Small and medium enterprises need to consider hosting their own servers

Source: Internet
Author: User
Keywords Server own cost if

Now small and medium-sized enterprises also grow to need to consider hosting their own servers. We tend to think of large companies as "outsourced", but in fact many http://www.aliyun.com/zixun/aggregation/9348.html "> small businesses outsource their online work." Unless it's a company that is run by a real technician, even the smallest companies will spend money to outsource their e-mail services, network services, DNS services, and so on.

Still, many companies are now being scaled from small to medium-size, and their internal networks have grown to the point where they need to hire one or more full-time employees to manage. Dedicated IT staff is no longer a luxury, but a business need. And as the scale of the network expands, you may want to consider enterprise-class network planning based on T1,SYMMETRICDSL (SDSL) or enterprise-class fibre. These vendors are not only able to and very much want you to host services on the network and provide you with sufficient upstream bandwidth and multiple public IP addresses.

With technical hurdles and the right person to keep the server running, it may end up facing the inevitable question of whether or not to be self-reliant. Before you make a decision, let's take a look at the issues that you should consider.


Hosting your own servers eliminates the need to pay for your hosting services every month, but what if you manage Your server? You might think that because you already have a ready-made IT staff, you will have enough time to maintain the server, so all the costs are saved. But there are still costs.

You need to consider the cost of the hardware server you need and the cost of the software running on the server. Includes the operating system and other server software. Some servers are less expensive to implement than other models. For example, the WindowsServer operating system has its own network services, but if you host a exchangeemail server, you need to purchase exchange software outside of the operating system. And that's not the whole cost, and don't forget that you also need to purchase a Client Access License (CAL) for each user or device.

When you start thinking about these upfront costs, these costs may not seem like much. On the other hand, hardware and licensing fees are one-time fees (at least until you decide to upgrade) but the hosting costs will occur month by month.

You should sit down and enumerate these numbers to compare the current hosting costs to the planned hardware and software costs, and administrative costs. Such comparisons can vary by company. If your company's IT staff is so nervous that you need to increase your headcount to manage your servers, your situation will be different from those that already have IT staff who can fully digest the extra work. If you implement your own server on existing hardware and operating systems, you can save some costs, but running multiple services on the same device can create security and performance problems.

Another way to save upfront costs is to use open source software products that, if your technicians are able to manage and maintain, you can use the Apache Network Service on a Linux computer.

Second, hosting their own web site is not just to save money. In fact, managing your mail and your Web servers doesn't necessarily save you money. The main reason many enterprises manage their own servers is that they can have more control over these servers.

After the server is hosted, you will be at the mercy of the hosting company when it comes to troubleshooting, modifying configuration, and downtime maintenance.

If you manage the server yourself, you can control the maintenance cycle, quickly configure, and control other people's access to the server. You can use your own antivirus products and other security products on your server to control spam filtering rules yourself. and will not be subject to mandatory traffic, the number of connections limited. If the increase in Web site traffic results in some performance problems, you have more initiative on how to handle it (such as increasing Internet bandwidth, increasing server balance load, etc.). )

Be sure to remember that, in most cases, your site's network and mail servers are accessible via the Internet. If a computer on your local network is exposed to the Internet, it can pose a security risk to your intranet.

One way to mitigate risk is to place your Internet-facing servers on a subnet called a DMZ or edge network, and install firewalls on each side of the DMZ, protect your servers from attacks from the Internet, and protect your LAN against attacks from the DMZ. The DMZ server is a buffer zone between the internal LAN and the outside world.

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