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How to get started with VPS hosting ?
Bauguelson
Member
Hi,
I am currently a freelance developer, and I am looking to open my hosting company.
MY EXPERIENCES
I have been interested in programming and hosting world since I am young, trying to learn all that stuffs myself, spending hours on Google. I got to have many VPSs and dedicated servers.
Past in 2014, I had coded myself my first hosting website when I was 12 years old, by getting a dedicated server at OneProvider under my older brother identity (Surely full of XSS fails, but none of SQL 
)
Fortunately, I never get hacked, because I closed it after 2 months, the reason of that is my dedicated server was issuing almost everyday ddos attacks (I never knew from who or why), and I couldn't convince my brother to invest more money in an ddos protection. (My first 4 customers got refunded of course)
Evenif it didn't lasted, it helped me training on Proxmox VE, I learned how to create QEMU VM and configure them (OS Ubuntu, Debian and CentOS).
I also got to work with WHMCS, near 2015, for someone who was reselling VPS, I made an WHMCS Proxmox module using Proxmox API documentation to manage QEMU and LXC through client area. (It wasn't as crazy than current available Proxmox modules, but start, stop, and reboot)
I also dealed with VMManager API, made an little SAMP Server manager (Start, stop, restart, send command to console, and prevent users to change their assigned port)... Tbh I've always been hiding my age by all way, allowing me to go where I'm not supposed to, maybe thanks god, I was not such a bad developer since most of people always believed me after work done. I am glad I no longer have to hide tho.
Recently, I used one of my dedicated server to create NAT VPS on Proxmox, after seeing an article from LowEndTalk (It worked well, thanks to this community).
Maybe it can help, I got Cisco CCNA1 v7 certification 2 years ago.
GETTING STARTED ?
Well, even if years passed, maybe it's a childhood dream, but I still want to get started in hosting company.
I have now ready 1111€ of budget for this, I may be able add an additional 1111€ on next weeks. I also have my friend who know me since 2013, who is ready to invest around 1500€, and help on advertise and support (I don't just rely on him of course). I think for sure, evenif I am not gonna be fastly profitable, I could pay out of pocket in next months if required.
My plan is to start colocation at an France datacenter.
So I read this:
https://lowendtalk.com/discussion/29089/colocating-your-first-server
My friend and I, have choosen to buy this blade (the data center accepts it):
https://www.servershop24.de/en/hpe-bl460c-gen9-v4-server-blade/a-125863/
We want to add more RAM and change installed disks for SSD.
We plan to host up to 50 VPS on this server. The datacenter provide 500Mbps bandwidth @ 1Gbps port, 2.2Tbps ddos protection, and 400 Watts.
In addition, I plan to lease an /24 subnet.
For VPS virtualization, I plan to use SolusVM or Virtfusion, because both are cheap.
I want to buy a new blade/rack at each time I can get the previous one full of VPS.
However, I wonder about our choices, even if I know I can't avoid all of them, I'm afraid of bad surprises, so I prefer to prevent them. As we are not my friend and me experts, I decided to go where I know I can have many points of view, analysis, and opinions about our choices. Any criticism is welcome.
Comments
I am also super interested in this topic, @MannDude and @HostSlick are kinda the people I want to be. Starting with a co-location and selling vps's and when revenue is high enough get my own datacenter and spread across the world. I am going to keep dreaming though because I don't know enough about every single topic.
@MannDude and @HostSlick are premium!
@Bauguelson:
Your post was full of technical information and you seem to know about the operational side. Unfortunately, I saw very little in your post about the business side other than the comment about seed money. It is as if you drew a picture of a globe but omitted the oceans.
-> I keep saying the same thing over and over here on LowEndTalka, but have you written a business plan?
If not, stop everything else and write a quality business plan. A good business plan takes much time and effort, but it can be critical to success. A good business plan will definitely expose many of the "bad surprises" before you start spending large sums on equipment and services.
Think about all of the "people" things a business needs to operate. Banking, legal, accounting, billing, insurance, support, operations. How will you interface with customers?
How many effort hours per week will it take to accomplish all of the business objectives? Whatever number pops out, quadruple it.
What are the risks? What if equipment fails or goes down? What if someone gets sick or in an accident? How much padding/buffer do you have to absorb unexpected costs or sudden labor needs like handling an incident?
You have learned much about the technical side, but it is appears that you have some business learning still ahead before you are ready to launch. That is just a feeling based on your first post above.
Have you considered working for an existing provider to learn more about the business aspects, or perhaps partnering with someone who has the right business experience?