Purchasing a Dedicated Server

[rukuartic]

[blah blah useless info]
Well I've been using Ubuntu for about two years now. I've utterly fallen in love with it, and I've even converted several friends or helped them get it installed on their laptops/desktops as a dual boot system.
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Here's what it comes down to. I've been toying with the idea of starting a small company, and I'll need a dedicated server for it. I've had lots of experience with Linux (compiled my own kernel, compiled/configured/installed several services eg. Snort/Apache/MySQL) so I should be set from that aspect. I particularly like Ubuntu/Debian, and if I do have the choice I'll shoot for that.

One thing that I haven't really had the ability to work with is DNS and Mail. Everything I've done so far has been on an old P3 in my basement on a residential internet service, which limits my ability to work with DNS and mail.

Question 1: When you go grab a server from a company, have they usually installed OpenSSHd (because I have noticed that its not installed by default on the Server CD) and BIND9 and postfix etc, or am I going to be left to handle that myself?

Question 2: I've had no experience with setting up/configuring those myself. I've read a few guides on the internet, particularly the perfect setup guides (listed below). I'm sure I can configure them myself by reading around on the internet... but does anyone have pitfalls they can point out (eg: misconfiguring iptables to drop everything, blocking yourself out from SSH)

If you have any tips/recommendations/books/links/hosting companies to recommend, lemme know.

Thanks in advance,

rukuartic

http://www.howtoforge.com/perfect_setup_ubuntu_6.06

[craigp84]

Hi rukuartic,

I'll be unpopular and say - do you really need a server when you're starting out. Sure it's cool, but it's helluva expensive, and really time consuming, especially if you've never done it before.

While you're fiddling with the server, you're not earning dollars and thats got to be priority one.

So register a domain, get some free web & mail hosting for it (google email hosting for your domain?) and when you grow, start paying for that hosting.

You'll do all your computing on your desktop PC when you're starting out. There;s no need for a server to do letters, spreadsheets and emails!

Once you've got a few staff (5+) have a look at that server requirement again for your new office :)

Hope this helps,

-c

[Chayak]

All in all it depends on exactly what you want the server to do. It doesn't take top of the line hardware for most things. If you like ubuntu though there are some from system76 that are fairly reasonable for starter servers.

[Chayak]

Sure you can go with some virtual server to start out with but then you should also factor in the costs of moving things to a better host when things get cooking. I started a hosted application business and went for a dedicated server right away. Once I had a few customers with another in the pipeline, that was not the time to be worried about my infrastructure, so I was happy to have it all on my own server. And with the costs of Ubuntu dedicated servers being so low, and the costs of a programmer's time so relatively high, you might actually save money by ramping up on your own server, instead of building the prototype on some cheepo hosting solution only to have to move the whole system (even if it only takes 6 or 8 hours to move it) later. That is, if you value your time.

S. Wright

Just curious if anyone else thinks this smells like spam. It's relevant yes but it reads too much like an ad to me.

[matthew]

Just curious if anyone else thinks this smells like spam. It's relevant yes but it reads too much like an ad to me.It was spam. I removed the link from your quote as well as the original post.

Please continue with the topic and have a great day.