Buying a Web Server

I currently resell hosting through another company and I'm getting to the point where it would make more since to have my own server. I'm thinking about buying a Dell PowerEdge Server with Linux installed. I would later install Apache Server and other software to support scripting languages and MySQL.

Obviously I need to have a dedicated connection and a DNS but what else would I need to do? Are there any good sites out there I can find info?

Anybody had any experience (good or bad) setting up their own Linux server?

Thanks.

Is it for commercial hosting or just as an inhouse testing server? I have set up a few Linux testing servers and intranet stuff and you usually get apache, mysql, php and a DNS server (BIND I think?) with the distribution (certainly the last few versions of Red Hat and Mandrake that i have used)

If its for a commercial server environment, selling space to others, etc. then I'm not sure. But would be interested to know how you get on, and if you find any decent sources of info as its something i was thinking about for the future.

heres an excellent tutorial so read up on it. hopefully it will help http://www.diywebserver.com/


how much do dell power edge servers cost?

Yeah - how much are Edge box's? Unless you are expecting a helluva lot of server-side processing, why not just buy a 2GHZ intel/amd box with plenty o' RAM?

The company I work for does hosting, and we don't have any problems using stocko PC's as servers. Actually, some of them aren't even that powerful - i think there's a P2/3 500mhz in our server room. A lot of stock-standard web stuff doesn't need too much grunt.

I have purchased a DELL PowerEdge server (600SC) for about $850,- for my company.

It is the smallest DELL server, 1.8 MHz P4, 128 Mb RAM and 40 Gb harddisk. Shipped with RedHat Linux 7.3
I think for $100,- less it is equipped with 1.7 MHz Celeron.

Installed everything and running within couple of hours.
Most work I had to put into configuration of BIND (caching DNS) and the firewall. The server is used in my company as a internet gateway, that's why the firewall.
Furthermore it is running Apache with PHP as a local test server in the office.

Regards,
Arjon Vlasblom
VTAS

Thanks for all the replies! I would be using it for commercial purposes. I host about a dozen sites now and I'm always picking up new clients. Plus I want to run a couple of sites of my own that will have a lot of multimedia files which require a lot of disk space.

I suppose that any computer can be turned into a web server but I want to make sure that whatever I set up is going to be fast and reliable. I'm also concerned about security since a couple sites need use of a secure server.

I'll keep searching and if I turn up some good resources on the subject I'll be sure to post them....

and call up a place like Rack Space (www.rackspace.com). From the tone of your post is sounds like your pretty green when it comes to sysadmin work. If your trying to run this as a biz you really _NEED_ to know what your doing. If you lease a deticated server from Rack Space, you get a deticated server, that is managed by the Rack Space staff. Rack Space will take care of your DNS, security updates, etc, etc. You get to work on the biz side of things.

Now if you want to learn this stuff, then go the do it your self road, buy two or three cheap used P200 boxes and a hub then setup a test network in your house running whatever version of Linux/Unix/Windows you plan on using on your production machines.

Learning the basics before you sell the service is the least you can do for your cusotmers.

Duh...It wasn't like I was going to to do this today. I wouldn't think about switching over customers before I had everything set up correctly and knew exactly what I was doing. I'd test it out on my own sites first.

I wasn't trying to flame you, just point you in one possible direction. Rack Space is a good option for many people and I thought you might like the pointer, guess not.

Good luck on learning the basics of being a network/sysadmin, it's steep learning curve.

Any one else used designerservers.com? They have a pretty nice set up, if a little expensive for casual users. You get a Virtual server, complete control over all the domains, though either telnet, ssh, or an online control panel. You can set up email accounts, full user privileges, ftp logins to restricted directories. Full LAMP set up. Quite a good intermediate step, i'm finding.