Phil, if unwise, please let me know why. Speed (adsl transmits data in one direction only - 256/64 may seems fast enough to download but it's a pig uploading - especially if your client has broadband) Reliability of your service (some people have found this to be an issue - I personally havent had any problems) Redundancy (this should be gauged by the speed of your client to ring you after a problem and the tone of their voice) Power outages (you would have been in trouble if you were in new york - or even some parts of sydney recently) No more holidays (someone will need to be around to fix the thing - there is an automatic setting that breaks stuff on most servers, it activates at the most inconvieniant time for the sysadmin) Your clients ringing you in the middle of the night :) Cost of setup: if this is the only thing you are going to do and your client is happy to pay you may be better to look at a dedicated server somewhere.
If wise, * can I isolate this PC from the rest of my office network, which is currently connected to other ports on the adsl modem? Yes - Put your firewall behind the adsl modem then the Firewall - 3 nics : red network card to adsl, green network internal & safe 192.168.X.X, orange network 10.0.X.X this is your web box. (this can be done using a crappy old machine and a linux firewall (ip cop or smoothwall will do the trick, these also provide the routing ability) or a dedicated firwall/router * how do I set up my home network so requests to the shared IP address go to the correct PC? Router - passing port 80 (or whatever) to the dedicated machine Hth Steve Soars Interactive Redlands www.i-redlands.net Shop 2 Cleveland Town Square Cnr Queen & Bloomfield Sts Cleveland Qld Australia 4163 p: +61 7 3821-5800 f: +61 7 3821-5811 Instant Messaging msn: [EMAIL PROTECTED] icq: 298661060 yahoo: [EMAIL PROTECTED] -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Phil Evans Sent: Wednesday, 27 August 2003 3:04 PM To: CFAussie Mailing List Subject: [cfaussie] OT : The perils of semi-self-hosting??? Hi All, I have a site hosted on a shared server. The response and reliability of the site is very good, with the exception of the crystal reports component. The reports produced via crystal are the central purpose of the site. Crystal does not cope well in a shared server environment - it was difficult to install, reports are only accessible via active-x, and for some unknown reason Crystal hangs about once a week, with the only way to correct it being a server reboot. As you can imagine, my previously good relationship with the ISP is getting a little strained, and I am investigating options. One solution would be a dedicated server, but the income from the site makes it difficult to justify the costs. I have a 4-port adsl connection into my home office, and am using a reasonably powered PC to act as a backup crystal server. If crystal is hung, the site users can store a report request in the db, my office PC uses an odbc link to poll the ISP every minute, and if a report request is found, creates the report in Word or pdf format, zips if required and then emails the report to the client. This fall back process works reasonably well, but means the client has to wait 5 or 10 minutes for their final report once they have finished their data entry. What I am wondering is, are there pitfalls to the above setup? Also, given that crystal is far more stable on a dedicated box, is it wise to attempt the following: * purchase a PC for home office with say winXP Pro * load crystal * setup an odbc link on the home office pc to the database at the ISP * connect the PC to one of my adsl ports (adsl connection has a static IP) * use a cfhttp call from the ISP to the PC to request reports * PC uses odbc link to create the report in word or pdf format, and return it to the client via the browser * setup a means of terminal serving in to the PC so that if I go away for a weeks holiday, I can access the server via modem if required If unwise, please let me know why. If wise, * what are the potential pitfalls to watch out for? * can I isolate this PC from the rest of my office network, which is currently connected to other ports on the adsl modem? * how do I set up my home network so requests to the shared IP address go to the correct PC? Thanks, Phil. --- You are currently subscribed to cfaussie as: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe send a blank email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] MX Downunder AsiaPac DevCon - http://mxdu.com/ --- You are currently subscribed to cfaussie as: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe send a blank email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] MX Downunder AsiaPac DevCon - http://mxdu.com/
