October 17, 200818 yr Hi all, I'm starting out in business and was wondering what the web development community thought of hosting, namely at what point does it make more sense to buy and run your own servers? For info i'm looking at hosting about 500Tb of streamed and downloadable HD/high-quality content (Roughly 1024-2048 kb/s max download/stream speed) with a few thousand views a day (on average). On the same note, if I were to buy my own servers how much would I be looking at? What sort of gear would I need? What broadband connection would I need too (i,e, DS-1, E-1, OC-3072 etc)?
October 17, 200818 yr ...... 500TB.... 500, 000 GB.... about 50 thousand HD quality feature length films... You wouldn't be able to run that kind of kit out of your shed, you would need to rent some rack space at telehouse or a similar datacentre. But given the space you will need (if you are for real) then you should speak to them directly as they will be rubbing their palms together just talking to you
October 17, 200818 yr Completely agree with ITLocal - you would have to rent space in a datacenter. I have worked in corporate IT departments for many years, often involved with system management, so am quite picky, but personally, I wouldn't use a supplier that didn't have multiple connections from more than one comms supplier, UPS & backup generators, 24x7 staff onsite, strict security, adequate fire prevention, etc. The only way to provide these is through economies of scale, which is where the big hosting companies come in. Mind you, a friend of a friend has meant to have started a hosting company with a server in his spare room!! If it's true, I hate to think what he is telling his customers.
October 17, 200818 yr Its not always best to buy servers - if you do you have to co-locate them yourselves in a Datacentre also pay to gain access to build rooms, if sommet goes wrong you have to pay more money on top of your existing bill. If you rent, the hardware is covered in the event of a failure / breakage, you dont have to worry about hidden costs or worry about renting build rooms if you need to do maintenance etc.
October 18, 200818 yr That's quite a lot of data you require - site is going well then! Similar to Peartree hosting above, we can also meet your requirements. If you're interested give us a call and we'll talk through your options and provide you with a no-obligation quote. Paul
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