Server Question

[jmdb71]

Hi,
I am currently the webmaster for two e-commerce flooring-related sites. We were planning on swithing to ACT business software (from our outdated system) and have people access a database off of a server. In addition, we would move the web sites to the server. What amount of time/work could be expected from switching to our own server and placing the web sites on this? How much maintenance time can be expectec with our own server? Is it recommended to use a host? Thanks in advance!

[clasione]

The actual move shouldn't be much work at all - but running your own server comes with lots of responsibiliy... Especially when dealing with customer data....

Running servers usually require server administrators...

[php~pro]

Personally I wouldnt bother. You are talking about two small sites with low hit rates. You may save a few dollars by hosting your own, but create a whole load of headaches. Hosting is for nothing now, as there is so much competition in the market.

[jomariet]

You won't save any money by running your own server, you'll just get a whole new headache. In addition to the software and tech support, hosting companies can provide the basic infrastructure that a small company would find cost prohibitive. If your sites are large enough or use extremely specialized software, you can go from a normal hosting plan to a dedicated server and let someone else do the management.

Believe me, at 3 am when something is going wrong with the server, it is really nice to know that someone else (who knows what they are doing) is taking care of keeping the server running.

JM

http://www.crucibledesigns.com
http://www.akalt.net

[Conficio]

May I chime in here. Your plan sounds to me like a big No - No !

Why? Because you are putting your company critical data (the ACT! database) and the web server on the same machine. You can't avoid to advertise your web-server to the world and therefore expose it to hacker attacks. And once they succeeded, you reward them with your whole customer data form ACT!.

Don't do this. You can get plenty of web hosting for $8 a month and professional up-time on top of it. And you save yourself the headache of hackers getting in to your server.

Good luck

K<o>

[rackaid]

Do not locate any sensitve customer data and your web sites on the same public web server without proper pre-cautions.

By getting your own server, you also assume the burden of dealing with security. Your customers privacy should be paramount.

Ideally, the public web server would be in a DMZ zone with a firewall sepearting it and your customer records. Very sensistive data like credit card numbers or other private material should be encrypted.

Running your own server will require you to spend at least 1-2 hours/month in system maintenance and administration. You can either outsource this task or do it in house.

In terms of moving the data, you do not describe your current setup. Will the web servers be the same version, what database do you use, what scripts do you use etc.

Migrating sites can take as little as a few minutes to as long as days depending on their size and complexity.

Before acquiring your own system, evaluate whether or not you have the approriate resources to manage the system. If you are locating this at your place of business, then a firewall appliance is a must. Good SOHO firewalls with DMZ capabilities will easily run $500.00. You will also then need to secure the rest of your network. If you are co-locating a server, consider one of the PCI hardware firewalls. I've not seen many good software firewalls on Windows systems. On linux IPtables is very good but requires some experties to configure and test.

[jmdb71]

thanks for all the advice.

I will certainly keep my web sites hosted separately. What about just putting the ACT businessware on our own server? Suggestions?

[mbhmirc]

You could get a server at ev1servers and then get one of the people from the forum to do the maintence :)

[KtoID]

does anyone know a good method for doing redirects from asp to aspx, site wide, without having to use the properties on each page individually. Speaking in iis.

[easytouch]

@jmdb71

Independent from the technical details I would recommend to you have a look at www.tutos.org an open source project.

I am using it since three years now and
have all so called CRM Stuff inside (contacts, projects, invoicing)

Also the trouble tickte system is fine,
but in this case i use www.kayako.com

Give it a test-ride because you could save lots of license and technical problems if you are still before the move to migrate your data and you have no problem any more to use it through a browser (internet or internet) - because the 'know i want to use it through the browser' stuff is with the big commercial packages more headache then the missing interfaces and documentation of the open source mammas.

Take a 100 bugs server, a php and linux Student as your project costs and thats it.

[Deep13]

if you can spend around $600 a month then you can get server on www.rackspace.com with cisco firewall and amd 2gig machine with 1 gig ram... (+ tape backups)

support, stablity, security everything is top notch....

2nd option would be going for www.theplanet.com or www.servermatrix.com

you might not find support as quick as rackspace but servers are very good stable, secured...

it shall cost you around say $250 for p4 2.8gig with 1gig ram and hardware firewall...

both the sites have managed servers by default..

I am suggesting dedicated server because sharing your censitive information on other's server is as good as allowing him to download all your customer details...

Deep