I wish you well in your efforts. I've been in your position before and will offer some insight if you wish it. Your own servers sound great, it is cheaper by far, and having two mirrored and load balanced servers sounds good too. Years ago when Ebay was young a friend and I had several fairly successful picture hosting sights. freepicturehosting.com made a lot of money when banners were hot, and pictureat.com and picture-at.com were our paid sights, one backed up the other. Only problem with your own servers is that you end up being the smartest person that can deal with problems, if something breaks you are it, you cannot call the help line and get it fixed. We chose to run two servers not mirrored and running different operating systems, one a hot backup for the other, if one fails (or is hacked) it takes a while to get the other on line, but it does come on. If someone hacks one of identical mirrored load balanced computers you can assume both are hacked, databases are shared and mirrored, if one is hosed they will both end up that way, you are S.O.L and have two computers a thousand miles away to fix. Have a plan on where to go and what to do when it happens and good luck. Guess only time will tell. Larry