[ishkabible]

So I'm looking at renting a remote server for personal use but I'm not sure where to start.
primarily I want to be able to use it just as I would use my computer remotely and transfer files between my computer and it. only having a command line to work with is acceptable, the OS is mostly irrelevant.

[modi123_1]

Why not hop on and get an amazon server? Scale as needed.. etc. Are you looking for this to be just a storage dump for files or are you going to actual serve something up?

https://aws.amazon.com/ec2/

[ishkabible]

primarily just a file dump for personal use but also something I can run applications on if need be. I'm looking at the amazon ec2 stuff now

[JackOfAllTrades]

If you don't need a ton of space, there are lots of free options like Dropbox, etc.

[modi123_1]

Heck.. MS's skydrive is giving out free seven gbs of space... GEE-BEES!

http://windows.micro...S/skydrive/home

[JackOfAllTrades]

Fever Night!

[ishkabible]

I can't run applications on those however. that's a deal breaking even though it's not the primary use.

[GWatt]

Out of curiosity, what applications do you plan on running?

[ishkabible]

downloads, the idea being that I can tell it to download something big and yet the computer I was actually using wouldn't loose any bandwidth until I actually wanted to use the file at which point I would ideally just use it on the remote computer instead of actually downloading it. so running applications is of importance to that case.

also, having a server for devolpment would be nice.

This post has been edited by ishkabible: 15 August 2012 - 05:45 AM

[RudiVisser]

There's a shittonne of stuff you should be considering before renting a server, I know you have pretty loose requirements but they still play a factor.

If you're wanting something virtual in the cloud then one of Amazon's services is probably a good idea as you can scale up requirements as you go. On the flip side, you might be wanting something dedicated which you'd be able to manage yourself entirely. From the sounds of things you're wanting something more virtual so a cloud solution is probably best, at least for now.

The main problem comes if you want to scale up from a development server to offering services to others, then you'll need to scale up a lot to the point where the cloud is no longer cheaper than some dedicated physical hardware.

You're mentioning the running of applications, so I'm not quite sure how the OS is irrelevant?

This post has been edited by RudiVisser: 15 August 2012 - 05:55 AM

[no2pencil]

GWatt, on 14 August 2012 - 12:24 AM, said:

Out of curiosity, what applications do you plan on running?

ishkabible, on 15 August 2012 - 08:42 AM, said:

downloads

He means Torrents.

[ishkabible]

Quote

so I'm not quite sure how the OS is irrelevant?

Most OSs have the applications I would want.

Quote

He means Torrents.

if it's allowed sure; I don't think many places would allow it.

[fatalpriapism]

Many places limit filesizes that you can upload to their servers. For example, my host service has a limit of 128MB, even though my disk space is much larger. I also can't help but think that companies offering online file hosting, especially for your purposes, would have tracking mechanisms installed to prevent a torrent client from downloading directly to the server.

[Lemur]

Why not just make one? It'd be great experience and buying some P4 or Dual core off of craigslist will work just fine for getting a nice *nix or BSD server up and running. You could even look at some gov't sites getting rid of old equipment.

[fatalpriapism]

@lemur I've been down that road before. Set up a home fileserver using a bunch of old parts I had accumulated. It wasn't anything fancy, set it up on an old XP system and used a 40GB drive for the OS and server functionality, and used 3x160GB drives for data. Installed a wireless card and set up the access permissions and voila!

Note: If you do any serious downloading of movies or videos, I would definitely suggest going 1TB+. I have closer to 4TB of drives locally that I use for storing various multimedia files (read:porn, jk).