Help with setting up own server hosting?

[SuPrAiCeR69]

Hey guys,

Glad to find a computer forum for networking/servers

I'm looking at hosting a dedicated server myself, but need help knowing what is involved.
I have searched around for hosting providers who can provide more than 1.5tb space and bandwidth and also support ffmpeg and flv tools but can't seem to find any to provide an inexpensive solution with larger storage than 1.5tb.
Typically I need to host my own server with at least 10tb storage...the questions i have are as follows;

What are the steps to setting up my own hosting, software, hardware, isp etc? Can I upgrade each component at anytime? What about backups?
What should be done about security?
Better to run apache on UNIX or windows server?

I pretty much need a "dummies guide" on start to finish for setting up my own hosting.

Any help would be much appreciated, thanks!

 

[Black6]

What in the world do you need with 10tb of storage???

If your site will have a lot of traffic which I assume with 10tb of storage you will be looking at some significant costs for bandwidth. Just guessing one OC3 line if not more.

For hardware, you should use commercial grade servers (Dell, HP Proliant, etc) in a cluster for high availability and load balancing which will also allow you to upgrade servers one at a time. Don't forget a backup generator in case of a power failure. You will also want a big tape drive for backup or a way to backup remotely.

Software wise, I would go with Linux from both a security and cost standpoint.

Is this a doable project- yes but you won't bust in out over a weekend or two. If you can tolerate slightly older hardware, ebay is your friend. Most of the server hardware goes fairly cheap since there is a limited market for it. I personally am partial to Compaq/HP servers. Unless you are very familiar with your OS and clustering, I would recommend finding someone at rentacoder.com to do the setup once you get the OS installed. I found someone who works in a Linux data center who did a cluster for me for $100 a few years ago.