I’ve been tempted on more than one occassion to host my websites at home, but up until recently there wasn’t a fast enough connection to make it feasible.
Cable is fine for home use, but even their business packages max out at 2Mbit upstream.* I ordered a FIOS package with 20Mbit down / 20Mbit upstream, which will provide plenty of overhead for future bandwidth needs.
In the datacenter, I pay by the Mbit, so I throttle some sites to make sure I don’t get charged over.* I also have been delaying other site services (video and file downloads, game servers) because of the huge bandwidth requirements.* Once I get FIOS installed in the house, then I’ll kick these things into full gear, which will give OCMS a big shot in the arm!
There are some things I have to consider that are actually quite scary.* For one, I have to put the servers in a location where heat can be exhausted, and doesn’t disturb us.* Servers are LOUD, especially several of them in a rack.* I also have to be concerned about heat, because our house doesn’t have central A/C.* What about natural disasters (Seattle has been known to get an earthquake or two)?
The electricity also goes out like clockwork in the winter, and although I’m getting a major UPS for the rack, I’m not sure how any outage will affect the fiber lines.**The fiber box has a battery backup, which should keep the lines up for 8 hours, but it remains to be seen how reliable this will be.* I’m running a business, and I want 99.99999% uptime, just like in a datacenter.
What prompted*me to make the sudden move is the rising*datacenter costs.* I got a “pretty good” deal from my current datacenter, but the monthly*prices would make the average internet user cringe.* Now they*want to nearly double that, charge me for electricity, and increase the cost for bandwidth.**They want me*to pay $100 per Megabit… so if the average cable internet customer were charged that then they would have $800 bills every month.
Going to another datacenter is also alot of trouble.* Yes, I can strike deals and get sponsorships and other stuff, but in the end it’s really just*too much trouble… and if you get behind on the bills then they lock you out of the*building,*so what’s the point of paying all this money for 24-7 access?*
So anyway, OCMS (and all her sister sites) are getting a major fatpipe upgrade, which hopefully will be in place by the end of July.* I’ll be adding game servers, video downloads, file downloads, and tons of other features.
