Posts Tagged ‘cloud’
Server-less office
Over the last month or so, I’ve been spending some time searching for a new office. Our current office is almost full, flaky internet connection has been driving us all mad and the selection of lunch-time food is… well, there isn’t any selection really. There is only one mamak stall with questionable hygienic standard downstairs.
While looking around, one thing I notice is that, the moment I mention that it will be a software house, everyone seems to think that we need a server room. At our current office, we have a small dell server that runs our bug tracking and subversion system but I always feel that it is unnecessary. All these application can really be hosted somewhere else. So, I have decided that our office shall run completely server-less!
Seriously, there is no need for us to have a server at all!. Almost everything that we need can actually be hosted somewhere else, on a remote server. There are several advantages of running all these application on a remote location. First and foremost, continuity. Most competent hosting environment should have a good continuity and backup strategy. Other than full raid setup, regular image backup normally comes standard. You will also never need to worry about hardware failure. They should also have reliable network which makes access from any location a snap. Again, any competent hosting company should have a technician on stanby 24/7 . Trying to replicate all this in-house takes a lot of time away from your real work. Having our data off-site also means that we don’t have to worry so much about theft or fire, or flood destroying our work. The office runs quieter, cooler, cheaper.
Amazingly, going server-less is easy. I grab a cheap Windows VPS package (hosted in Malaysia), with just 380Mb. I successfully moved all svn data to the new server. Next, I’ll be moving our fogbugz on the new server and perhaps relocate our build script on this server too. I can then shutdown our dell server forever or donate them to charity. Anyone wants one ?
Its all in the cloud…
