Colo

Would probably be the ideal solution in terms of guaranteeing we know what's attached to the machine, and it shouldn't be too expensive either. Lordrich is finding out about this.

Rented Dedicated Server

Would move the onus of fixing hardware more towards the company we rented from, and we wouldn't need to go out and buy a machine, but it would cost more monthly. Example quote from Bytemark:

• Opteron 1214, 2GB ECC RAM, 2x500GB SATA drives, 100GB bandwidth/month, 10Gb backup space, £135.00/month plus £370.00 setup (plus vat)

Continue on existing setup

We're seeing the limitations of our existing setup, and we're subject to the restrictions placed upon us by hosting providers. We can however continue to develop on our existing setup for some time.

Current Restrictions

• Lack of DNS configuration flexibility (currently handled by lordrich's vps provider who lets her rsync dns zone files)
• Can't install mailman on the same machine in a way that gives us root access (currently handled on lordrich's server)
• Can't get a MySQL account with CREATE DATABASE privs, which would be very useful for multisite hosing
• Not sure what email client software we'd be able to install
  • Any, it's more the issue of creating email accounts programaticaly through Drupal

(Multiple) VPS servers

One VPS probably won't be enough once we grow, and hosting across multiple VPS systems wouldn't be much better than our current setup. Plus we're still subject to restrictions put in place by hosting providers.

Amazon S3

Fantasticly capable cloud hosting. However, it has a price to match and is owned by Amazon. So no then.