To Self Host or nOt to Self Host

[Kobojunkie]

I own a software design business and have recently has to cut my budget. I currently pay about $300 a month for hosting/database/project management hosting etc services and I would like to reduce this drastically.

I would like to work on a website project and I sort of need to have my own development, QA and Production environments set up. Problem is I am now on a budget and so can not afford the high end VPS or Dedicated Server hosting package at this time. I would also like to have my own Subversion server hosting, as well as gantt hosting and cruisecontrol hosting so I can work on multiple projects with different teams without having to pay extra each time I have to add people to the team.

I have been fiddling with the idea of hosting my own subversion, dev and Qa sites, at least on my local machine/server and was wondering if this is a good idea. I currently have a Quad machine with about 5GB memory to boot. I am more a programmer than I am a server administrator and would welcome any advise you have for me. I am concerned about security issues but I am willing to learn what it is I may need to in order to cut costs.

 

[LWComputingMVP]

How critical is your web site to your business? What would happen if your internet went down for a day? Or if the server crashed? How detrimental would it be to your businesses image and/or your ability to impress potential new clients?

If the answer is that it would make little difference, then self host. If the answer is that it would be REALLY BAD, then don't run it yourself. Hosting sites generally have backup generators, redundant internet connections from multiple providers with multiple paths to the internet. If you were to add these services to your own systems, it would cost you MUCH MORE than the money you're paying now.

You can also look for other hosts - like HostMySite.com and others.

-Lee

Those who ask why, learn

http://www.lwcomputing.com