Servers and their Management

Inspired by @twizzle post of today and my comment under it, I thought I should take the comment and make it an own article.

As I am sure I have written in the past, I have a small hosting business running. It is nothing special, just a convenient way to keep freelance customers nearby by providing not only the development but also the hosting.

I own one root server where all customer stuff is on and one small VPS where I’m doing some experiments from time to time.

Back in the day, when my business partner and I decided, it would be better to have a powerful root server than more small VPSs or reseller things, so we could expand easily and keep the cost low.

Well, the server itself isn’t expensive (46,80€ per Month) and it has plenty of unspent resources (The hard disks are maybe a quarter full, the ram is not anywhere near a quarter usage and so is the CPU).

On top of the Server cost, is the cost for the Administration Interface we use (Plesk at 21,60€ per Month).

With the few paying customers we have, about half of the cost is paid. Which leaves me with 34,20€ per Month.

More customers would help to pay the whole server, but on the other side, something is bugging me the last days. What happens if something inside the Server broke?

Sure we have backups and all the stuff, but if the server would burn up in smoke, there would be a major downtime.

Also, the 34,20€ are without the hours I spend administrating the server. Although Plesk does a great job, sometimes things break and need to be fixed.

TBC