As I said in a previous post I worked mainly in a distributed environment. Such a kind of development requires some attention to avoid losing productivity because each member of the team is physically far from the other.
The first think you need is buy a Dedicated Server on some web farm. You need a dedicated server, and not a simple hosting, because you need full control of the machine, you should be able to install services, restart the machine and so on. You can also use a virtual server, but quite often it is best to have a machine on your own, this is necessary to avoid share hardware resources with all other people that share with you the physical server.
Avoid the temptation to install a server in one of the developer’s location, this is surely less expensive, but you do not have 24/7 support. Imagine that you need to work on the server on saturday, and the server is down, and noone is there to reset….too bad. If you have a dedicated server in an hosting environment you are sure that the server is in a well structured room, with power save devices, with at least a person 24/7, with high bandwidth, etc etc…you cannot have such a service if you place a server in a standard office.
When the server is in place you are ready to install all the tools that makes you possible to work in a distributed environment.
Alk.
Tags: Experiences
June 18th, 2008 at 2:47 pm
Very very true! Yea you want to have a dedicated server that you have full access and superior support for! We have 7 servers hosted Server Intellect. Any time a client wants to place a server in their office we force them to purchase a dedicated server. Because we all know clients love to call at 3am on Sunday because they could not sleep and want to work on something. Plus the added bonus is you can host their website any any applications they need.