What would i need to start a simple hosting service

Question

One of my friend who does free-lancing is on the verge of completion of the project.

He is looking for hosting plan, the client wanted him to take care of the hosting too.

He is wondering, what would it take to start off a self-hosting service.

What hardware, investment would it take to start a hosting service.

All that he want to host is PHP for max 1-2 clients.

Any suggestions/ideas are welcome.

Thanks

Answer 1

Unless he is prepared to throw lots of money at this (which I guess he isn't based upon the number of clients), then let a specialist company take care of it.

You need to consider uptime, redundancy, bandwidth etc.

If his clients require SLAs, simply make recommendations for hosting companies that specialise in this field, and let them take the fallout if/when things go wrong.

Alternatively, you could just re-sell services from an existing provider.

Answer 2

Hosting is not only about the hardware, but also about constant maintenance and - especially - security. You need to be available on very short notice to fix security holes, apply patches, have an eye on what is going on on the machine and so on. This kind of job is best left to those who can do it and still make a profit - i.e. professional hosting companies with the necessary personnel and redundancies.

As Bryan points out, if your friend really wants to sell hosting services have him look at a reseller program where somebody else takes care of the maintenance. 1and1 has those, at least in Germany. Many others do as well.

Answer 3

It would probably be better financially to buy a hosting package rather than try to host it yourself

If you want to host it yourself you would need to invest in the correct hardware, and always ensure that the server(s) are up and running, and if anything breaks (such as the HDD) then you also need to fix it.

What would you do if theres a powercut and your server goes offline, would you invest in a power generator?

What if your HDD breaks, are you going to take care of backups all the time, will you have a spare environment to run from until you can fix it?

Personally, I would just rent some disk space and a domain from a hosting company, such as 1and1. You won't have to worry about uptime/hardware

Answer 4

FIRST .. I will answer the question asked. What is needed to start a hosting service?

1- A server. You can buy your own, or rent a server from a hosting company. For 1 or two low volume sites it doesn't have to be big or even new. In theory, the desktop you bought last year is probably more than sufficient, particularly if you are going to use LAMP. Figure out backups on the server.

2- An internet connection for the server. This you have to buy from someone. You can have an internet line installed at your home/office, or you can purchase internet access and space for the server at a hosting company (called "colocation"). I recommend colocation. In all but the smallest metropolitan areas you can find a reasonably priced one within driving distance.

3- Technical knowledge to setup and manage the server. Since you are asking the question, one can presume that you do not have this. Either hire it, or contract with the hosting company for it.

SECOND .. I will give some advice. Do not start a hosting other people's sites unless you are prepared to lose a bunch of money. Hosting is VERY competitive, and is only profitable at a large scale. Google "web hosting" and look at the responses and the ads. Do you really want to compete with that? Heck, Google will host a 5 million page view/month site written in python for FREE.

Were I in your friend's shoes, I would have the client engage their own hosting service and manage it for them at my hourly rate. I personally like DreamHost. An alternative if he refuses to leave money on the table is to become a 1and1 affiliate and get a commission. I doubt 1and1 is the only company that does this either.

Answer 5

Another alternative is to rent a VPS solution and host sites on the Virtual Machine. This is a cheaper option since the hosting provider is responsible for ensuring the machine is up and connected at all times.

However the responsibility for maintaining the VPS and it's software, along with licenses is up to you. This includes:

• Installing and running Apache
• Installing OS service packs
• Maintaining security on the server
• Configuring and managing required databases

The lifecycle of self hosted websites are normally dependant on requirements. The process I followed so far had been:

• Hosting package with a hosting provider
• Reseller hosting package with a hosting provider
• VPS package with a hosting provider

My next step would be a dedicated server, but again I would go with a hosting provider to offer the connectivity and space, rather then having to build the infrastructure myself.