

IT infrastructure strategies for startups - brunowassermann

If you have a bunch of developers and designers all hacking away on their laptops, what are the different options and pros/cons for backups, shared file storage, etc? Is it better to set up your own file servers, version control servers, email servers, implement backup strategies on your own servers, etc. or does it make more sense to use things such as Confluence to share knowledge and files, Dropbox, GitHub and so on?
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mweil
Build as little as you can get away with on your own. Focus on the core value
of your business and not the incidentals, if you can help it. Use Dropbox or
Box.net for file sharing, Github for version control, Google Apps for
calendaring/email/contacts, and use S3 to backup your EC2 servers nightly. We
also use the Github wiki for our various projects.

Of course, you can make your own choices in all of the above tech. I was just
providing a list for the sake of examples. The point is, each of these things
is the core value of these other businesses and they do them better than you
will be able to. It's absolutely worth the small fees they charge to keep you
focused on your core product.

~~~
Joyfield
And backup OFFSITE. S3 is onsite if you use EC2.

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xxqs
what I do for myself, is a local Synology NAS in RAID1 configuration for
synchronizing all business documentation, such as offers, invoices, salary
statements, etc.

Every night the NAS compresses and encrypts the whole archive and pushes a
copy to a VPS at the provider site. This way I am sure I have a relatively
recent off-site copy, and it is secured enough, so that even the VPS provider
is unable to read it.

I use GoodSync for synchronizing my documents folder with the NAS. Also NAS is
reachable from the public internet over HTTPS, and I can synchronize my files
when I'm at the customer site.

Also I use another VPS (extremely cheap one from
<http://www.buildyourvps.com/> \-- a bit slow, but fine for these needs) as my
Git storage. I use Gitolite to organize my Git repositories, and basically
create a new repository for every set of scripts or configuration files that I
do for my clients.

For public and open-source code, I use Github.

A third VPS is used as a virtual PBX where I organize hotline service for
those of my customers which need support with an SLA. You can see some
technical details in my blog (<http://txlab.wordpress.com/tag/dvop-net/>).
Also an instance of RT: Request Tracker is running on it.

