Admin Server 2003 myself? Or find someone to host?

[Guest chessaurus@gmail.com]

I am part of a team that is developing a custom, high-volume ASP.NET

application that will receive primarily local traffic (ie from my

city).

 

I have used hosted ASP.NET providers in the past (like Intermedia and

ResellerChoice) and these have worked well for our earlier/smaller

projects, but I'm worried about scalability for our upcoming larger

project. These providers all geographically far away from my city

(which seems inefficient) and share an individual SQL Server instance

with many other customers (which lessens our ability to scale).

 

I'm toying with the idea of buying a Dell with Windows Server 2003 and

SQL Server, but I'm wondering how much work this will be to secure and

administer. I am an engineer with significant software development

experience, but limited SysAdmin experience.

 

Any advice will be greatly appreciated,

Zach

[Guest Ryan Hanisco]

RE: Admin Server 2003 myself? Or find someone to host?

 

Hi chessaurus,

 

I am a big believer in outsourcing anything that is not part of your

standard line of business. Sure, there are some things that you might want

to do yourself -- configuration of SQL for your app and setup of your .Net

app pools -- but the hosting, security, and DNS end of things take a bit of

planning, especially if you are expecting the site to be up all the time and

able to resist some failure.

 

For this, you'll need to quantify your tolerance for failure and the

isolation you need in the hardware and match that to how much you are willing

to pay in a hosting company and what kind of service/ support you need from

them. From that, you should be able to make your decision.

 

Finally, you haven't given us much idea of the traffic you expect and how

intensive you think the app will be. Generally, you shouldn't worry about

where the server is hosted for an ASP.Net app as a good Internet provider

will have sufficient bandwidth, load balancing, and BGP failover to handle

this well. If you do have a lot of streaming content that would need to be

pushed, you might want to consider one of the streaming companies like akamai

or cachefly to push that content in a more localized fashion.

 

I use serverintellect for my personal hosting and have been very pleased

with their service though there are a ton of good companies out there. I

would suggest talking with several of them and building a list of what you

liked from each of them. It is important to be unbiased and objective in

your review.

 

Hope this helps

--

Ryan Hanisco

MCSE, MCTS: SQL 2005, Project+

http://www.techsterity.com

Chicago, IL

 

Remember: Marking helpful answers helps everyone find the info they need

quickly.

 

 

"chessaurus@gmail.com" wrote:

> I am part of a team that is developing a custom, high-volume ASP.NET

> application that will receive primarily local traffic (ie from my

> city).

>

> I have used hosted ASP.NET providers in the past (like Intermedia and

> ResellerChoice) and these have worked well for our earlier/smaller

> projects, but I'm worried about scalability for our upcoming larger

> project. These providers all geographically far away from my city

> (which seems inefficient) and share an individual SQL Server instance

> with many other customers (which lessens our ability to scale).

>

> I'm toying with the idea of buying a Dell with Windows Server 2003 and

> SQL Server, but I'm wondering how much work this will be to secure and

> administer. I am an engineer with significant software development

> experience, but limited SysAdmin experience.

>

> Any advice will be greatly appreciated,

> Zach

>