[plug] [OTish] Hosting for Large Website with DB.

[Craig Ringer]

> One option is to go the full Co-location way, but this site could probably 
> quite happily coexist on an existing box with other sites, and it would be 
> preferrable if someone else could maintain the Operational aspects of the box 
> (OS, security patches, backups, etc...)

I had to go co-lo for a basic SSL site a few years ago. All I needed was 
mod_perl and apache-ssl but most providers weren't willing to provide 
that at a vaguely reasonable price, so it proved cheaper in the end to 
co-locate at Indigo networks. The machine was up for over a year 'till 
some idiot tripped over the power plug a few months ago :-(

Co-lo isn't expensive and can be very reassuring security-wise, plus you 
have _full_ control over your system.

> iiNet has a Web Affiliate deal for $1200 (for a measly 50Mb hosting) but only 
> alludes to DB access, and "CGI Support" could mean CGIs (whereas a dynamic 
> site really needs at least FastCGIs, and preferrably mod_perl or sim...)
> 
> WestNet's excuse for DB hosting seems to be MS Access. Ugh!

Sounds like it hasn't improved much since I looked a couple of years 
ago. *blech*. Maybe somebody will start offering "virtually partitoned" 
servers like IBM's but on a smaller scale here - I gather some ISPs in 
the UK are already doing it. Until that happens, co-lo seems the only 
way to go.

-- 
Craig Ringer
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