Helping small tour operators and niche agents with travel ecommerce
Server Hosting
We are planning to run our websites on a dedicated hosted server (1.8GHz, 1Gb RAM) running Ubuntu Linux / Apache. We have the choice to run on Windows Web edition / Microsoft IIS but having used open source linux/apache previously with another company we want to stick to that . We have a separate room in our offices to run a server and also have a 20Mb NTL cable link so theoretically could run the server(s) here. Is the hosted server the better option?
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Ralph Foulds on
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Hi Keith,
Unless you are proper techies, and have no plans on moving anytime soon, I'd strongly suggest sticking with the hosted server option.
If it does go down, then at least you aren't taken away from your real business of operating and selling holidays, and can leave the responsibility of sorting it out to the hosting company.
You also know that you don't have all your eggs in one office - in the case of a fire or robbery, your website will continue operating and sellling, whatever else you may have lost.
The hosting company will also keep software licenses up to date, and keep backups of your data in case they are required.
Finally, bigger/better hosting companies will have a wide range of pipelines around the net meaning that if one exchange goes down, your website doesn't (apologies for non tech language). With a cable link, if someone digs the road up and cuts it, you're stuffed for a few days. Not sure either that a 20Mb connection will be enough if you get a lot of users downloading at one time, which I'm sure is the aim.
For these reasons (and because we don't have a super fast connection), we use a hosting company to provide a dedicated & managed server. This isn't the absolute cheapest option, but it does ensure that other companies websites aren't hosted on the same machine as ours, and that if anything breaks, we don't need to fix it ourselves. Depending on your level of knowledge with server software you may need not the managed option - but just bear in mind you want to be selling holidays, not fixing servers.
Ralph
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dedicated_hosting_service
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Permalink Reply by Keith Roberts on -
Ralph,
Thanks for the input.
We've priced up a dedicated server and it looks good value at £50 a month compared to setting up a server (with redundancy) ourselves in the office.The hosting company doing the software admin is also a big plus (as long as I don't opt for having root access).
I assume that you do the back up regularly yourselves and that is stored by the hosting company?
I have worked with server software and was tempted to do it myself at one stage but you are right in saying that we're here to sell holidays not be IT engineers. I think I'd be tempted to tinker with the server if I were to install it here!
Thanks for the useful Wiki.
Keith
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Permalink Reply by Alex Bainbridge on -
Hi Keith,
I would go the hosted solution as much as you can..... or perhaps a dedicated server at some remote web host (although I can't think of too many smaller tour operators who need that level of power)
Bear in mind that what you mainly pay for with hosting is customer service. The company I have used have 3 teams who work in UK, USA and Australia - so have a pretty perfect response whatever time you contact them..... others are just UK office hours for "changes" while do offer minimal 24 hour support for "major issues"..... however that will be their definition of a major issue not yours!
Not even the big players want their web machines in their own office....
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