What is internet server hardware

Brianweb

Is this a server for a website?
Is this a server for hosting?
Is it the same thing???????????

Please let me know.

Oooo Where do ye get them???

junii

The internet is a network of networks, not specifically offering the world wide web or webpages service but other services also such as email. A server for a website would be called a website server but could also be called an internet server too because it will be connected to the internet.

Basically, its a loose term and meaningless. You probably heard it in some marketing bull.

If you are looking to get a website hosted you don't need to buy your own hardware. You can get this service from a hosting company. You pay them to host your site 24/7 and the price you pay includes maintenance, bandwidth, processing power and disk space.

layke

You can use a P100mhz as a webserver Brian.

Just some big companies require a lot of power so they have to buy things like a HP ML370 which is chocked full of power. Better chips and all that.

e.g

http://h10010.www1.hp.com/wwpc/us/en/ss/WF04a/15351-241434-241477-241477-f84.html

SouperComputer

^what he said

Its a very "how long is a peice of sting" kind of question. Essentially is a computer that serves up webpages. As said above it could be run from a Pentium one machine, or even much older. It depends on exactly what kind of information to be hosted, the amount of data and how frequently is is accessed.

If you are looking for somewhere to put your propective website, you need what is called hosting. Hosts provide access to the hardware that you need to host your website. Your website will run from their server computers which are generaly connected to the internet, full-time with a very beefy connnection.

For hosting you could do a lot worse than:

www.hosting365.ie
www.blacknight.ie

Both irish companies with their equipment located in Ireland.

You can host your own website with your own internet connection, but there is a lot more to worry about from your end.

Brianweb

What would i have to do to have of my own server, with my own site on it. I would like to have control over my website and everything got to do with it.

Can you give me a list of what i would need on a server to make it safe....

Where would i get it?

This is for a business website which will need as much as possible, as we will be hosting more website which are also part of our business.. once we have the sites we want to host then ourselves

irlrobins

If you use a hosting company (like hosting365.ie, which hosts this website) then you still get full control over your website content. They give you access to upload your webpages, edit them, set up email addresses, set spam filters, view usage stats etc.

Many hosting packages allow you to host more than one website. My package allows me to host up to four different domains.

And to be honest and not to be offensive, if you have to ask what you need to run your own web server, then I think actually running it is beyond your technical expertise.

Brianweb

irlrobins wrote:

If you use a hosting company (like hosting365.ie, which hosts this website) then you still get full control over your website content. They give you access to upload your webpages, edit them, set up email addresses, set spam filters, view usage stats etc.

Many hosting packages allow you to host more than one website. My package allows me to host up to four different domains.

And to be honest and not to be offensive, if you have to ask what you need to run your own web server, then I think actually running it is beyond your technical expertise.

Ok I understand... But what if 365 close up? Where would you be then or is this a problem. can i just switch? The problem is the company who put my site together keep this information to them selfs.

Can i deal with the hosting company myself? will they set up email address, spam filters etc....

irlrobins

Well if you go to reputable company (like hosting365, blacknight etc) then chances of them just folding up are minimal. And you should always be backing up your website so if there is any loss, you still have all your data. Good hosting companies will of course have their own backups, but it's no harm in being doubly protected.

Yes you can deal with hosting company yourself. They generally leave it up to you to set up the email addresses (which is very easy to do), but if you're stuck I'm sure they will help you out.

stevenmu

Basically it's something you'd need to pay an expert a huge sum of money to setup and maintain for you, on top of an expensive internet connection. You'd also need to pay the appropriate software licenses if it's to be windows based hosting. You also need to worry about expansion and redundancy, what happens if the power goes, can you afford to have all your customers sites go down ? What happens if one of your sites gets a huge amount of traffic (slashdotted or similar), will your other customers be happy with their sites slowing to a crawl, and so on.

In the end you'll be much better off going with a hosting provider. Doing that let's you divide up the huge costs involved with all the other people using them, and they already have the expertise to keep everything running smoothly. Most also offer some form of reseller discount, so for eg you could sell your customers some hosting with hosting365 for the same price as if they went directly to them, but you keep a percentage of it.

regi

Hosting providers have the economies of scale to offer these services at a much reduced rate.

If you actually need 'internet server hardware', then it sounds like you might need colocation space. Colocation is where you own the hardware (perhaps like these or this) and their are physically located within the hosting provider's cabinets to take advantage of the power, connectivity and environmental controls.

Boards is colocated in that way - we own and manage the hardware, but the physical servers are located within a Hosting365 cabinet in order to use the connectivity and power there.

SouperComputer

Ok I understand... But what if 365 close up?

I can assure you that the chances of having downtime with your own setup are indescribably greater than using hosting. To be frank, if hosting is good enough for most corporates (Including technolgy companies themselves) then its good enough for you. And me for that matter

Hosting on your own can be a pain in the A$$ for us more seasoned IT veterans, especially when irish ISP's come into the equation! Hosting for someone who does not have basic knowledge of such technolgies is unfeasable. It requires a lot of knowledge and expense to setup and even more to keep running effieciently.

Im not having a stab at you by the way, I just want to be completely transparent so that you dont make costy mistakes.

When you sign up with hosting365 for example, you can setup a simple website using free tools included. Its just as easy as using word, and you can do it from anywhere that you have internet access. You login, click create new page and away you go.

What is the nature of your business?
What do you require\hope to achieve from your prospective website?

Brianweb

Thank you All.

You have been a great help as this was a worry. The site is on Blacknight so i will be getting in Contact with them.....

Thankx Again

Brianweb

SouperComputer wrote:

I can assure you that the chances of having downtime with your own setup are indescribably greater than using hosting. To be frank, if hosting is good enough for most corporates (Including technolgy companies themselves) then its good enough for you. And me for that matter

Hosting on your own can be a pain in the A$$ for us more seasoned IT veterans, especially when irish ISP's come into the equation! Hosting for someone who does not have basic knowledge of such technolgies is unfeasable. It requires a lot of knowledge and expense to setup and even more to keep running effieciently.

Im not having a stab at you by the way, I just want to be completely transparent so that you dont make costy mistakes.

When you sign up with hosting365 for example, you can setup a simple website using free tools included. Its just as easy as using word, and you can do it from anywhere that you have internet access. You login, click create new page and away you go.

What is the nature of your business?
What do you require\hope to achieve from your prospective website?

I am Sorry But i can't tell you the name of the site here... As it is on the internet and is becomng very big. Information, Customers etc

regi

Often, the worst case scenario if your hosting provider closes up is that you'll need to fax the registrar of your domain to move nameservers (or potentially fax another registrar if your existing reseller's registrar went bust), and restore the site from your own backups (that you obviously took ).

If you want to outsource it, and you are very worried about your provider going bust then maybe use a contact email address from gmail.com or some other provider. Don't register blah.com and have blah@blah.com as the contact email for it

irlrobins

Regi wrote:

Don't register blah.com and have blah@blah.com as the contact email for it

Ashamed to say this is what I did. Was quite messy trying to get my login details in order to change the nameservers when my blah.ie was down. :rolleyes:

regi

Oops

Brianweb

Regi wrote:

Often, the worst case scenario if your hosting provider closes up is that you'll need to fax the registrar of your domain to move nameservers (or potentially fax another registrar if your existing reseller's registrar went bust), and restore the site from your own backups (that you obviously took ).

If you want to outsource it, and you are very worried about your provider going bust then maybe use a contact email address from gmail.com or some other provider. Don't register blah.com and have blah@blah.com as the contact email for it

Would this mean!
If blah.com goes down, and i have blah@blah.com that i can't be contacted.
But if i have contact blah@eircom.net i can be contacted to tell me what the problem is?

irlrobins

Correct

SouperComputer

Brianweb wrote:

I am Sorry But i can't tell you the name of the site here... As it is on the internet and is becomng very big. Information, Customers etc

Thats understandable, but I never asked about the name of your company

So are you saying that you think you need more capacity for an existing website?

Throw us a line here

Brianweb

SouperComputer wrote:

Thats understandable, but I never asked about the name of your company

So are you saying that you think you need more capacity for an existing website?

Throw us a line here

Ok the problem is i have lost fath in the company who are looking after the site and i am trying to find out information i may need.

eg. Is it the norm for it to take a year to buld a site and any time an upgrade is put onto it they don't work, or they do, But something else is not.

irlrobins

That sounds like an issue with your web designer, not your web hosting. (Unless of course they are the one and the same).

If you're unhappy with their work, fire them. Get someone else to design your site. If you're concerned that the present designer will remove your current site, make a backup of it. Once they're gone, change any passwords you might have given them for the hosting account.

astrofool

You could also setup a seperate mail server, like I have for SMTP mail (mail.blah.net), so even when I change the website host, or the host goes down, I still have mail.

regi

Astrofool, if he's worried about the hosting company going bang, then his DNS might go offline too, unless that's self-managed too.

astrofool

Well, for instance, I have my domain with an ISP (one of the big ones), and my hosting with a smaller company, if smaller company ever went bang, all i'd have to do is change the A-records. If the big ISP goes bang, then I wouldn't have the internet anyway (and neither would alot of other people ).