Working on a distributed enviroment 8211 The server

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