What steps do I need to take to host a SERVER at my house?

Question

I just bought a Dell PowerEdge T110 Server, what kind of service do I have to look for hosting at my house?

Answer 1

An Internet connection with a static IP address. You should check to ensure that the terms of service that allow hosting.

Answer 2

a static IP is nice but not entirely necessary. You can use a dynamic DNS like http://www.dynip.com/ or http://no-ip.com.

what is going to be an issue is ensuring that your cable/dsl provider is not blocking ports 80 and 25. Most 'home' or 'personal' plans do.

upgrading to a small business plan is usually significantly more but you will have to check with your local provider.

Answer 3

DNS registration and nameservers are the key thing you're probably missing. I'm assuming you already have an ISP that provides you an internet connection. You can look into what your ISP offers in terms of fixed IP address & self hosting plans (normally the numeric address used to contact your computer changes occasionally, fixed IPs cost extra). Alternately you can use DynDns.com, which relies on an updater running on your server to change your nameserver entries when your IP changes. The DNS registration can also be done through DynDns or any number of registrars out there (just shop around for the cheapest), so long as that registrar allows you to manually set your nameserver list, or has there own nameservers and allows you to specify your own IP.

Beyond that there's setting up the software on your server, and ensuring that your modem/router is configured properly to allow incoming connections to your server on the appropriate ports. But that is a whole different can of worms.

Answer 4

If the site is low traffic you need to do the following: Install and configure a web server on your computer of choice. Set up port forwarding on your router to allow incoming connections on the port the server is running on (default 80, many hosts block this). Determine your IP address and visit it through a proxy to ensure you're visible to the outside world (If you try to access your own IP without a proxy, it seems sometimes it gets routed back to you without traveling "through the internet", either by your own systems or your ISP). That's it.

If you want a domain check out http://freedns.afraid.org/ - I used them a while ago with good results. There's really nothing hard about setting up and running your own server. However, do use something low-wattage - no use for a power supply over 200W on an always-on computer unless you intend to do some heavy processing on it, it will just be a waste of money.

Answer 5

Depending on what load you think it will have, get a suitable net connection.

Obviously always on, but you need to think about the sort of bandwidth you require, will it be serving a lot of content, or receiving? Most home connections are asymmetric in favour of downloading, servers tend to have opposite requirements, favouring upload, or at least symmetric bandwidth.

Answer 6

I run several services from home. The ability to do this hinges more on knowing how.

In order to run services, you need:

• The bandwidth to host those services.
• Ideally, one or more static IP addresses on which to host those services, or some sort of infrastructure that you can use in order to have names that are updated when your dynamic IP address changes.
• The server software to run those services. For example, if you want to host a WordPress installation, you will need PHP and Apache installed (or PHP and IIS if you are using Windows as a server).
• The desire to learn how to manage these services safely and securely.

Also note that if you are hosting services on your home network, you are potentially putting your home network in harm's way. Let's say that you have single-sign-on or something similar to it (maybe a manual version of it, where you just make the usernames and passwords on your home systems match). If your server can talk to the rest of your home network, you are putting all of your workstation systems at risk for breakins.

There is a lot to running services. Just keep the willingness to learn, keep up on the system logs, look around for how other people do things, and so forth. It's not so much what you know, but your willingness to learn and understand things. As long as you keep that, you can pretty much learn anything, which will be very beneficial to you.

Answer 7

I'm not sure which kind of service you want to provide, but most hosting services offers 99,9% online time, what requires UPS and redundant power supply, also redundant network switches. All this for less than $10 per month.

The bandwith is a very important factor, usually DSL is extremly slow for uploading. If you host in you house, all the visitors will download with your upload bandwith, what usually is very slow.

also you need to have your own DNS and a fixed ip address.

I think is really cheaper and easier to buy a server in a hosting service. It's your server and you pay the DataCenter for the facilities (Internet connection, power supply, refrigerated area, etc)