dammit

[den]

I am annoyed with the company's web host. Email dropped out yesterday, a trouble ticket was sent, and no word. In the past the problem was fixed with no notification of what they did or what was wrong. I can see in the site cpanel that no one has exceeded the email allowance but I can't do anything about it. I wish the host was here in Aus, so I could call them.

Looks like it's time for DIY company web hosting. james_bmakovette any ideas that would help?

Comments

[hedgegoth.livejournal.com]

which company is it?

[dewhitton.livejournal.com]

the host is MCHost, the company is the one I work for.

[hedgegoth.livejournal.com]

hosting company is what i meant - thanks

[jamesb]

Are you thinking about going for a roll-your-own solution?

[makovette.livejournal.com]

A few ideas yes....

Cheap in house: Spin up a linux box on CentOS with a pair of mirrored hard drives. Run Postfix as your mail software and use IMAP (keeps a copy of all the mail on the server) or POP (client sucks the mail off the server).

Use Thunderbird or any flavor of Outlook you like.

Requirements:
Generic P4 box with 512MB of ram and a pair of reasonably fat hard drives, and a reliable broadband connection to the server with a static IP. A firewall appliance or run iptables on the server.

Some DNS wizardry is required. between James and I, that's covered though.

Upside:
It's all yours. You have total control, and responsibility for the server. You can also run apache to serve the company's web page.

Downside:
No web based interface to the mail server w/o another package. If it breaks, you fix it.

If this sounds like the HRF server, well, you'd be right :)

Outsourced: Ping tegeren, he's worked with two hosting providers and is mach more savvy on who in the States is better.

CYa!
Mako

[makovette.livejournal.com]

You will be pleased to know that we have working DSL now :-D

And I have two solid daze worth of moving work ahead of me, doh! Can you post in the HRF group which domains you want to move to Vegas in what order please? I'll start whittling away at those as time allows.

THhanks!
Mako

[dewhitton.livejournal.com]

Looking at either rolling-our-own or changing hosts. Changing hosts is easiest but if something goes wrong we'll be in their hands to get it fixed. Doing it myself means that if something goes wrong I can fix it. The downside is that if something goes wrong *I'll* have to fix it.

It depends if IPrimus will let us add a web/email server to our connection.

[dewhitton.livejournal.com]

ta. Looking at all this inc. costs own server vs paying for hosting. I'll ping tegeren for a reliable host.

[jamesb]

First thing to find out is if you have the option of a static IP. Doing web and e-mail stuff with a Dynamic IP is possible but it just adds one extra wrinkle. It can be done, it's just extra work, and will add the cost of using a DNS service from somebody that can handle Dynamic IPs.

You'll also have to see if they do port filtering. Port filtering may prevent you from hosting a usable e-mail server. Many ISPs default to port filtering if you have a Dynamic IP.

[jamesb]

No problems ... there's only 3 to be done, and it's really just a case of doing the DNS stuff. The data should already be there.