Hosting A Server In A School?

carlmango11

Hi,

Just wondering if anyone has any advice. I'm developing an Android app/website combo that will be deployed by secondary/primary schools. The app connects from the device it's installed on to a server to get its data. The website will be hosted on that server too.

Students and teachers will need to be able to access the data 24/7, in the school and at home (via the Internet) although it's much more important that they have access while in the school.

My question is this, would it be very difficult/abnormal for the schools to host the server in the school themselves and provide access to it via the Internet to student while they are at home? Or is the norm to get some dedicated hosting elsewhere and have the app connect to it via the Internet? I'm concerned about performance if I were to go for the dedicated hosting solution and also that if the school's internet connection goes down one day then the students won't be able to access the app/website. If it's hosted in the school then it would be accessible at least on the local network which is very important.

If that explanation wasn't clear maybe you've heard of Moodle? It's a eduation-related website that's deployed by each university individually and I think it's hosted by the university itself. Presumably this means that once you're on the university's internal network then it should be relatively fast and isn't reliant on an Internet connection.

Thanks in advance

srsly78

The dept of education has a contract with some company for hosting, all the dublin schools are supposed to use it. However it seems brutally slow and all the teachers I have talked to hate it.

As you can see there are lots of vested interests already at play here, your difficulties will be political rather than technical.

tricky D

Avoid hosting in the school, just go for external hosting. There are significant overheads to setting up, running, maintaining, securing etc. your own server. False economy would kick in, in no time.

carlmango11

Thanks for the replies. Much appreciated. It does seem like hosting with a 3rd party company would be best.

Trojan

I'd agree with the two posters above - technologically you're better off with a 3rd party hosting solution, and you may have to deal with some politics. If you can include hosting costings as part of an "all-in-one" proposal then that'd definitely be the way I'd suggest going.

awec

srsly78 wrote: »

The dept of education has a contract with some company for hosting, all the dublin schools are supposed to use it. However it seems brutally slow and all the teachers I have talked to hate it.

As you can see there are lots of vested interests already at play here, your difficulties will be political rather than technical.

The problem being the company who won that contract are the ones who said they'd do it the cheapest...