Don’t mean to be a downer, just trying to be real here. I’m an entrepreneur at heart and I hate to stifle someone with the entrepreneurial spirit. But 'cmon, lets get real here.
You go into business for one reason. To make money.
Businesses survive ONLY IF they MAKE MONEY.
I would highly suggest that you guys sit down and go over the financial’s of this venture before jumping in head first. The financial question should be first in your mind, not ‘how do I run a server’. You need to seriously ask if this is a viably profitable business.
This business has quite a bit of start-up and overhead expense.
- Hardware (servers, computers, monitors…etc)
- Power Bill (wherever your servers live the power bill WILL go up)
- Cooling (Server power supplies are nothing more than a space heater, you will likely need to add additional cooling to the server room)
- Static IP address and increased bandwidth from your ISP (could be several hundred $$/ month)
- Backup Power Supply
- Someone on call 24/7/365
Without adding up the numbers you could blow $10k on this venture VERY quickly just getting started. Then you have to actually do the leg work to get clients in the door. Marketing in this arena is VERY competitive so advertising is NOT going to be cheap. You will be operating at a loss for quite some time (several years).
I’ll put it this way. I’m a web developer with many clients and I don’t host my sites in-house. I outsource the hosting. Sure, I spend a few extra dollars every month but the peace of mind is WELL worth it. I can take a vacation anytime I want lol! I don’t have to worry about the 10 servers in my spare bedroom.
So, if I wanted to, I have the clients to load up several servers and host them all in-house. I have all the capital required to start this type of operation up, hell I even have an office space to put it all in. I have all of the things necessary and I wouldn’t touch this business with a 10 ft pole.
Long story short, you will be entering into a highly competitive market that is filled with companies with experts in their field with hundreds of years server admin experience combined. And you expect to be able to compete with this when you don’t even know how to setup a server?
Think Again. Seriously, your money is at stake, your friend’s money is at stake and last but not least. If the business doesn’t make it (chances of failure are MUCH greater than success) you can kiss your friendships goodbye. Nobody comes out of a failed business venture friends.