[paulanthony]

What all would I need to get myself running my own server? What sort of hardware / firewall setup would you guys recommend? How much do I needa spend to do it right?

Anyone done it before themselves?

And no hosting of any kind isn't an option for this particular project.

[pgo]

Originally Posted by paulanthony

And no hosting of any kind isn't an option for this particular project.

Not even colocation?

[cam]

Originally Posted by paulanthony

How much do I needa spend to do it right?

Can't answer that one without more details about what you're doing - server specs are entirely dependent on what the site you're planning to run on it will actually do, and what the estimated traffic will be like. For example, if it's a high-volume but non-dynamic site you wouldn't need a particularly powerful box - Apache is fairly lightweight in what it requires. On the other hand, if it's a dynamic site and has heavy database work involved then you're looking at a machine with oodles of ram - and preferably seperate machines for webserver/database (you may of course have to go further and have clusters of DB machines to make sure the site won't be taken down by a hardware failure).

Like pgo asked - is colocation an option here? If not, you're looking at serious costs involved in getting access to the bandwidth a dedicated server will require.

As for the firewall, I'd look into a dedicated machine (low spec) running Smoothwall and have it sitting in front of any other boxes you buy.

[paulanthony]

I didn't really want to get into specifics, but what I can tell you is that I estimate to be transferring 4.8 GB roughly a day in terms of traffic. The machine would also be pulling live data from a Unix based machine on an hourly basis (custom program to do this). There also would be database work involved. Are we talking 2GB of RAM or more?

[cam]

Originally Posted by paulanthony

I didn't really want to get into specifics, but what I can tell you is that I estimate to be transferring 4.8 GB roughly a day in terms of traffic. The machine would also be pulling live data from a Unix based machine on an hourly basis (custom program to do this). There also would be database work involved. Are we talking 2GB of RAM or more?

Yeah, more than 2Gb of RAM would be a good idea for that server. If you're going to be running the webserver and database off the same box, RAM is more important than pure processor speed.

[oli]

4.8 gb a day isnt that much, have a look at liquidweb.com for managed server deals - quite reasonable really.

[paulanthony]

ok cheers chaps.

[Eyual]

http://www.bigapache.org/

www.zoneedit.com

I set up my server with those two pretty simply but I really did not have much traffic coming so i am not all on the server load. Only have 512 ram so its not all that bad.