Infrastructure

First of all, you need to decide if you want to have the hardware in house (on premises) or hosted by e. g. 1and1, amazon or azure.
For this tutorial I’ll consider a hosted szenario. If you prefere on premisses, you sould contact a local IT-Service partner (most of the time you would want an Service License Agreement).

On Premises

You need to buy the Hardware and you’ll also need to provide the necessary space (server room) including cooling.

This can be very expansive, but it could be required if you need to be protected from internet outage or if you need a low latency connection for e. g. high-bay warehouses. If you have production critical servers, these should be located in house. If you don’t want to have them local, you should at least consider two separate Internet Connections (Business grade), you’ll maybe need to pay the 2nd provider for the last mile. Often only one provider has the infrastructure from your building to the distribution point, and the others rent these cables from the other provider. So you need to pay at least one (if not both) provider for these cables. Having two separate cables gives you high availability, even if one connection or the whole provider is down.

Hosted

You outsource the hardware, you only need to worry about the software. You don’t need to provide a server room, no cooling, no hardware maintenance. BUT consider data safety and privacy. It can be very expansive if you get sued for infringing or if you loose your files.
Also often backup is included by such providers. If you’re located in the EU, you should consider hosting in Germany. They currently have the most restrictive laws, which gives you the assurance that the provider doesn’t tamper with your VMs and gives you plus points for some certifications.

Also it is a more plannable cost with monthly payment and especially good for start ups.

Features

• 1x IPv6 /64 prefix
• 1x IPv4 address
• If possible with daily snapshot backups
• Possibility of hosting multiple VM within the same /64 prefix (you need IaaS and not just single VMs)
• At minimum 100M up-/downlink
• No fair use policy, these are not transparent and not very reliable for commercial use