New Server for Webhosting

[JTR7]

I'm running a business. One of our clients has a website managed by another company. It's been infiltrated twice and set to redirect to rogue antispyware. They overpaid ridiculously for the website. I want to offer them the option of setting up their own in-house webserver and doing away with the current management company. The rationale is that we set up the website, and if it's run on a server we have direct access to, we can turn off the remote access capabilities, IE the FTP server. Thus, remote access attempts are much more difficult because they cannot just password-crack.

I'm wondering what sort of internet connection would we need? It would serve 100 concurrent users (at most, probably more like 50 max, 20-30 concurrent). It's database driven by MySql and PHP. What sort of hardware would we need for just this client? If we were to put 3-4 of this same type of setup on?

 

[calderone]

EDIT:

I can't read.

 

[JTR7]

That's precisely my question. What sort of connection speed should I have to serve those users?

 

[mikes63737]

There are four factors you need to consider: link speed (both up and down), link quality (uptime percentage, lag, etc), price, and setup/maintenance.

This means that if you were hosting a website for a business, you would need to pay for a business-class connection with a static IP address. This is much more expensive than, say, the fastest Comcast cable package.

Home connections usually run at asynchronous speeds. Ex, 25 mbps down, 10 mbps up. You are already bottlenecking your speeds here. Home connections are also unreliable. If a user thinks your site is slow, or it is not reliable, they will leave.

You would also need to set up DNS so that your domain would point to your server's IP address.

You could probably save lots of time, money, and frustration by getting your client hosting through a better provider and telling them to set a very secure password. I mean, if you're just telling your FTP program to remember the password, it doesn't need to be as something stupidly simple as ilovemykitty. It should be something secure like j*j42no234j9ij3&242*lk#3rf789kla47*(.

 

[JTR7]

I'm not the average idiot. I'm familiar with computers. I'm CCNA certified. I'm more looking for an excuse to do this so I have reason to play with OS X Server. If I'm using it for nothing, the purchase is unjustified. If I make a purpose for it, like serving this company, it makes sense. Besides, I'm using a secure hosting site. The other company is not. And I don't appreciate the insult. I'm not a big enough idiot to make a password like "ilovemykitty". I use 20 character random passwords. With the size of the web based application this is serving, it makes sense to run it on office web-server. Especially because our client-base for this program is expanding. In order to keep our proprietary code secure, I'd prefer to keep it on our own server. I'm just trying to get an idea of what connection speed I'd need so I can figure out the monthly costs.

 

[calderone]

It sounds like you should be able to figure it out yourself.

 

[mikes63737]

I'm not the average idiot. <snip> And I don't appreciate the insult.

This was not intended to be an insult towards you. It was simply a comment based on experience. I develop websites, and it amazes me that some of my clients think that a password such as "Password3" is secure. My comment about bad passwords was directed towards your client and the company that manages their website. Lots of people just don't know better. My point was that if the hosting company that your client uses is running the latest patched software, then weak passwords could possibly be how the person broke in. Once again, speaking from experience with a client.

If you are running this server from inside your business and have multiple sites you are willing to host on it, then it is worth it. But the way I read it from your post, it sounded like each client would have their own server.

 

[maflynn]

Generally speaking running your own webhosting out of your home or even office is not a good idea.

Uptime, you need to setup fail over for servers, including power supplies, battery backups and disk arrays. Backups, you need to ensure that you maintain back ups of your system. Back up power, how are you going to achieve this.

Getting a VPS account is generally a better, cheaper, easier approach then trying to go at it yourself.

 

[JTR7]

Okay. I converted the monthly bandwidth usage reading from their old provider into Mbps based on 9.6MB per month. So, if I calculated correctly, a 1.5Mbps uplink would suffice, but obviously higher the better because usage isn't spread evenly. Regardless, I think I've got the link speed settled.

That settled, what sort of hardware would I need? I'm running a web application. If I get a Mac Mini Server, how many clients will I be able to serve using the one server? It's written in PHP and heavily based in MySql. Would I be better off running OS X Server on an iMac or xServe or a Mac Pro for future growth? I want to be able to also host email and VPN. What other features would OS X Server enable for me? What could it offer to grow my business?

I understand that I need a backup. If I went with a Mac Pro or an xServe, I'd probably throw in an eSATA card for backups. I'm no stranger to a backup. I'm running a terminal server on a Windows box that handles all of my company's data.