend on doing it from home.. and you'd probably get better results.
I run my own boxes off my employer's electricity, but on an internet connection I barter for. I'm work in electronics recycling, so I trade hardware for bandwidth with an ISP in my building. Rackmout LCDs, UPS hardware, blade servers, you get the idea, for 3 IPs on a connection that's a bit quicker than your standard T1. My employer gets to save hosting costs for services related to online resales of recycled hardware by utilizing the servers and internet connection. And my hosting setup is all done with used post-recycled equipment.
Cthulhu Saves.
I'd watch it though. Some smaller universities don't have very good network/server management. My University wanted me to help with some applications development and maintenance as a student worker for $5.60/hr. I said screw that as I make about $500/week doing webdesign/consulting on the side. The networking and application maintenance is a joke ran by Ph.D's who won't get their head out of their proprietary asses and think that coldfusion is a godsend. The Computer Science department, however is ran by very well rounded individuals that know wtf they are talking about. All the good people end up being teachers, and assholes end up maintaining the backend, and think of you, the user of their servers as dumbasses, and they don't give a flying shit about your data.
Sig: I stole this sig.
I find by far the easiest way to do it is by paying for hosting. You can get super cheap packages with shared hosting starting at less than $4 per month. This goes all the way up to dedicated machines where the price can get up around $200 a month. There's a lot less to manage, and uptimes are usually pretty good. This way you can spend more time putting the content on your server, and less time making sure the server is running properly.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
The company I work for would have no technical difficulty hosting my personal website. In many ways they would probably encourage me to do it, as I can use it to gain experience outside of what I do on a day to day basis for the company.
But even if they suggested it I wouldn't do it lightly.
I would rather pay for hosting service and know that if I lost my job tomorrow I would still have the website and domain.
I know that anything I do on the website is mine. I don't use their tools, or their time to maintain it. If, for some reason, they decided they owned something on my website I could, in good faith fight for my rights to keep it as mine. They would have to fight to take it from me, I wouldn't have to fight to get it back.
Keep your homelife, and your worklife separate.
Here's what I say: If you don't mind a slightly slower Internet connections and have no intentions of being /.ed, a home server is perfectly acceptable. I myself used to use GeoCities, Tripod, etc. a lot, but after a while kept having to move over because so-and-so had X feature that I wanted... drove me nuts, trying to find a free host that suited my needs.
:-)
Eventually I figured that since we have broadband I may as well set up my own machine as a server. Used to run off my desktop – not a good idea – but now I've got a dedicated machine that's been re-purposed as a server. Everything I need (PHP/Python, MySQL, as much space as I need, NO ADS...) and then some.
And this machine hasn't been too much of a problem even though (1) we've got about six or seven machines online ALL AT ONCE at any given time, including the server, and (2) since it's hosting what's now a fairly well-known Linux distro – my own of course, link to DistroWatch to save me bandwidth – and haven't had a problem.
I think the trick is really to just know what you're doing. Don't over-burden your connection, optimize your site for efficient bandwidth usage, use technologies like BitTorrent if you plan on distributing lots of large files, and things should be just fine.
Oh, and one more suggestion: Go with Linux... yes, I'm saying that partially because I'm a Linux developer and therefore would be somewhat biased, partially because it's better optimized for that type of thing, and partially because spending $1000+ on Windows Server for a tiny personal site [or even a large one like mine...] is just overkill.
Creative misinterpretation is your friend.
My landlord provides free cablemodem, downside it's shared with about 5 other people and it drags down my torrenting or gaming with their VoIP phones and surfing. Damnit I need my fansubs!!!
At work we got rackspace out the wazzoo so my boss would let me put a server on our corp network if I keep it low key (loki?). Downsides are if I get fired/quit I got to move it out with a quickness. I also need to worry about management asking why a v120 and a Sunfire 280R is in the racks that's not under control of the dev group, they need accounts on it by close of business today..... Not to mention having to explain open firewall ports or making a fast shuffle when we need to expand in a OMG hurry.
I could run the boxes at my house but the electrical is circa Ben Franklin, I can't keep them all up at once so I bite the bullet and rent a rack for $350. It's part of the costs of building a bigtime app cluster as a hobby. Seti will be pleased until I get it going for real.
Conclusion, if you don't have a long term plans/needs for servers, stay out of it. Get yourself a linux box and stick it in a corner. If you want to play with the big toys, you need to not play in the kiddy pool. Real computers need real power, UPS, racks etc. Otherwise they will gather dust in your garage and that $2000 you spent will be 18 months from now gone, as you sell it for $150 on ebay. Deep coat of dust not included.
Sorry about the writing. Robot fingers, you know? Cliff Steele in DOOM PATROL #23
It is their server. All your datas are belong to them. ...
You won't work there for ever.
They will decide they no longer can afford to have people freeload on their server.
Someone will buy them out, and decide that they can't affort to
I host my own because that's the kind of thing I do. I've done it since the late 80's, when it was UUCP. I'll probably continue to do it for a long time. But if all you want is email, I'd use Google. If you want to blog, I dunno - plenty of people let you do that cheap/free.
If you want to host a website, maybe you want to run a webserver and use dyndns (supposing you can't get a static).
But hosting mail can sure be a lot of work. All the spam, and the multitude of painful spam protection software. dynamic IP blocking, ISP policies, and the fact that you're going to change ISPs every few years makes it all even more troublesome. But it can be done if you want to.
Who do you trust?
(this coming from someone who still has an answering machine)
This guy appears to work for ITS at UT-Austin
Directory Information for Schley Kutz
Name: Schley Kutz
E-mail: a.kutz@its.utexas.edu
Title: Oper Sys Spec, BA
College/Department: Information Technology Services
Office Phone: +1 512 475 9246
Office Location: COM 1
Office Address: The University of Texas at Austin
Asso VP for Res-Prgm Devel Ofc
1 University Station Stop G2700
Austin TX 78712
Campus Mail Code: G2700
I appreciate all your comments, truly. For the curious, here is my setup at home. I have a 10mbps Fiber connection to my home courtesy of Grande Communications. I happen to rent a duplex in a well-to-do neighborhood of Austin where my wife and I could never afford to actually buy, but the nice side-effect of renting here is that the Austin president of Grande lives in the same neighborhood making this area the first one with fiber to the doorstep :) Oh, and I pay for 3mbps! double-:)
My server is a P4-2.8ghz 83G5 Shuttle with 2GB of RAM. It runs Ubuntu Linux 5.10 Breezy Badger. All this setup does is run SSH (pubkey auth only ) and Apache2 with WebDav enabled so I can access my home directory from afar with ease. Oh, and I require client certificates to talk to my WebDav share for security.
On top of this though I run VMware GSX server. I run a virtual instance of Breezy that is my web/e-mail/ldap/svn server. The beauty of it being virtual is that if I ever need to move it I just move the directory to another machine! Since the VM was created under VMware GSX 3.2.1 I can easily move it into ESX 2.5 or VMware Workstation 5.5.1 (legacy mode). I went this route specifically in case of the need to migrate the server. I also run a virtual instance of Windows 2003 Server Enterprise and Exchange 2003 for testing code and projects on Windows.
I like running my own server, it teaches me a lot, and I feel that I have the minimum amount of competence to pull it off. That said, there are times when I would love to just give it to somebody to run for me!
P.S. I was using Lunarpages, but I got to the point when I decided that I needed shell access to much. However, Lunarpages is a spectacular hosting company and their support turnaround is second to none. Withing 2 hours on the weekends! Those guys rock!
-- -a
I say go for it. It will be the most useful application of that bureaucratic hellhole of a money sink yet, if it slows the network and is the last straw that drives some student from that armpit into the job market, it will be worth it. In fact, as a taxpayer, I think I have the right to an account on it too. I'll be in contact, please reserve the username "hornfan".
Like you, I like the warm fuzzy feeling of running my own server, knowing I can put whatever I want on it (both in terms of content, and configuration--Win/Lin, PHP, Perl, Postgres, etc.), never run out of room, and not worry that someone else will upgrade a component that will break everything. So, I've got a vanity domain running on my DSL at home--mostly my little play area.
On the other hand, I don't want to *have* to keep that box up 24/7/365 so I've got my main "real" domain at a real host--that way, I (mostly) don't have to worry about important stuff like keeping my email going and not running a box that's vulnerable to spammers.
Also, consider your desired naming--do you *want* to be company.com/you or school.edu/~you forever? (And, more importantly *can* you? What happens if you quit, get fired, graduate, or drop out?) In any case, if you want a real, permanent TLD, you'll probably need to run your own box at home or pay for a host.
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
Q. Which is better, running your own server or letting someone else do it for you?
A. Letting someone else do it for you, and rsyncing daily to your own server.
The unofficial
I have thought about it a lot. I work from many different locations (at work, at home, at random places on my laptop using a wireless Internet provider, etc) on a multitude of projects, and basically my need is to have a permanent access to a secure Unix server offering flexible services on my DNS domain, in order to:
That's why I plan to buy a 1U server with at least 2 disks in order to do RAID 1, and I will have it collocated in a datacenter offering affordable prices. I plan to use an encrypted partition (think /home) to store my data, this partition will have to be mounted manually (to enter the required passphrase). This way if someone power off the server and try to steal my data, the encrypted partition will be useless for him.
Ideally I would have preferred NON-managed colocation (i.e. I would responsible for the physical installation of my hardware in the rack, and I would have access to it 24/7), but since it's too expensive I have chosen to go for managed colocation (i.e. I send my server to the colo company and they install it, but I would not have free physical access to my server).
I'm guessing you have already considered the relevant University of Texas System polices, the Office of General Council Ethics Standards, and the ITS Policies. Sorry, I work for another Texas university.
With that in mind, know that you and only you are responsible for the security of your computer and that you will be held responsible for any undesireable activity coming from your computer. If someone were to manage to compromise your computer and then attempt to compromise other university systems, you will at least be held responsible for not securing your own system, if not held responsible for anything coming from your computer -- or through it. If you are quite certain that you can keep your computer secure, then by all means run your own server and learn as much as possible. It's best not to experiment with production university systems. Besides, one could argue that using university-owned systems for your own purposes is a violation of the ethics policy. However, using your personal computer on the university network is no different than any student using a laptop.
Ouch! The truth hurts!
This is based on my personal experience. I've run my own linux server from home for many years, providing quite a range of services (DNS, HTTP, FTP, shell, etc), and if you live in an area with good power service, then I think you could pull it off.
/29 or /28 netblock for the heck of it, and you're your own mini-ISP. You can expand services and machines as you see fit, and you have complete and secure physical and administrative control over your boxen, and you don't have to give the boys down at the NOC a call at 3am to power cycle your box if something goes wrong.
First off, find yourself a local, geek run ISP. They generally will have good service, with high speed low latency connections to multiple higher-tier ISP's, and their own backup power.
Second, get a decent DSL package through them, and I'm not talking the "speed not garunteed" SBC deal-o-the-week - something in the range of 3.0-6.0mbit downstream and 384-768kbit upstream. If you can't find a decent local ISP, look at a larger geek friendly ISP like Speakeasy. With my DSL, which is 3.0/384 via a Covad line, I can get consistant 20ms ping times to google.com, so latency is not a problem. Plus, I've had maybe 90-120 minutes of downtime in the last 12 months. Sure, it ain't 5 nines, but it's not bad, either.
Get yourself a
Just as an FYI, here in Ohio (as it was explained to me by my HR contact), it is illegal to profit from State owned (e.g. public university) resources such as IT equipment, vehicle, telephone, e-mail box, etc. (ORC 102.04) For example, forwaring "you@yourbiz.com" to the University Central Mail system and making personal business transactions, is (at the opinion of the University) a violation of (ORC 102.02) If what you are doing is of "academic or not-for-profit" interest, it's up to the IT folks/university lawyers what they construe as "within the academic mission of the university." The problem comes when your friend of a friend's boss asks if you'll host his stuff for $juicy_sum_of_money, and you risk it or need to get a 3rd party host if you want to get his business anyway,. You also have to worry about hosting content for a social/political group whom the university (or mid-tier sysadmin) doesn't want on the subnet, you're in a real pickle.
Forgive my spelling from time to time. I'm often posting during short breaks.
When I am testing something I might like to implement at work, I generally try it on my own servers first. Partly because it's a learning experience for me either way (and the more practice, the better) and also because killing my home server just annoying a bunch of unpaying users whom I host... killing the work server means pissing off the bigwigs which is much less cool.
As so many others have said, keep your personal data out of company servers. Otherwise, you are just asking for trouble.
If you want to provide some sort of internet service, even if it's just for yourself, keep in mind the risks asociated with it.
Example: if you run your own personal mail server it might be only a matter of time before some clown decides to spam your domain doing a dictionary attack, and while anti-spam techniques can be pretty effective in rejecting messages, your bandwidth/cpu will still be consumed.
If you would still like to keep control of your email, try a colo box, or a virtual server, or one of them spam filtering services (you point the mx to them and they forward the "clean" mail to you) or even a traditional mail server and "fetchmail" the mail into your own server.
No sig
Don't mix your personal stuff on company gear! What good can come of it? If a hacker takes over your webserver and turns it into a SPAM zombie because of a flaw in your script or the next Apache whole, who's going to be in trouble? Yup. You. What do you gain? You save a few bucks.
IMHO, host at home for sites in which you aren't concerned about uptime, or get a webhost for sites where uptime counts. FWIW, I host my personal website on an old Linux box downstairs, but my commercial stuff is on a professionally hosted VPS.
Running your own server on a company's dime without explicit permission is stealing, plain and simple. Why not just use the mail room to send your personal packages while you're at it? In fact, most companies in their bylaws have explicit rules prohibiting this very sort of thing.
I don't host anything of my own at work. Take a look at the Personal Co-location Registry. You'll find a bunch of inexpensive providers for your servers or apps.
Uhm, have you looked around to see how much it costs to get your web/mail/databases hosted? It's cheap as hell. I started at 2.95/month a few years ago, and now I pay a whopping $9/month. Maybe I'm just insane, but I would *never* consider hosting my stuff at an employer's work, even if they were OK with it and I had no plans of leaving ever. It's just shady. What if your php script that you just threw together playing around and that didn't go through QA had a hole in it and your server got compromized... or whatever.
Leave work at work and home at home,
Nick
RandomAndInteresting.comdefending the world from stupidity since 1979
Ask Yourself the Same Question I Did.
How badly do you want to do things, "Your Way?"
I work for an ISP that gives me a lot of freedom to do things as I see fit, and I am very proud of the work I have done, and the machines I maintain. However, I am bound by compatability issues with previous design decisions I don't always agree with. That sort of entrenched policy is impossible to quickly erradicate. Hence, I opted to maintain my own trio of machines that do my bidding.
I do make extensive use of my work servers as well, but for my personal use, I wanted it to be 100% all mine. I have prior design decisions of my own that I regret that have become entrenched, but at least they are "My" mistakes, and mine alone to fix. But I am an insatiable individualist, to the point of obsessiveness.
Just how badly do you want to run a sys your own way? If the answer isn't, "I wanna run a server for myself and possibly a few friends as if I were a demon from hell, sent to restore order to the entire interweb, one puny server at a time." Its probably not worth the effort. If that _is_ your answer, medication?
--Nuintari
slashdot : where an opinion can be wrong.
If you're an sysadmin type of person (most people aren't, but I am), the convenience and security of running your own servers is very difficult to compromise on. When it's your box, you're in control--you can fine tune it to fit your needs exactly, and you can change anything instantly at your discretion.
Trusting your stuff to professionals is not too bad of an idea, but you have to realize that you're dealing with an organization of people that don't have any vested interest in you or your data. They'll do their best to serve you most of the time, but they'll never be able to do it as well as you could for yourself. Because of levels of authority and control, getting necessary things done for *you* on a machine owned by *someone else* requires you to go through them, and there will be bureaucracies, red tape, and layers upon layers of people who can't do anything to facilitate a solution. Eventually it might get to someone who can, but there is always the chance that they can't or won't.
What if your box needs something special? A custom kernel or special modules? Specific settings on a certain server? I don't know man...
I host on a debian 3.1 virtual server, but I manage my sites using webmin/virtualmin so I can up and run to another host if I need to and just restore my virtualmin backups.
I manage dns from my domain registrant, joker.
currently I host with www.tektonic.net for vservers, if you cohost a few friends with you then they effectively pay the bills, and you get root to do what you need.
Get a dedicated server (you can get one for easily sub-100 these days) from a reliable provider, or reseller who uses a reliable provider. (such as Savvis datacenter. Don't trust ThePlanet! Bad Bad Experience! Same goes with EV1) You'll get a reliable & fast service for you that way, also you can anytime you want to transfer to another provider etc.
:) MTA, Asterisk(PBX, VoIP etc. you can even get Wireless Lan phones to use with that, very usefull on cities with A LOT of hotspots!), HTTPd (perhaps even LightTPD tho why'd you need extreme performance for personal use?), FTP etc. you can then use something like Webdrive to map a drive letter for an FTP location on your wind0ze box and keep all your work stuff there :) just use an older version of webdrive (i'd link it up if i would remember the address i have for personal usage of that old version).
:)
:)
:)
using home connection i do not recommend because for example: many ISPs block port 25 (smtp) so your mail won't be moving anywhere. and that's not acceptable. and home connections aren't really reliable.
Plus colocation costs also almost as much as dedicated service.
Use different e-mail address for contacts with your provider (ie. gmail) for possible abuse reports, ISPs etc. are VERY strict on especially spam cases nowadays, they might give you as little as 3hours of notice to stop a spammer etc. but this generally isn't the problem. You might also want so that all your provider mails get to copied to other mailboxes too (for as fast notion as possible), and perhaps even a SMS gateway (very easy, buy a 10 phone + 15 datacable, a 10 prepaid service which you recharge for 10 once per year, then stick it on your server, home server if you don't have access to "proper server" for such thing, and put mygnokii to send e-mails, you might need to write a simple script to filter the proper messages to SMS and what kind of SMS's, it'll take few hours to setup. at the sametime you get '24/7' monitoring, so you can put it to check online status, and if down more than say 5 or 10minutes, send an SMS)
You won't need for personal use even cPanel or any other management software. Then just put anything you need, and in between to that server
Now to the part to get it all paid: get few of your friends share it with you, very easy, as in question is friends
for example, i offer a 79 server/month, 1000gb bw, 5 ips, 10mbps uplink port, 2Ghz Celeron, 512Mb ram, 80gb HDD.
get 5 friends to pay you ~15/mo, and it's already covered
you can give them something like 10gb of HDD easily etc. and they be more than happy with the service given
Just don't get greedy and try to grow as hosting business --> then the problems start, friends won't pay so much anymore, people wanting freebies will be harassing all the time, and really getting enough clients to make it all worth -might- take years, and all that involves a lot of work and expenses: server management license(ie. cpanel), billing system license(ie. modernbill, whmautopilot, awbs), marketing costs, making everything work easily & how you like them, different payment systems(2checkout, moneybookers, paypal, western union, checks) etc.
Especially paypal is bothersome: in my case, still when i accepted paypal approx 90% of orders using paypal was frauds.
Fraud amounts seem to be quite high generally (except with moneybookers), so it's gonna give a lot of headache. also if you run an hosting business, you really can't take vacations or you need to hire someone to cover for you for that period, and you need to train them, if you don't train them well first they tend to make big mistakes etc.
also security comes up as a even bigger question etc.
I won't go into more details, there is already so much more than you asked for.
Oh yeah, neither use your employees resources --> they have a tendency to spy on their workers etc. so not that wise idea, besides, they might give you
Pulsed Media Seedboxes
I have a shell account on a Dreamhost machine. The cheapest account will get you that. I was a customer for 8 years now with zero complaints. This is the only host where all of my applications and scripts worked out of the box and I've installed countless scripts in the late 90s all over the Internet.
My server at home is where I keep my data. I login to it over the Internet through RDP and go from there to wherever I need to.
Never ever keep data on employer's computers. I write computer use policies, and yep all your data is our property. I don't know about you, but I wouldn't want to disclose things I am working on outside working hours on an employer-owned machine.
I had offers in the past to host my stuff with my employer, which I always declined.
Leonid S. Knyshov
Find me on Quora
It was not my intent to start a series of posts about appropriate work content. So please let me clarify: I never had any intention of running a for-profit site on work machines, rather I only wanted to bring up a blog about code/tech. My conundrum is that type of material falls under what I do at work AND home. My boss would *love* if I published this material at work, we just do not have the framework in place (I would need to install Wordpress or something) to do it yet. However, the alternative was to take advantage of free sites or roll my own as well. Many of you made many assumptions, and while they were not accurate, I shoulder the blame for not being clear in my original intent.
I hope that helps clear things up.
-- -a
I ran my personal sites off of corporate servers for a few years. There were plenty of nice perks to being on their servers including the fact that it didn't cost me anything. After a while though, I was dying to get off of company ran servers and onto my own personal one... for a few reasons.
1. The company happened to change their settings a lot, causing downtime on the server and downtime on my sites.
2. The company continuously changed their mind on where they wanted their websites to be, forcing a move of all sites every few months. That was a lot of trouble and it never felt like my sites "settled" before they were yanked up and moved.
3. I didn't like the feeling that other sites on the box were being managed by somebody else. I always felt like my stuff wasn't private and that other employees had access to code I had written personally. I don't think anyone ever stole anything, but it wasn't a good feeling.
4. It was hard to switch jobs. Even though at the time I was being paid crap, I still justified some of my being there since I had "free hosting", which was a really pathetic thing now that I look back.
So overall, I'm much happier running my own server instead of riding on somebody elses. The costs are higher but its worth it.
firestream.net
I do what's best for me. I pay someone else to run a server with all the goodies installed on it. I don't have uber access, but I don't have to worry about university or employer policy. The money is worth it to me. I don't want to spend time maintaining the system. For many other geeks the opposite is true. From what I've seen though, it's usually a gut reaction.
postmodernsideshow.com
You are obviously extremely technical and more than capable of running whatever you want. I don't think the question is really whether you should be doing this at home or work because it's going to take alot of work to maintain regardless of where you base it out of. Although I obviously agree with the others that you are better off keeping personal stuff at home so you don't lose it suddenly due to things happening at work.
But just for comparison's sake, I do all my e-mail personal (and some family members for free) web hosting, and of course FTP server and remote access on a $200 Walmart Lindows machine with it's standard Celeron 900MHz processor (slightly altered so it now has 256 MB RAM and Windows Small Business Server 2003). I set it up once and just leave it alone. It does just fine for simple personal needs and when it acts up from time to time I reboot it and it's happy again. I rarely touch it except to install core server updates and it does just fine. I had wanted to use a linux distro instead (and originally did) but wasn't technical enough to figure out why I couldn't get the e-mail to work so I gave up and installed Windows Server because you don't need to know much to get it up and running. Which, of course, is the plus and minus of MS software. I'm sure my server could be hacked in a New York minute by someone who targeted it but it's been safe from all the standard attacks so far. I'v ealso managed to get my server acknowledged as safe by using some of the new technologies for verifying server info (AOL was a nuisance but I got OK'ed by them too). Keep in mind I'm just a desktop tech and have no formal training on any server software (except a little OS/2 and Novell like 10 years ago.
Personally, as more ISP's start being forced to share information and likely start to sell it I think having personal sercured and encrypted servers is becoming a viable option for those who use the Internet a great deal and want to be able to have control over their online "stuff". Not to mention it's relatively inexpensive. Especially if you choose a linux option instead of the costlier (but easier for average Joe to be taught to use) MS solution. I go to many people's homes as part of my work and I see more and more complex home networks all the time.
Never, ever confuse your employer with your friends in this regard, positions change. Hell, you shouldn't even trust your friends with your domain.
If you need to buy into a managed service, I recommend something like 2wdhost.com or the ilk. As long as you dont need a dump truck load of bytes-per-month and dont want much over three 9's then this sort of gig is for you.
Its basically poor-student pricing so you have no excuses. As far as this hosting in particular, I cannot say I recommend them, I only suggest you should get something like them.
For $10 a month you can host your own stuff and hand out sub-hosting like it was tastless candy corn to your friends for the price of the domain name. You will be all 'leet and stuff.
Of course you get no shell...
I think you underestimate just how much I just dont care.
I've worked at a colocation and dedicated server company in Tampa for years now and watched people come and go I can tell you that for some of them, they have their own mark on the company that lasts for a long while after people leave. Employees have generally been able to host some of their own "project and experiment" servers in the data Center without any worries. When you leave, howevere, it is importnant to remember that you may have vital dta that you shared with your server for backup purposes, that the company may not won't you to leave with. In a couple cases, we kept them and hosted them here because we had uploaded mp3's for co-worker usage. Now, no one wants to let the server go, cause we all love the size. If you want to keep your stuff business out of work, then bby all means do that. Don't walk that line. I know that hard drives crash and when my server dies up in the DC I'll just have to get on with it. So at the very least, I'd suggest you put your own personal drive at work for redunancy, but I'd keep my server out of work if it means that much to you.
I would've thought that anyone who works in an university and is capable of setting up the mentioned systems would also be capable of answering this question.
I run my own email server. I've had it for years. Half my family is on it. They don't have to worry about changing ISPs now because they have their address on my server. I have a ton of friends at data centers and ISPs, so my server always has a home. Even at worst case I could put it on the end of my DSL.
Can all fish swim?
Just get serverpronto/colopronto server and do whatever you want with it. Its all yours, yours cheap and high bandwidth, and you can play with linux/solaris/openbsd/whatever. And youll have serious trouble crossing the bandwidth limit there.
"Give orange me give eat orange me eat orange give me eat orange give me you." -Nim Chimpsky
For email, I use Yahoo and Hotmail, though I could set up an email server on the fanless box, or even get another fanless box for that.
I wonder. Why doesn't someone put together and sell a nice little box specially configured for various services? There are VoIP boxes, routers, firewalls and such, but so far as I know, no web server box.
Intellectual Property is a monopolistic, selfish, and defective concept. It is "tyranny over the mind of man"
Now, if you have a higher bandwidth application (more friends or substantially more attractive children than I have), then doing it work might work out better.
It's not wasting time, I'm educating myself.
this would have been the standard long ago, ... ...dead of the flesh secretary?
if it wouldn't be so difficult. it is obviously
much more appealing to know that email to you
is delivered thru a cable/fiber directly to
your HOME as opposed to having to trust
some random free email site
the problem is that marketing of many ISP
never thought about this for real.
thinking ahead into the future, people
serious about the net should invest into this
market gap. can i smell a killer app on a personal home server,
that can talk to me on my mobile phone while
being connected to the vast and infinite internet?
BOB calls "susy" his "a.i" running on his home server.
susy (sexy voice?):" Hi bob, thanks for calling"
BOB:(*)"susy i need you to look up the cheapest flights from
zuerich to bangkok, thanks"
BOB hangs up his mobile phone.
5 minutes later he gets a call from susy suggesting some
flights
"feel free to dream on(tm)"
p.s. personal server at home = using a public computer somewhere, access
nessus on your home server and have it do a security check on the public
computer you are using before doing any sensitiv work on it?
(*) okay that's asking to much i guess? how about a menu driven interface then?