My office has a BT Openreach (UK supplier) FTTC Fibre Broadband connection with at least 8MB Upload (the cabinet is outside my office). I have recently started to run some low volume production websites and I can't believe how well they are performing. Or rather there seems to be no noticeable drop in performance compared to when they were located in a hosted rack (I've never measured performance before as the sites have worked from a business perspective, I just need a few phone calls from a few people searching a few niche keywords to run my day to day business).
The upside is I can save money by not paying rent for hosting. Also, I find it really handy for my "mirco business" to have the web server on the LAN so I can easily update and amend the business website(s). I have the same FTTC line to my home and I'm thinking of installing a backup (CARP) server there. FYI, I'm this guy:
http://forums.freebsd.org/viewtopic.php?f=32&t=43592
I'm weighing up the downsides and would welcome any feedback. Obviously there is the physical security issue, but I now have the server in a locked cabinet in a locked room. I'm backing up the important data and it wouldn't be a big deal if the site(s) went down for a short time if say the line was cut in a storm.
I have started monitoring the website using these free services http://www.freesitestatus.com/en/index.php, http://www.monitor.us/en/website-monitoring and I have an app on my android phone checking for uptime too. It's been a week now and I have 100% uptime.
There must be a catch? I feel I should be looking behind my back for something obvious to go wrong. Please can anybody offer any advice or strategies for benchmarking, monitoring the server and any other tips. The web server is Apache24 and if I was to use Apache ab (Apache HTTP server benchmarking tool) or other software (?) what performance threshold should I be looking for to decide that I should go back to a rack hosting environment, ie., how can I determine the fibre lines limitations, or when will a site have too much traffic to be on the line?
Surely, there must be a serious downside? Or is Fibre Broadband the future for small (micro) business website hosting on mini PC platforms?
All comments and suggestions welcome.
Fibre Fan :stud
The upside is I can save money by not paying rent for hosting. Also, I find it really handy for my "mirco business" to have the web server on the LAN so I can easily update and amend the business website(s). I have the same FTTC line to my home and I'm thinking of installing a backup (CARP) server there. FYI, I'm this guy:
http://forums.freebsd.org/viewtopic.php?f=32&t=43592
I'm weighing up the downsides and would welcome any feedback. Obviously there is the physical security issue, but I now have the server in a locked cabinet in a locked room. I'm backing up the important data and it wouldn't be a big deal if the site(s) went down for a short time if say the line was cut in a storm.
I have started monitoring the website using these free services http://www.freesitestatus.com/en/index.php, http://www.monitor.us/en/website-monitoring and I have an app on my android phone checking for uptime too. It's been a week now and I have 100% uptime.
There must be a catch? I feel I should be looking behind my back for something obvious to go wrong. Please can anybody offer any advice or strategies for benchmarking, monitoring the server and any other tips. The web server is Apache24 and if I was to use Apache ab (Apache HTTP server benchmarking tool) or other software (?) what performance threshold should I be looking for to decide that I should go back to a rack hosting environment, ie., how can I determine the fibre lines limitations, or when will a site have too much traffic to be on the line?
Surely, there must be a serious downside? Or is Fibre Broadband the future for small (micro) business website hosting on mini PC platforms?
All comments and suggestions welcome.
Fibre Fan :stud