Question : Moving from Dedicating Hosting to Collocated Equipment

Our small company has decided that it is time to move from dedicated hosting to collocated equipment.

The equipment that was ordered prior to my arrival here includes the following:

1 Server for Web Services (Apache)
1 Server for Database (MySQL)
1 Server for Backup Storage and Future Replication Tasks

What I need to determine is what other equipment I will need inside of our server rack.

I know that we will need a Firewall or Security appliance and a router or gateway. I have no idea what firewall or appliance to purchase. Sure, I can ask my vendors, but they all want me to buy their biggest and baddest.

Would anybody be wiling to provide me with a basic overview of the equipment that should go into our rack in front of our servers.

The only purpose of these servers are to host a LAMP web application. We do not require any VPN or other network services.

Thank You,
Michael

Answer : Moving from Dedicating Hosting to Collocated Equipment

Base on you immediate parameters, current concurrent users and 6 months expected growth, the NSA 2400 seems to fit your requirement.

However, it will also depends or your company IT investment direction as well, if you are planning an upgrade after the 6 month period where the concurrent connections may hit more than 32K, then that may be sufficient.

As for deep packet inspection, well it's really subjective, as it will depend on what is the trade off on the performance hit on your application. If it is not performance sensitive, than it would be sufficient, even when it hit higher traffic volume.

Note that spending on security will really depend on what you need it for and how much you are able to spent on it.

Having a firewall is always better than none, as long as the firewall is configured correctly and within your network requirement, any firewall would do, until start to look into more in depth needs, like better VPN performance, high performance IDS/Deep Packet Inspection, etc. Then you will really need to look into which brand and model will fit your needs.