Ask HN: Anyone hosting their site on servers in their garage?

It's not just annoying it's counterproductive. In my head setup fees trigger warning bells on two areas:

1. The company is so un-automated that it actually needs considerable human intervention to prepare a server and doesn't actually bother to include this basic operation into their total cost (they sell servers after all).

2. It's a trick to squeeze at least the 150 euro from you. Because if I find out in the first months that their service is sub-par I can just cancel my subscription but I'm not getting my 150 euro back.

I'm always baffled by this question. What on earth gives anyone the perception that data services are only about a connection and a server? How many concurrent TCP/IP sessions do you think that "free" Comcast cable router will support? I can guarantee you that you can overrun it's capabilities with even a single dedicated server. You might have a few spare UPSs lying around, but what about HVAC? What are you going to do when a squirrel blows the only circuit servicing your home? Sure, your servers and connection might stay up, but how long can you run without overheating? When you enumerate the things that data centers have, and your garage does not, I can't see how it makes any sense.

* Redundant electricity/generators * Real HVAC systems (also on generators) * Fire suppression systems * Redundant connectivity * Connections that can handle high levels of concurrency * Secure facility

Never underestimate the impact of downtime to your business' viability. At any given moment, your service will be "critical" to someone. Often times, the loss of confidence can't be regained, and to be brutally honest, that loss of confidence would be justified given that you think it's ok to run your hosting out of a garage.

Given how small the cost delta is between hosting infrastructure at your home versus paying for something like a VPS, you're assigning a very small value to your customer's importance. As a customer, how am I supposed to feel about that? That is probably the single greatest reason more startups aren't doing this. You have to fight and claw for every customer you get. I'm not willing to have them walk out the door because I decided I could save $70/month on hosting by doing it from my garage. If you can't sustain the hosting costs required to run your business today, you won't be able to do it six months from now. Time to reassess your model.

Well, according to this article [1] a burglary happens every 15 seconds. I highly doubt any government agency is that efficient, but even if it did happen and you have a backup you could be back live in a couple minutes. Just like the scalability comments below allude to, the key is having the infrastructure right and then everything else is easier.

[1]: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/artsandliving/homeandga...

While hosting anything that's too serious in your garage probably isn't a great idea- I've hosted stuff at non-traditional places before and been just fine. Nothing of ours is mission critical that I'm doing this with.

We've got a rack at a local university that's in a large (8x10) closet with its own power, HVAC and fire suppression. The facility is fairly secure and you'd have to know two layers of door codes to get in there.

Yet we've got 6 servers in a rack. The servers in total cost us around $3000 (could have done it for less, but one of them we bought new and went overkill on), and we pay nothing for monthly hosting.

If you sniff around local universities, you can likely find someone that is cool with you throwing something in their rack for free or cheap. I know many of the dorms at MIT have several 42U racks on each floor and people throw stuff in those all the time. I know of others that have cheap hosting for affiliated members.

Time to call your alma mater?

Actually, I think the key is what you just mentioned...

backup.