I founded and sold a web hosting business... albeit a very small one: under 1k subs. So I'd like to think I know a thing or two about this industry. And being an engineer, I believe I know the tech stack very well.
Why?
Whenever I hear people say "I have to", it often boils down to slothful thinking, flawed logic or strong emotional attachment to something with no logic behind it.
Have you really subjected this to critical, logical reasoning -- and concluded that owning your own infrastructure is the only way... or even the best way to build this solution?
Can you play the devil's advocate and start from the premise that you don't need to own your own servers... and see if you can work your way back to justify that, indeed, you need to?
And can you share with us why you're so convinced the solution to this "persistent problem" requires that you own your own servers?
If cost is the only reason why you want to roll your own infrastructure, then I'm afraid you're yet to learn the ABCs of this industry. That, or, you're simply being delusional.
And if the only value you're bringing to the marketplace is lower cost, then I'm really skeptical of your solution.
Today you can get a highly performant cloud VPS with 2GB RAM, 1vCPU, 20GB pure SSD, and 20TB of bandwidth for as little as 2-3 euros per month from the likes of Hetzner and OVH.
Can you build your own hosting infrastructure from scratch and offer cheaper hosting? Sure. Digital Ocean did it seemingly overnight, and since then several copycats have come along.
But that would have to be on a massive scale, as Digital Ocean did.
If you want to roll your own infrastructure to provide a hosting service, and you want to offer a fast, secure and reliable service, there's more to worry about than just the cost of electric bill:
Even the big corporations with the cash and staff are shutting down their data centers and moving all their workload to the cloud. Netflix shut down their last data center 2 years ago and moved to AWS. Hulu has done the same. AOL, Comcast, Vodafone -- all infrastructure providers, have switched off some of their own data centers and moved partially to the cloud.
The VC-funded startups and tech companies have also come to realize their value skew is not in the underlying boxes that power their SaaS platforms. That's why practically every startup leverages existing cloud infrastructure, instead of rolling out their own:
Pinterest, Airbnb, Snapchat, Spotify, Twilio, SoundCloud, Smugmug, GoPro, Instapage, Animoto, Adobe, AOL, Scribd, Slack, Zynga, Wix, PayPal, Twitter, Feedly, Evernote, Leadpages, Kinsta, Pantheon, Vimeo ...
... all live on someone else's servers. Yes, that includes hosting companies and site / landing page builders.
With all that said, note that there's a huge ocean between a "reseller" reselling a $15/month cPanel reseller account, and owning your own infrastructure. Perhaps you could fit yourself somewhere in-between:
You could...
Whichever path you decide, the most important thing is to KEEP MOVING!
I have an elegant solution to a persistent problem I have seen. But it requires that I own the servers and deploy my solutions on it.
Why?
Whenever I hear people say "I have to", it often boils down to slothful thinking, flawed logic or strong emotional attachment to something with no logic behind it.
Have you really subjected this to critical, logical reasoning -- and concluded that owning your own infrastructure is the only way... or even the best way to build this solution?
Can you play the devil's advocate and start from the premise that you don't need to own your own servers... and see if you can work your way back to justify that, indeed, you need to?
And can you share with us why you're so convinced the solution to this "persistent problem" requires that you own your own servers?
It might be easier to use AWS or another cloud service but it might cost a lot.
If cost is the only reason why you want to roll your own infrastructure, then I'm afraid you're yet to learn the ABCs of this industry. That, or, you're simply being delusional.
And if the only value you're bringing to the marketplace is lower cost, then I'm really skeptical of your solution.
Today you can get a highly performant cloud VPS with 2GB RAM, 1vCPU, 20GB pure SSD, and 20TB of bandwidth for as little as 2-3 euros per month from the likes of Hetzner and OVH.
Can you build your own hosting infrastructure from scratch and offer cheaper hosting? Sure. Digital Ocean did it seemingly overnight, and since then several copycats have come along.
But that would have to be on a massive scale, as Digital Ocean did.
@Elbert Dockery Thanks for your reply. I had not considered the cost of electric bill.
If you want to roll your own infrastructure to provide a hosting service, and you want to offer a fast, secure and reliable service, there's more to worry about than just the cost of electric bill:
- Redundant, independent sources of power
- Redundant, high-speed internet connectivity from different providers
- Routers, switches, racks, and other network gear
- Cooling
- Physical / perimeter security
- Tech team to manage all that and keep the heart beating
- etc etc etc
Even the big corporations with the cash and staff are shutting down their data centers and moving all their workload to the cloud. Netflix shut down their last data center 2 years ago and moved to AWS. Hulu has done the same. AOL, Comcast, Vodafone -- all infrastructure providers, have switched off some of their own data centers and moved partially to the cloud.
The VC-funded startups and tech companies have also come to realize their value skew is not in the underlying boxes that power their SaaS platforms. That's why practically every startup leverages existing cloud infrastructure, instead of rolling out their own:
Pinterest, Airbnb, Snapchat, Spotify, Twilio, SoundCloud, Smugmug, GoPro, Instapage, Animoto, Adobe, AOL, Scribd, Slack, Zynga, Wix, PayPal, Twitter, Feedly, Evernote, Leadpages, Kinsta, Pantheon, Vimeo ...
... all live on someone else's servers. Yes, that includes hosting companies and site / landing page builders.
With all that said, note that there's a huge ocean between a "reseller" reselling a $15/month cPanel reseller account, and owning your own infrastructure. Perhaps you could fit yourself somewhere in-between:
You could...
- Co-locate your own servers in someone else's data center, and pay monthly co-location fees (depending on how much rack space you're using, power consumption, connectivity needs, and whether or not you're going to need tech hands... especially in emergency situations)
- Rent a private cloud (complete racks of gear dedicate to you) from a data center or cloud provider
- Rent individual dedicated servers from any of the traditional hosting companies and pay monthly rental fees. You'll need to decide whether you want managed or unmanaged (ie self-managed) servers. The latter can be super cheap, but you're responsible for babysitting the server.
- Rent traditional VPSes or cloud servers. Again, your cost will vary greatly depending on whether you go for managed or unmanaged (ie self-managed) hosting plan.
Whichever path you decide, the most important thing is to KEEP MOVING!