Personal vs. Work/Free Server? 160
akutz asks: "I am sure many of you have asked yourselves this question before: do I run my own server, or take advantage of my employer's hardware and/or free online hosts? I recently brought my own personal server online that provides web, e-mail, source control, and directory services for myself. I like the warm snuggly feeling that all my data is on my box and it is mine, mine, mine. However, I have also just burdened myself with maintaining a server when my employer, The University of Texas at Austin, has plenty of servers that I could use for this very purpose. There are also plenty of free services online that do this, such as Gmail and Sourceforge. So the question is, which is better, running your own server or letting someone else do it for you?"
Depends on who it's for (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Depends on who it's for (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Depends on who it's for (Score:3, Interesting)
Once i get this going, it's GOING to go on a more powerful server with more b
Re:Depends on who it's for (Score:2)
As for FTP, yuck. Rsync is your friend - works over ssh. If you are hosting on Windows, then it's a different matter. Either you have decided that secur
Employment goes away - have a backup plan (Score:5, Insightful)
Normal employment can change policies or downsize, but universities are an especially fickle environment - many of them have policies making it easy for students to have websites, and some of them have strong academic-freedom policies about your rights to posting content, but other universities change policies when they change bureaucrats, and some of them occasionally go full-blast wacko shutdown-and-expel-you no-due-process mode when somebody complains about H4CK3RZ or when some application suddenly sucks down 98% of the school's firewall bandwidth, or when the RIAA/MPAA hands them a complaint about EVIL FILE SHARING CRIMINALS, especially if the complaint gets handed to an organizationally incorrect person who doesn't get it (at some universities, that's the legal department, at others it's a random grunt in the computer management; it varies a lot.) It wouldn't happen at MIT, but it's standard operating procedure at many state universities, and I don't know about UT.
So if you're going to use a university server, make sure than not only is it ok under the official policies, but that you have automatically-updating backups to your off-campus home computer.
Re:Employment goes away - have a backup plan (Score:5, Interesting)
Your online identity is precious, most of the people I know online I know mostly by their email address, if someone shows up anouncing some great story about losing their email address and they really are who they say they are and can we continue where we left off with such and such big deal we were working on I would really hesitate and have to work my trust back up again.
Re:Employment goes away - have a backup plan (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Employment goes away - have a backup plan (Score:5, Insightful)
But, it could also lead to serious trouble if your operational identity is closely tied to the where you work. If you're communicating with someone as a representative of your institution (or using your association with the institution to try to get something done that would be otherwise difficult), starting off with a homebrew email domain is risky.
For an academic, it strikes me as a particularly dangerous. Just imagine what your first thought would be if you received a cold letter from "Professor John Smith ". I'd guess that it won't be, "Oh, that must be that guy with a beard I chatted with at a conference last year." More likely is something along the lines of, "Is this spam? Some crank? Should I bother to open it to investigate?"
In a world where most email isn't worth reading and most people get too much of the stuff that is, it is a good idea to make your headers as obviously legitimate as possible. For an academic who probably has a fixed term of many years and can expect months of notice before an account is cancelled, changing addresses isn't really a huge problem.
Adding a personal address for friends and family can't hurt. But, if you're like me, the distinction between friends and colleagues is often imprecise. Even when it's not, juggling two different from-addresses and remembering who gets which is a pain.
Administering your own machine within your workplace may be a decent compromise, although you could lose your transitional buffer that way. Convincing your workplace to let you set up a
Re:Employment goes away - have a backup plan (Score:5, Informative)
"Professor John Smith <jsmith@somewackydomain.com>"
Didn't realize the tags would get eaten even when posting in plain text. (Clearly this is some new definition of "plain old text" of which I was not previously aware...)
Re:Employment goes away - have a backup plan (Score:2)
Re:Employment goes away - have a backup plan (Score:2)
Um, this is the primary reason why I still keep up my yahoo account. I've had it since shortly after they started offering free e-mail. I had a HS e-mail address, a college e-mail address, and then 2 different ISP internet addresses. At one point, I did use one
Re:Employment goes away - have a backup plan (Score:2)
employee handbook (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:employee handbook (Score:2)
I'd avoid setting up anything using Work equipment at all. If they paid any part in it, then they can usually try and yoink it from you. That would suck hardcore.
For example, if I use a company copy of VS 2005 on my home computer and develop an application with it, my company essentially owns it. I was using a work copy.
Now, cut to, I buy a copy of VS 2005 at the company store, and use it one my home computer, and develop an application with it. Now it's mine.
So that warm
Re:employee handbook (Score:2)
Only until they find out, and sue you for profits gained from your copyright infringment. Ouch, now it's theirs.
Plus, my company discount on VS 2005 is damned cheap, so there's little incentive for me to use it without proper permission.
Emphasis added (Score:2)
mod parent up!!!
(The University I went to had similar policies, including expelling a student for hosting his own business stuff on the comp. sci. server. I do
Re:employee handbook (Score:5, Insightful)
Keep all your personal stuff off company computers.
The submitter is correct in keeping his personal items on his own server that he can pack up on a moment's notice. This cuts down on any potential administrative conflicts.
Also keep in mind that your data is flowing over your company's network, so don't be surprised if any non-public connection gets sniffed at some point by a bored admin.
It's better to just keep your computer away from the company you work for, in general, but I know outside hosting or co-location costs money.
Remember, any data on your company's network or servers is theirs, so if you don't feel comfortable with them knowing your personal issues, store your data elsewhere. Even just having a separate computer doesn't stop them from accidentally taking it (or worse).
Think this is paranoia? Consider that the law is on your employer's side. Is it worth it?
Re:employee handbook (Score:3, Informative)
Re:employee handbook (Score:2, Funny)
Re:employee handbook (Score:4, Interesting)
Back in '95, I set up a web site on my desktop machine at the college where I worked. Nothing bandwidth-intensive, just playing around with HTML, publishing info about myself and things I'd written, etc. My boss knew I was doing it, and didn't particularly care. The only person directly affected by it was me (and even running on Win31 for the first several months, I rarely noticed any performance problems).
But the site somehow came to the attention of the upper administration, and some of the material on it did not meet with their {ahem} moral approval. (No, I wasn't running a pr0n site; I'd be rich by now if that were the case. But I was openly gay and had some erotic drawings on the site.) By the end of the day, I found myself in a conversation in which it was suggested that I resign.
Believe me: there was nothing in the employee handbook about what I'd done. There were no disciplinary policies or procedures involved. "At will" employment (which describes the jobs most of us have) doesn't require anything of the sort. All it requires is someone in authority saying "get rid of him". In retrospect, I can say that storing my personal files like this on a college-owned machine was the one of most bone-headed things I've ever done.
After that incident, I briefly tried commercial hosting, but quickly ran into problems with my provider that left me thinking "I can do it better than this". So I got me an ISDN line, installed Red Hat 6 on a spare Pentium box, and never looked back. OK, I admit: When the web server periodically locks up for no apparent reason, or the power goes out for several hours and the portable generator won't start, or a configuration oversight gets my mail server blacklisted as an open proxy, etc. I find myself wondering why the hell I'm trying to do this myself. But the feeling of self-sufficiency, the freedom and power of root access on everything, and the incredible learning experience of doing it all myself keeps persuading me that it's worth it.
It's also made me all the more valuable to the (entirely different) college where I work today. Where I'm careful not to use college resources for anything personal.
Re:employee handbook (Score:3, Insightful)
Frankly, you got off lightly by them letting you resign. Back in '95, most companies (and colleges) didn't have policies on "offensive content". These days they all do, without exception. What you did back then would today be grounds for formal disciplinary action at best, and on-the-spot dismissal for gross misconduct at worst. Whether it's
Re:employee handbook (Score:2)
Re:employee handbook (Score:2)
Grab.
Re:employee handbook (Score:2)
What I did was stupid. It was foolish. It was a mistake. One I would never make again, and would seriously caution anyone else not to make. Which was the rather obvious point of pos
Re:employee handbook (Score:2)
Your employer's reaction could have been a whole lot worse even back then. At least they let you gracefully resign instead of dragging your name through the mud for firing you for it.
The question is... (Score:4, Funny)
... are you a geek or an end user?
Re:The question is... (Score:2)
Re:The question is... (Score:2)
Note for the humor imparied:
Re:The question is... (Score:2)
Yes.
Re:The question is the answer (Score:2)
I do what's best for me. I pay someone else to run a server with all the goodies installed on it. I don't have uber access, but I don't have to worry about university or employer policy. The money is worth it to me. I don't want to spend time maintaining the system. For many other geeks the opposite is true. From what I've seen though, it's usually a gut reaction.
ISP port blocking (Score:4, Informative)
There seem to be a lot ISP now, at least here in Australia, who routinely block port 80, 25 and a host of others.
Re:ISP port blocking (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:ISP port blocking (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:ISP port blocking (Score:2)
http://www.contegix.com/solutions/colocation/inde
I am considering going with them based on the recommendations I have seen. But, I have no first hand experience with them, so do your homework first.
Host your own if you can (Score:5, Insightful)
I hosted my stuff at my previous employers and it worked great for a couple of years and then our relationship turned sour overnight and I lost about 3 years of work, I had backups but most of them were where I worked, what I did have backups of on my own was outdated etc.
Running your server is more than warm fuzzies, you can do what you want without anyone looking over your shoulder, plus the experience you gain from it could very well be stuff that could be used on a resume or talked about during a job interview. Much of what landed my current job came from the fact I was my own server admin.
Re:Host your own if you can (Score:2)
Re:Host your own if you can (Score:2)
You can buy a virtual machine under plex from these guys http://www.memset.com/ [memset.com] for 15£ which is less than 30$. That is on proper hardware with RAID1 disk susbsystem.
If you are not into some heavy duty PHP or apache-perl stuff the resources on the virtual machine will be more than enough.
I have yet to dip into the swap on mine which runs my mail relay and web for the time being.
Re:Host your own if you can (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Host your own if you can (Score:2)
My thoughts on the issue (Score:5, Funny)
http://www.cocacola.com/~robert [cocacola.com]
Re:My thoughts on the issue (Score:2, Funny)
Re:My thoughts on the issue (Score:2, Funny)
only to realize the joke onMouseUp()... (e.g. immediately after clicking on it)
good one
Academic Institution (Score:2, Interesting)
University Management (Score:2)
My Advice (Score:3, Informative)
2) If you have a website that you need to guarantee availability for, get a cheap webhost like LunarPages [lunarpages.com] or IPowerWeb [ipowerweb.com]. (Note that blogs fall under this category. Don't run your own blog unless the Blogger.com service doesn't meet your needs.)
3) If you have something personal (such as vacation pictures, web scripts for testing, an experimental web app, etc.) run your own server. It's a rewarding experience and can teach you a lot.
4) DO NOT run ANYTHING on your employer's servers, unless you have explicit permission. It was one thing to make quick use of them back when bandwidth was hard to come by. But now that everyone and their dog has server-grade bandwidth, there's no reason to be making illicit use of your employer's server.
Re:My Advice (Score:2, Interesting)
I run my own mail server but forward through my ISPs mail server. That fixed the dynamic-IP bounces I'd occasionally get.
Right on the money with #4. "don't shit where you eat" I always say.
Re:My Advice (Score:2)
Re:My Advice (Score:2)
Running my family mail server at home on adsl was fine for the last 5 years until last week when not only did a mail I sent through bellsouth's server get bounced because bellsouth's server was listed at SORBS blacklist, but then bellsouth started to block incoming port 25 so my family and I don't get mail at all anymore.
Now I am contemplating the same question as the original post in addition to having to switch to a sane IS
Re:My Advice (Score:2)
Plus, having IMAP support is handy for those times when I'm not at my PC (or my PC is having "issues").
Re:My Advice (Score:2)
I've been sending and recieving my own email directly from a debian/unstable box on a home DSL line (speakeasy) for about 4 years. Unless I've forgotten something, I believe the setup was just a matter of apt-get installing exim and answering the questions in the obvious way. This is the only email address I use for personal and work use, I use it pretty heavily, and I've only see
Re:My Advice (Score:2)
Re:My Advice (Score:2)
Or just run a recieve-only email server, and send outgoing mail through your ISP's server.
Re:My Advice (Score:2)
And don't even do it then. I've had to spend 50+ hours supporting some guys hobby football tipping website hosted on the companies server and had to make up the time to do real work on weekends. Meanwhile the hobbiest spent 100+ hours per year on it, and didn't make up the time - generally pissing people off who were waiting for him to finish things. When there is concrete evidence that you are spending time on hobbies at
easy (Score:4, Insightful)
a) If you like the challenge of configuring, securing, and running a server, do it yourself.
b) If you just need to use a server and you get what you want...security, access, uptime...somewhere else for free (or at a reasonable cost), then let someone else do it.
it depends (Score:2, Informative)
1) Most importantly, I learn all kinds of nifty things doing this that I can apply in a workplace environment
2) I don't have to pay anything. My cable connection + comp is expensive enough; I don't need to pay for that all again.
Obviously, if you have no need to learn about hosting servers and also have some extra money to spend, paying for a server is better. This way you have a better guarentee of uptime (assuming you pick a good
How good is your self-censor? (Score:2)
Even if you love your job, though, consider that you may still want to gripe about it to a friend sometime. Would you be comfortable explaining to your boss why your complaints were sent out through his system?
Keep your own server. It's good practice, in several senses.
My own reliability stinks (Score:3, Insightful)
I've been running a personal server now for about three years, primarily for web/email services with a few other things. I approached it as though it would be a little box to tinker on. But as I've come to rely on the services more -- particularly email -- I find that relying on my own availability and attentiveness isn't as carefree as I had thought. Most things on the machine are easily trashed/rebuilt/restored, but I rely too heavily on the email accounts handled by the machine so each time I hose the machine or just feel like starting fresh, it is becoming more of a hassle without also having a backup mail server in place.
Requirements? (Score:5, Informative)
This is a multivariable optimization problem. There is no right answer for all circumstances. Which is why some people host their own sites, some host at their employers' sites, some use colocated servers, some use virtual servers, etc.
There is no clear better. What matters to you? (Score:3, Insightful)
Running your own takes effort. You have to install your own software, keep everything patched, fix failing hardware, accept that it's going to break at some inconvenient time so you have to choose to leave your site down or abandon what you're doing to go fix it, etc.
It's a large investment of time. In return you get to have greater control over the software you use, the posession of your data, the ability to just fix things when they break rather than waiting for tech support, etc.
As for using an employeer... Are you sure they want you to? Who owns your data if you do? If you quit, what happens?
As a Tax payer in Texas... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:As a Tax payer in Texas... (Score:2)
Eh, I don't know. I also tend to err on the side of caution when it comes to using work resources for personal stuff. But when it comes to setting policy I'd rather be lenient--there are also costs to enforcing a rigorous separation between work and personal uses, and I wouldn't expect the small bandwidth/power/whatever savings you get from doing that to be particularly worth it. A
Re:As a Tax payer in Texas... (Score:2)
Which law? If so, the law is seriously out of touch with reality--good luck convincing students and professors that they can't use their university email address for personal mail. And I don't see how the public would be particularly benefited by enforcing such a strict separation. (OK, I'm being a bit unfair--handling personal email at the university isn't quite the same as setting up a personal server there. Hard to know exactly where to draw the line, though.)
Re:As a Tax payer in Texas... (Score:2)
Hah, you're right, very amusing. I wonder how it's been applied in practice? It'd be kinda hard to argue that a student or professor running personal email through a state-owned mail server (and typically probably doing so using state-licensed m
Re:As a Tax payer in Texas... (Score:2)
Why not? Especially when the University of Texas offers students access to IT resources for personal use [utexas.edu]? [PDF file warning].
If you read the UT Acceptable Use Policies [utexas.edu] they don't limit what students can do as long as they they respect the fact that IT resources are a shared and limited resource and they don't break any state/federal laws or university policies/regulations.
Re:As a Tax payer in Texas... (Score:2)
My own. (Score:3, Interesting)
Easiest (Score:3, Insightful)
Hosting work/personal (Score:4, Insightful)
But even if they suggested it I wouldn't do it lightly.
I would rather pay for hosting service and know that if I lost my job tomorrow I would still have the website and domain.
I know that anything I do on the website is mine. I don't use their tools, or their time to maintain it. If, for some reason, they decided they owned something on my website I could, in good faith fight for my rights to keep it as mine. They would have to fight to take it from me, I wouldn't have to fight to get it back.
Keep your homelife, and your worklife separate.
Unless you plan on getting /.ed... (Score:2, Informative)
Eventually I figured that since we have broadband I may as well set up my own machine as a server. Used to run off my desktop – not a good idea
Free is not really a good price (Score:2, Interesting)
At work we got rackspace out the wazzoo so my boss would let me put a server on our corp network if I keep it low key (loki?). Downsides are if I get fired/quit I got to move it out with a quickness. I also need to worry about management asking why a v120 and a Sunfire 280R is in the racks that's not under control of the
NEVER use work's server (Score:2)
You won't work there for ever.
They will decide they no longer can afford to have people freeload on their server.
Someone will buy them out, and decide that they can't affort to
I host my own because that's the kind of thing I do. I've done it since the late 80's, when it was UUCP. I'll probably continue to do it for a long time. But if all you want is email, I'd use Google. If you want to blog, I dunno - plenty of people let you do that cheap/fre
Re:Interesting Info (Score:2)
Yup. And next week UT is going to decide to outsource their IT to India. Or secede from the union. Or become a subdivision of Halliburton.
You never know.
Never trust work's server.
Simple (Score:3, Insightful)
(this coming from someone who still has an answering machine)
thanks for the responses! (Score:5, Informative)
My server is a P4-2.8ghz 83G5 Shuttle with 2GB of RAM. It runs Ubuntu Linux 5.10 Breezy Badger. All this setup does is run SSH (pubkey auth only ) and Apache2 with WebDav enabled so I can access my home directory from afar with ease. Oh, and I require client certificates to talk to my WebDav share for security.
On top of this though I run VMware GSX server. I run a virtual instance of Breezy that is my web/e-mail/ldap/svn server. The beauty of it being virtual is that if I ever need to move it I just move the directory to another machine! Since the VM was created under VMware GSX 3.2.1 I can easily move it into ESX 2.5 or VMware Workstation 5.5.1 (legacy mode). I went this route specifically in case of the need to migrate the server. I also run a virtual instance of Windows 2003 Server Enterprise and Exchange 2003 for testing code and projects on Windows.
I like running my own server, it teaches me a lot, and I feel that I have the minimum amount of competence to pull it off. That said, there are times when I would love to just give it to somebody to run for me!
P.S. I was using Lunarpages, but I got to the point when I decided that I needed shell access to much. However, Lunarpages is a spectacular hosting company and their support turnaround is second to none. Withing 2 hours on the weekends! Those guys rock!
Re:thanks for the responses! (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm not going to name names, but if you haven't yet, shop a
Just for comparison's sake (Score:2, Insightful)
But just for comparison's sake, I do all my e-mail personal (and some family memb
Re:thanks for the responses! (Score:2)
That way if you get hacked, you can easily pause the VM, make a copy for investigation, then revert to a pristine state and make the necessary changes so you won't get hacked again.
The ssh and firewall stuff won't require that much CPU so running them in a VM won't be a big prob.
If you're paranoid you could put the apache in the VM, but leave your files in the host, and then use a "read-only" share to access them.
Lastly is there
My solution: both! (Score:2)
On the other hand, I don't want to *have* to keep that box up 24/7/365 so I've got my main "real" domain at a real host--that way, I
Re:My solution: both! (Score:2)
I'm a member of IKI [iki.fi], a Finnish society of Internet users that provides redirection addressess for web and mail. My website has been running in a number of different places over the years, but the sa
Dumb story, but... (Score:4, Insightful)
A. Letting someone else do it for you, and rsyncing daily to your own server.
Re:Dumb story, but... (Score:3, Interesting)
It gives you the experience and (questionable) geek cred of running your own server, but without any of the hassle. You can even run your server as a virtual instance on your desktop, if it's suitably powerful, I suppose. But the point is you keep everything that the outside world touches in the colo building; you just get to do the "fun stuff" of building your site, your blog, whatever. And if you want to switch hosting companies? No biggie -- you have eve
I plan to do this (Score:3, Interesting)
I have thought about it a lot. I work from many different locations (at work, at home, at random places on my laptop using a wireless Internet provider, etc) on a multitude of projects, and basically my need is to have a permanent access to a secure Unix server offering flexible services on my DNS domain, in order to:
That's why I plan to buy a 1U server with at least 2 disks in order to do RAID 1, and I will have it collocated in a datacenter offering affordable prices. I plan to use an encrypted partition (think /home) to store my data, this partition will have to be mounted manually (to enter the required passphrase). This way if someone power off the server and try to steal my data, the encrypted partition will be useless for him.
Ideally I would have preferred NON-managed colocation (i.e. I would responsible for the physical installation of my hardware in the rack, and I would have access to it 24/7), but since it's too expensive I have chosen to go for managed colocation (i.e. I send my server to the colo company and they install it, but I would not have free physical access to my server).
Why not skip the CoLo and host it yourself? (Score:2)
First off, find yourself a local, geek run ISP. They generally will have good service, with high speed low latency connections to multiple higher-tier ISP's, and their own backup power.
Second, get a decent DSL package through them, and I'm not talking the "speed
Re:Why not skip the CoLo and host it yourself? (Score:2)
This is an idea that I have considered. But in my case, I am very nomadic: I move about once every 12 months. So if I hosted my own server, I would have at least 3 to 4 weeks of downtime every 12 months (time to move and subscribe to a new DSL plan), plus a change of IP address. Add to this the frequent power outages in my area (California), and IMHO this is just too much hassle. Compare this to a managed colo for 1U with a 10 Mbps (if not 100 Mbps) symmetric connection for about $100 a month or less, and
Re:Why not skip the CoLo and host it yourself? (Score:2)
I've been using them for a while now and I'm pretty happy with the price and reliability.
You Are Responsible for Security (Score:4, Informative)
I'm guessing you have already considered the relevant University of Texas System polices [utsystem.edu], the Office of General Council Ethics Standards [utsystem.edu], and the ITS Policies [utexas.edu]. Sorry, I work for another Texas university.
With that in mind, know that you and only you are responsible for the security of your computer and that you will be held responsible for any undesireable activity coming from your computer. If someone were to manage to compromise your computer and then attempt to compromise other university systems, you will at least be held responsible for not securing your own system, if not held responsible for anything coming from your computer -- or through it. If you are quite certain that you can keep your computer secure, then by all means run your own server and learn as much as possible. It's best not to experiment with production university systems. Besides, one could argue that using university-owned systems for your own purposes is a violation of the ethics policy. However, using your personal computer on the university network is no different than any student using a laptop.
Running Servers on University Boxes in Ohio (FYI) (Score:3, Informative)
Killing a server (Score:2)
Not company servers, please (Score:3, Insightful)
If you want to provide some sort of internet service, even if it's just for yourself, keep in mind the risks asociated with it.
Example: if you run your own personal mail server it might be only a matter of time before some clown decides to spam your domain doing a dictionary attack, and while anti-spam techniques can be pretty effective in rejecting messages, your bandwidth/cpu will still be consumed.
If you would still like to keep control of your email, try a colo box, or a virtual server, or one of them spam filtering services (you point the mx to them and they forward the "clean" mail to you) or even a traditional mail server and "fetchmail" the mail into your own server.
This shouldn't even be a question (Score:2)
IMHO, host at home for sites in which you aren't concerned about uptime, or get a webhost for sites where uptime counts. FWIW, I host my personal website on an old Linux box downstairs, but my commercial stuff is on a prof
List of personal colocation providers (Score:4, Informative)
shared server (Score:4, Insightful)
Leave work at work and home at home,
Nick
Ask Yourself the Same Question I Did (Score:3, Informative)
How badly do you want to do things, "Your Way?"
I work for an ISP that gives me a lot of freedom to do things as I see fit, and I am very proud of the work I have done, and the machines I maintain. However, I am bound by compatability issues with previous design decisions I don't always agree with. That sort of entrenched policy is impossible to quickly erradicate. Hence, I opted to maintain my own trio of machines that do my bidding.
I do make extensive use of my work servers as well, but for my personal use, I wanted it to be 100% all mine. I have prior design decisions of my own that I regret that have become entrenched, but at least they are "My" mistakes, and mine alone to fix. But I am an insatiable individualist, to the point of obsessiveness.
Just how badly do you want to run a sys your own way? If the answer isn't, "I wanna run a server for myself and possibly a few friends as if I were a demon from hell, sent to restore order to the entire interweb, one puny server at a time." Its probably not worth the effort. If that _is_ your answer, medication?
Obvious Choice for Me (Score:3, Informative)
If you're an sysadmin type of person (most people aren't, but I am), the convenience and security of running your own servers is very difficult to compromise on. When it's your box, you're in control--you can fine tune it to fit your needs exactly, and you can change anything instantly at your discretion.
Trusting your stuff to professionals is not too bad of an idea, but you have to realize that you're dealing with an organization of people that don't have any vested interest in you or your data. They'll do their best to serve you most of the time, but they'll never be able to do it as well as you could for yourself. Because of levels of authority and control, getting necessary things done for *you* on a machine owned by *someone else* requires you to go through them, and there will be bureaucracies, red tape, and layers upon layers of people who can't do anything to facilitate a solution. Eventually it might get to someone who can, but there is always the chance that they can't or won't.
What if your box needs something special? A custom kernel or special modules? Specific settings on a certain server? I don't know man...
Pay for hosting and keep your data (Score:2)
My server at home is where I keep my data. I login to it over the Internet through RDP and go from there to wherever I need to.
Never ever keep data on employer's computers. I write computer use policies, and ye
go the personal route... (Score:2, Informative)
1. The company happened to change their settings a lot, causing downtime on the server and downtime on my sites.
2. The company continuously changed their mind on where they wanted their websites to be, forcing
Never use your employers servers (Score:2)
If you need to buy into a managed service, I recommend something like 2wdhost.com [2wdhost.com] or the ilk. As long as you dont need a dump truck load of bytes-per-month and dont want much over three 9's then this sort of gig is for you.
Its basically poor-student pricing so you have no excuses. As far as this hosting in particular, I cannot say I recommend them, I only suggest
woot (Score:2)
serverpronto (Score:2)
Re:Its root that matters (Score:2)