A Colocated Server as The Commons
Mar 8th, 2010 by Alex
I own and operate the server that hosts this blog.
In the world of NearlyFreeSpeech.net, Amazon S3, Rackspace Cloud, all of which are more fault tolerant, why would I bother running my own?
Because it allows me, my close friends and family to do whatever the heck we what. It gives us options.
- If someone needs a new module loaded on the web server? No problem.
- If I want to idle on IRC for days, leaving processes running? No sweat.
- If someone needs a place to park a couple gigabytes of photos while upgrading a PC? Not an issue at all.
- Need to park two dozen domains that you’re keeping alive for the friend of a former roommate’s cousin? Why not?
- If a friend needs a proxy tunnel to get past his employers outdated firewall rules? Happy to help.
So long as I’m technically capable of doing it and I’m not going to get arrested or sued, it’s cool with me. Personally, I like having a shell prompt at my disposal that isn’t tied to or restricted by my home ISP. I also like helping young and aspiring people set up an Internet presence without having to dump a lot of money into it; nothing sucks more than having to pay for hosting on a project that just doesn’t pan out, at least here the costs can be minimized.
Best of all, the users here all trust each other. No one is going to go rummaging through their data.
The server has moved around a bit in the last ten years, mostly to accommodate physical moves of its maintainers. For a few years it lived in dorm rooms and on-campus apartments, leeching bandwidth from RIT (and at one point mirroring content for College Humor, back when it was in its infancy). When I moved to Maryland the server was the very last thing to be packed, powered down mere minutes before being transported 402 miles by car before being booted up atop a video editing rack at an Annapolis-based media company. After a year or so I moved the server again, this time into the basement of a coworker. And there it’s been for the last couple years, without issue. It’s happy there.
Since the move to Maryland, bandwidth has a monetary cost associated with it. So does power. So I ask the folks who use the server to pitch in if they can. A few cases of financial hardship aside, most everyone does. It isn’t the cheapest thing out there, but it isn’t expensive either; some users just have a basic hosting configuration, while others really milk it for all they can. I think most people are content to pay a little more to have their data on a system whose owner they know and trust.
This server represents the commons. A community. Compared with a commercial hosting provider, I wouldn’t have it any other way.
Just wanted to clarify that if Amazon EC2 is used, you can fire up a linux instance in their cloud and get root access on to do whatever you want on it.
Just for further clarification, you get full sudo access on Rackspace Cloud servers as well
I host with them and absolutely love every minute of it. However, if I could get the promise that I could use my own web server in my house for the same or only slightly more cost than my cloud servers I’d jump on it in a heartbeat. If only to avoid any ToS, etc. However, Verizon could change their mind at any point to kill port 80, or they could require me to upgrade to business FiOS should I get enough traffic, or I could move cross-country and have a week or two without internet (true story in my past). These are the reasons I suffice with the cloud (Rackspace is an amazing provider btw if you ever want / need a non-colocated solution).
DJ: The public-facing things could easily be hosting anywhere, but I think the biggest thing is knowing where the data physically resides. Moreso, knowing who has access to it. Having worked in corporate data centers before, there’s always more fingers in the pie than you might expect.
Steven: Once you’re on business class plans, the providers tend not to mess with you. But I hear you on the moving aspect. Moves are miserable, even moreso when you’ve got a userbase blowing up your email.