Here is a cool concept and “Green Hosting Providers” should appreciate the ability to fit 1,000 servers into a 40U rack unit. No, I am not going to pitch you on VMWARE or grid computing (I will save that for our upcoming face to face meeting that you will request after reading this post).
To get this up and running I am will need the following….
3.50″ 32 Port Panel USB - Quantity 12, Cost = $2015.52
USB Based Web Server - Quantity 365, Cost = $25,531.75
I will probably need something to connect these to and will need to learn the limitations, so I am going to need a development and server budget of around $25k.
Total Cost = $50,000 - $60,000 or about $165.00 per device.
If I purchase my own rack with a decent amount of bandwidth for $2500.00 per month, I could launch a new type of web hosting company offering “USB Web Servers” for $30.00 per month.
Revenue = $10,950.00 monthly…
The features of each USB Based Webserver are as follows:
HTTP server
Handles HTTP/1.0 GET and HEAD requests. Currently does not support POST requests.
FTP server
RFC 959 compliant FTP server built in.
ISAPI support
Supports Microsoft Internet Server API.
CGI scripts
Support for CGI/1.1 scripts. It should handle normal CGI scripts and non parsed header CGI scripts. Currently does not support POST request to CGI. Use GET instead.
PERL scripts
It should handle normal PERL scripts and non parsed header PERL scripts. Currently does not support POST request to CGI. Use GET instead. Recommend using Active State PERL.
Server-side includes
Supports server-side includes in specified directories with filenames that have a .shtm or .shtml extensions. Supports echo, flastmod, fsize, include, config commands. Does not support var and exec.
Document aliasing
Allows you to create an alias for a directory, so that all directories do not have to be under the document root. Also allows you to move directory locations, and not have to change the HTML links in your documents.
IP Address security (pop up)
Allows you to restrict access to specified URLs based on the request client’s IP address.
Username/password security
Similar to IP Address security, but allows you to require a username and password to access specified URLs. See IP Address security above and User/Group authenticaton below.
User and Group authentication
Used in conjunction with Username/password security. Allows you to create users and groups that can then be used as remote admin users, or for requiring authentication to protected resources.
Users (pop up)
Groups (pop up)
Remote administration (pop up)
Currently allows you to start, stop, or restart the HTTP server and the FTP server remotely via a browser.
Error customization (pop up)
Allows you to redirect error responses to a user provided HTML document, rather than using the default error message.
Common log format logging
WebServUSB can log to the screen and/or to a file using the Common Log Format (CLF). Does not support other logging formats.
HTTP Logging(pop up)
FTP Logging(pop up)
Configurable MIME types (pop up)
Allows the ability to add and modify MIME types. Several well known types are previously defined and required.
Directory browsing (pop up)
If directory browsing is enabled, it automatically creates directory listings for any directory, under the virtual root, where a default document cannot be found.
Anonymous FTP
Allows anonymous FTP access to the specified home directory.
Username/password FTP with home directory (pop up)
Allows individual user account home directories that requires authentication.
Configurable thread cache pool
Allows you to control the maximum number of threads the HTTP server will use. Also allows you to tune the number of threads that are in a thread cache that can be re-used. This eliminates the overhead of create and destroy threads for each request.
This is 100% a joke, I don’t even think it’s technically possible, but still cool to think about!
