Be a Professional or Get a Professional?
May 16, 2005 Posted by KP
After rented two unmanaged FreeBSD servers, I have been always wondering what’s the best choice for me, does it make sense to learn how to administer a server? Isn’t it better to hire someone to do all these stuff for me? Thus, the servers are more secure, and I can spend more time on the websites rather than thinking about the hosting all the time.
I also swayed between Linux and FreeBSD for a while, I like FreeBSD in many ways, but it has a big drawback - little documentation, almost everything needs extensive search on the Internet. Linux has a much bigger user base and enough tutorials on almost every subject.
My Linux VPS was hacked last month, fortunately I only host one website on it and nothing lost. I do most things with WebHost Manager and CPanel on it, as a result, I can do little research to find out how the hacker broke in. My ISP tried to fix the problems, several important programs damaged during the process, they restored the whole system form backup (they backup the whole system daily).
After the FreeBSD server working, I spent little time on learning FreeBSD, probably I’m tired of studying new stuff. The Linux hack and email spam incidents taught me a lesson: either to be a real professional - hard but convenient, or to hire someone - easy but inconvenient, convenient as well as easy solution doesn’t exist at all.
Improving FreeBSD knowledge will be my first priority task from now on.
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Filed Under: General
May 16th, 2005 at 2:13 pm
I have explored both these tracks, and I have found administering FreeBSD yourself is much better. The up front investment actually isn’t that much, and once you have done it you save money, develop and release faster, and gain peace in mind.
May 17th, 2005 at 1:13 am
Yes, it’s tedious to ask for others to change something, a 2 minutes work could take 20 minutes to explain :-).