Hi,
Do you have a list ISP's in Switzerland offering Drupal-compatible web hosting?
The Drupal hosting page ( http://drupal.org/hosting ) doesn't break down vendor
by location, and I don't recognize a Swiss site, unless I have missed something.
(Please, lets avoid "it doesn't matter on the Internet" discussions.
Sometimes it does matter very much.)
The more obvious requirements are compatible MySQL & PHP versions,
but also Drush-compatible SSH access, and my own quirk: support
for inbound rsync. There are perhaps other requirements which may
be not so obvious.
I checked several vendors on this list:
http://www.webhosting.info/webhosts/tophosts/Country/CH
I'm disturbed to find a lack of publicly stated support for Drupal,
although "the other guys" are often listed: Joomla, Typo3, etc.
Either there's little demand for Drupal, or the vendors don't care
to mention it, or Drupal is still emerging, or ... ?
The best vendor I've seen so far is http://www.greengeeks.com (go green!)
but they are in the USA. Thanks.
Comments
Drupal is not very wide
Drupal is not very wide spread here in Switzerland. I think http://www.cyon.ch/ is pretty good.
Drupal hosting in Switzerland
I think http://www.dynamic-net.ch/produkte/confixx-application-pack.php is pretty good.
Freundliche Grüsse
Roger Ramuz
(Zentralschweiz)
Root server
Don't expect any wonders of shared hostings.
Fulfilling MySQL and PHP compatilility requirements is almost trivial for a professional hosting company. Every standard server setup does right that.
Sure rsync and ssh/drush is important for every /real/ project. But that's no matter of good or bad hosting company - it's simply a matter of having a root server or not.
Consider also:
Novatrend
http://www.novatrend.ch/
(which supported us also on http://www.drupalmediacamp.ch in 2009 with 10 shared hostings that finally where used by visitory for their drupal setups happily)
I've heard also positive response about Metanet and Nine. There's a long continuing list of opportunities. Little switzerland is full of hosting companies.
Genotec
I'm hosting on Genotec, it's a company 100% Basel, offers for shared hosting:
http://www.genotec.ch/de/shared-hosting/optionen/index.html
I'm using the servier hosting offer, called "vserver":
http://www.genotec.ch/de/server-hosting/
http://www.genotec.ch/de/server-hosting/documents-overall/Factsheet-Serv...
There you get all you need for a - in my opinion - decent price. For only CHF 40 you get all you need for several drupal sites and the support is very good and the quality too, plus you get dedicated power. If you have more than one project, then a vServer is defently worth the price. And I'm very, very happy with it.
Solicitations
Thanks guys. I sent out the following query to a few vendors.
Looks like I can get what I need for about CHF 15 per month.
I received good feedback from some.
This topic is not as simple as it seems - more info below.
Hello,
Do you support the Drupal CMS application with your product XXX ?
Your company is not listed on the Drupal page: http://drupal.org/hosting
These technical requirements are commonly provided by web hosters, although your
site's configuration may in turn require extra steps. http://drupal.org/requirements
In addition to these common requirements - eg, Apache, PHP 5.2, MySQL -
I'm also looking for these features:
Thanks,
John Buehrer
GreenGeeks.com No Longer Supports Drush On Shared Hosting
If you want drush with your shared hosting then don't use greengeeks.com as they once supported drush with shared hosting and now they don't but they will give it back if I upgrade to VPS. http://bit.ly/jMdyp8
esoteric ISP requirements
The book Drupal 6 Content Administration (J. Ayen Green) lists some server specs in Appendix A. Do you have comments or other additions, eg, for Apache or MySQL configurations?
PHP settings
- memory limit 64 Mb
- register globals OFF
- session.save_handler: user
- error_reporting: E_ALL
- safe_mode: Off
- session.auto_start: 0
- .htaccess AllowOverride enabled
While Drupal might work without them, my goal is to work efficiently and avoid wasting time - such as fooling around with strange behaviors due to obscure configuration mismatches.
I keep this in mind when speaking about requirements. In other words, "strictly correct" is less important to me than "useful and recommended".
Cyon says
"We run dozens of Drupal on our servers, it works perfectly in our environment.
All your further questions can also be answered with a clear yes.
Please let me know if you have any further questions or if I can do anything else for you.
Freundliche Grüsse"
Novatrend says
"Thanks for your mail. We have a lot of customers who are using the Drupal CMS
tool. All requirements for Drupal are met by our server configuration. Also all
the other requirements you have are not problem, just the green energy is not
possible in the InterXion Datacenter.
If you need more information, don't hesitate to contact us."
Hostpoint says
"Yes, it is possible, but you have to install it manually. TYPO3 and Joomla can be
installed by one click in the control panel."
"Please note that Drupal has the Option "Follow Symlinks" activated in the
.htaccess by default. You have do delete this line to make Drupal work. The option
'SymLinksIfOwnerMatch' is activated by default on our servers."
[JDB: Thanks for this tip, but what if I hadn't asked you?
Would this non-obvious .htaccess requierment cost me much time fooling-around with strange behaviors?]
"Yes, you can use rsync via ssh with the 'smart server'."
"We are currently working on a new support center which will have a search function.
kind regards"
Vendor X says
(Vendor X shall remain nameless at this time. What do you think about this?)
[after some elapsed time]
Hosting comments
memory limit 64 Mb is the limit, If you have lots of modules, you may encounter some probs. Not for viewing the site, but for some heavy admin operations.
KreativMedia.ch: a swiss company based in Zurich do some good job. ~70CHF/Year but dont dream, no ssh access.
Site5.com: an US provider ~100$/year , very flexible & ssh access
I have a couple of website on both, the performance is pretty good. But as you probably know, the infrastrtucre is one thing, the way you optimize your Drupal is an other. Specially if you have a very frequented site.
Thanks
Thanks mkalbere. Sure there are a lot of Drupal hosting vendors out there, so I'm sticking to my requirements about based in Switzerland, and offering ssh access for Drush. As shown above - I've found a few vendors, but also a few cautionary notes.
Current market offerings for my needs seem to run about CHF 13 - CHF 17 per month. But I'm concerned about "hidden gotchas" leading to wasted time, like the configuration things mentioned earlier.
FYI - my goal is to build a few advanced sites but without PHP programming. So I want to use modules instead - yes, I might hit that "lot's of modules" thing. Any tips on that?
I have never build a Drupal
I have never build a Drupal based web site directly on the final server.
Mainly because I find more convenient to work on it locally, you don't have to bother about file transfert, you have your own dev environment etc ..
And .. that right .. you have full access to drush or you own scripts.
To answer your question for "lots of module", with the local approach, you have less problem.
Kreativ let you change the memorylimits via htaccess, I currently have it to 124M .. no idea what the maximum could be.
I tried unsuccessfully to find a provider with ssh access in switzerland, but it was one year ago .. so tell me if you find one.
Some hidden gotcha are merely linked to special functionnalities
- safemode can sometimes give you hard time, when for some reason you dir perms get mess up
- update status and some other modules (geonames, stuff with rss feeds retreival) need to have outgoing connection allowed
- If you need to use the "search in files" functionalities, you need some external exe (catdoc, catpdf etc ) and be sure that you can use sheel_exec or equivalent fct
- idem to generate mysqldump
not easy to find a good provider ;-) and take a special look at
- how quick they answer
- what they answer
Drupal setup notes
I'm leaning towards Hostpoint, they seem to know what they are talking about.
I do intend to use separate servers, so I have the module "problem" everywhere:
I already hit the 32 Mb limit (and one-minute timeout) when doing a DEV install
on a new PC. After some wasted time ("fooling around" - hate that) I stumbled
across these answers:
http://bagofspanners.wordpress.com/2009/10/24/defeating-the-drupal-insta...
http://drupal.org/node/29268
I want common infrastructure functionality on all, eg, Drush.
Adding new modules flows DEV -> TEST -> PROD
and I'm thinking how to automate that PROD deployment and config,
maybe an external set of Perl scripts. But some parts of this are tricky,
eg, special extra steps to install CKeditor & JQuery.UI internals.
Data then flows the other way: eg, PROD -> DEV. In my current prototype
I use the Backup-and-Migrate module to export / import the SQL configs.
I'm trying to figure out how to incorporate external files (eg, pictures) into
this scenario as they seem not to be in the database. Any way to do that?
Otherwise I'll handle "plain files" propagation with rsync - hence that requirement.
How do other people handle this scenario?
I'm new to Drupal, so I'm trying to use standard paradigms of other environments.
Hostpoint is pretty good BUT
Hostpoint is pretty good BUT
we stopped using them for two reasons:
Because of this post I see now that Hostpoint changed their offerings and have SSH! Good news! :) Question here is, how much can you do with SSH?
The email thingy is a detail but a pretty important one if your client is an SME (KMU) that needs email addresses for it's employees. Last time we used hostpoint it was not possible to allow users to manage their account, especially the password. So every time somebody lost his password, the admin had to login to the hostpoint panel and change it manually...
Not sure if that changed as well.
-----
Servit Open Source Solutions
Swiss Drupal Development & Outsourcing
I recommend using a VCS
A VCS like svn, or better Bazaar or git, gives you revision control over your installation and a basic infrastructure to separate staging from production. For a new project, I always create a branch from our vanilla Drupal repository onto my development machine, add contrib modules and themes and check in those changes again. I upload the files via SFTP and Transmit's sync function. For some VCS solutions, there's even an upload plugin which does it automatically at checkin.
As for Drupal hosting, I invite you to check out http://www.drupalconcept.de. We've opened shop last weekend at the Drupal Dev Days in Munich and my desk is only a few kilometres north the Swiss border. ;-)
Best regards,
Jochen
Jochen Lillich, CTO freistilbox Managed Drupal Hosting
more Hostpoint
Thanks Jochen. I prefer to use Subversion (SVN) as I'm already familiar with it. Your site and offerings look good, but do I want a site physically in Switzerland. For example, data protection laws are related to physical presence - that's either too primitive or too advanced for the current Internet. (I can't decide which.) Anyway, I'm still interested in what you offer besides the hosting.
Mr. Globetrotter: I asked Hostpoint about your topics and received a good reply very quickly. As shown earlier they now offer ssh access, over which I can do rsync. Presumably I can also login, transfer files, make configuration changes, and use Drush. Do you have additional ideas for the "how much can you do with it?" question? This is a good topic.
This is possible since a few months. As administrator, you have to allow this
login to the mailaccount by activating the checkbox "Allow this e-mail user to
login his e-mail control panel interface."
The user can now login on https://admin.hostpoint.ch with his e-mail login.
I will forward this request to the responsible person.
Yes, this is possible. In the menu "Explorer/Web-Settings" you can create new
PHP-Profiles which you can allocate to the folder where Drupal is installed.
Data protection
Hi John,
for sites that need special attention to data protection (for example our email infrastructure), we're also hosting servers in Germany, where data protection laws certainly match the quality of those in Switzerland.
Besides hosting, there's not much for me to offer with regards to Drupal. :-) We're focusing on providing the best Drupal hosting services possible -- and nothing else.
Jochen Lillich, CTO freistilbox Managed Drupal Hosting
re: Data Protection
Oh - I thought you also did Drupal consulting and development: http://www.freistil-consulting.de/swprojekte
Note that data protection also means "protection from laws of other governments". It's hard enough to traverse the Swiss legal system, I don't want to require Euro-compatibility to my users' postings. And the Swiss are notoriously tight lipped about data disclosures, witness the ongoing fights over banking data between the countries. I want to avoid this potential topic by sticking to Swiss legal jurisdiction for data regarding Swiss-based activities.
Consulting and development
I have to apologize for that misleading page. The information about those other Drupal services has been deprecated and I just removed those parts. We decided at the beginning of the year to stick to Drupal hosting only and in projects that require consulting and development, we work with several partner companies. I'd be happy to refer you to one of them if you need such services.
Jochen Lillich, CTO freistilbox Managed Drupal Hosting
EU rules
John
The trend has been for Switzerland to move toward EU (for good and bad), so I suspect it's only a matter of time before CH and EU data disclosure rules align too.
Heck, with the Euro plummeting, think of all the CHF you'll save.
Alan
re: EU rules
Sorry, but that future isn't here yet. Whether it arrives or not, and soon or not, is something I'll deal with when it happens. So at the moment I stick to "must be in CH" criteria.
Hi John Looks like Hostpoint
Hi John
Looks like Hostpoint has improved its services :)
Regarding the "how much you can do with it" question... Yes it's hard to define the requirements exactly... One thing are the user rights you get, but that should most of the time be fine. I guess the bigger issue is what applications/tools are available, respectively are you allowed to install new ones. There are quite a few tools that you use on a Linux server which you take for granted and only notice them when they're missing :o) Would need some work to put together a final list.
I remember a hosted client account with SSH access where we uploaded the complete system in a zip file just to find out there was no / we didn't have access to a tool for decompress archives...
-----
Servit Open Source Solutions
Swiss Drupal Development & Outsourcing
How much can you do with Cyon Kiwi ssh?
Hi Globetrotter, GeraldMengisen,
Any comments whether vendor Cyon supports a reasonable set of these "Linux tools" aka "normal Unix commands" with their ssh login?
Cyon has moved to the top of my preference list, and unless Dynamic-Net confirms their hosting is physically located in CH, I will probably go with Cyon Kiwi.
Hostpoint loses my bid because they no longer allow SSL with "SMART server" because of the fatal show-stopper "we once had problems doing it" (see below). And if we all quit like this, Drupal would have died long ago...
Regarding your other recent comment regarding Playing-it-safe / Email-service-for-client: Yes, I also need this. I have no big worries here, but I want a mailing list integrated with the Drupal site. Eg, list users must first sign up for a Drupal account so I can track who they are: real name, location, etc. But that's a Drupal how-to topic, hopefully not vendor limited.
Cyon Kiwi ssh
I'm by no means a Linux command line professional, but so far I have not encountered anything blocking for the Cyon SSH access (using tar/untar, chmod). The feature I like the most is that they also give you the mysql and mysqldump command line utilities; I have found exporting / importing databases to be unreliable via phpMyAdmin (slow and you can get time-outs), but no problem via command line.
I'm also with another hosting company in the US where they give you the CVS command line client, which is not the case for Cyon. But that's just a goodie for Drush (instead of wget) and will become obsolete with the Drupal move to Git.
If you want, you can give me a list of commands to try. But anyway, Cyon has a 60 days money back guarantee.
re: Cyon Kiwi ssh, and rsync test
Thanks Gerald. It sounds like they have the basic Unix stuff.
Can you try an inbound rsync over ssh?
For starters, what version is installed? rsync --version
More info here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rsync
http://samba.anu.edu.au/rsync
Rsync version
rsync version 3.0.5 protocol version 30
Copyright (C) 1996-2008 by Andrew Tridgell, Wayne Davison, and others.
Web site: http://rsync.samba.org/
Capabilities:
64-bit files, 64-bit inums, 32-bit timestamps, 64-bit long ints,
socketpairs, hardlinks, symlinks, IPv6, batchfiles, inplace,
append, no ACLs, xattrs, iconv, no symtimes
rsync comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY. This is free software, and you
are welcome to redistribute it under certain conditions. See the GNU
General Public Licence for details.
=====
Sorry, I've never used rsync before, so I'm a bit lost about how to go about an inbound rsync. Inbound is meant from which side? Cyon?
rsync test
Ah yes, I mean inbound into Cyon.
The idea is, you have a set of files and folders on a master source - eg, your home Linux PC - and you want to replicate whole structure on a remote location - eg, Cyon - but only copying files and folders which have changed. Obviously, the first rsync will copy everything, but the next time perhaps only a few files have changed or been added. This is where rsync is very useful, it only copies what is necessary.
For a simple test, create a file and folder on your home Linux PC and rsync it over to Cyon.
Eg:
mkdir test_dir
echo hi > test_dir/xxx
rsync -rvt --rsh=ssh --rsync-path=/bin/rsync test_dir geraldmengisen@server.cyon.ch:/tmp
Then you should see /tmp/test_dir/xxx at the remote site.
Running rsync again should still work, but without transferring any data
until file xxx changes, or another file is added to test_dir.
If you're not running Linux, there's also a Windows version of rsync,
for example as part of the Cygwin distribution: http://cygwin.org
Metanet AG & Development Workflow
Hello John
In Switzerland I always recommend Metanet AG http://metanet.ch/, who are centrally based in Zurich. Their server offers can be found on http://metanet.ch/server. I have always made excellent experience with their support!
When it comes to development processes, I think one shouldn't listen [too much] to all the fuss which is made about the optimal development workflow! In the end these things are easier than they look, resp. than they are made to look. I myself have been working since a long time with an own development server based on Ubuntu Linux & self-assembled old hardware. For exporting the MySQL database, I simply use phpMyAdmin (both ways round: DEV<->PROD resp. DEV<->TEST<->PROD). Although, I understand my role primarily as a webintegrator (and not as a web developer/programmer), I obviously still need to make sure that my IT environment is a good one. From my perspective, fact is, that for demanding web projects a lot of factors count far more than pure IT automatisation/efficiency -- far more!
---
PHILIPP-SCHAFFNER.COM {Text 3.0 & Web 3.0}
Hostpoint is out
Thanks for the tip. I sent metanet an inquiry about the Drupal support features listed above.
Hostpoint "SMART Server" is out, it doesn't support SSL / https. Their "Business Server" is CHF 25 per month. At this time I'm sticking to the under-20 offerings. Cyon is still in the running.
_ https is only available with the Business Server. We don't install self-signed
certificates because we had bad experience with this in the past._
I don't get it - with all the insecurity of the Internet, why https / ssl is still considered such a value-added item. I'm surprised it hasn't been made a legal requirement in some places. Of course more CPU power is required for encryption, but the hardware vendors love to sell us upgrades and there are so many idle CPU cycles anyway.
Metanet is out
Their webhosting (CHF 7.70) per month does not allow ssh access for Drush.
Nein - ASP wird nicht unterstützt, da wir keine Windows-Server einsetzen. Shell-Zugriff gewähren wir aus Sicherheitsgründen nicht.
(BTW Phillip: I like the workflow described in the Wrox book Leveraging Drupal ?
http://www.amazon.com/Leveraging-Drupal-Getting-Your-Right/dp/0470410876...
SERVER, not HOSTING!
John, what you need [and what Miro pointed out correctly in #comment-202463] is, that you need a SERVER (Dedicated Server or Virtual Server -- in each case mandatorily/preferably with ROOT ACCESS; which means you cannot take a managed version, in either case) http://metanet.ch/server! Your requirements cannot be fulfilled by any regular hosting offer, or, if there really should be such an offer out there on the WWW, I would heavily doubt the quality of it.
So: No, naturally METANET doesn't support SSH in their hosting package.
Well, I don't know this Wrox book, John. What workflow is described in there?
---
PHILIPP-SCHAFFNER.COM {Text 3.0 & Web 3.0}
Server vs Hosting ?
Care to clarify the reasons for that? Is it just a matter of load?
I have a Drupal prototype already on a cheapo hosting site and it seems to work
well enough small scale, but without ssh access (for Drush) so my updates cannot
be as well automated as I want. Hence my current quest.
It also occurred to me that I don't know how to "reboot" Drupal in case of problems.
Maybe restarting Apache accomplishes that task, and yes that would need vendor
support commonly associated with a root-access server. But maybe this is not
necessary.
Anyway, while I appreciate these tips, I'm also looking to learn the technical mechanisms
behind the recommendations. The vendors listed on http://drupal.org/hosting offer Drupal
in a hosted environment - or so it seems. What's the insight here?
Regarding Wrox book - I can't readily paraphrase the workflow, but Amazon.de offers a
"look inside" mode to a few pages. The author approaches Drupal work as a software
project with test / production separation and version control underneath.
leveraging Drupal
@John
yes, the "Leveraging Drupal" book you mentioned is by Victor Kane who is now living in Argentine. I met him at DrupalCon Barcelona. The book is about leveraging a project explained on the basis of Drupal.
The book ist definitely worth buying! ;-)
. . .
------------------------------------------------
Bettina
Don't Follow Trends: Set Them!
https://drupal-training.de
https://www.skool.com/drupal/about
Well …
Well_#1 ... the discussion/debate 'Server vs. Hosting' is an old, old, old one! I guess, there is plenty of information to be found online already, John! At the end, one needs to know oneself which individual needs require a particular solution.
Well_#2: I seem to have to correct myself — Novatrend apparently offers http://www.novatrend.ch/en/home/hosting/151/pricelist/ 'SSH Root Zugang' in combination with a 'Virtual Server Managed'. Novatrend titles the offer 'VPS Hosting', but in the description they talk about 'VPS Server' ... and probably they mean something like 'Virtual Private Server' with their abbreviation 'VPS'. ;) Unluckily their communication is not too clear in this case :) However, prices for managed offers (control panel inclusive) seem to be a bit high — if I dare to speak frankly so publicly.
[EDIT:] Any ideas from the community, why Novatrend can offer 'such an unusual thing'?
---
PHILIPP-SCHAFFNER.COM {Text 3.0 & Web 3.0}
Have a look at
Have a look at http://www.alwaysdata.com/
Based in France, which is not too far away...
Its cheap, ssh access, and you can get a free account to play around with and Test.
I'm running a few test sites, shared, for about 3 months, they are quite good.
Support is good, website response time a bit slow on initial loads.
Other things to add to your list: support for revision control tools (rcs, svn git...)
Php memory needs to be at least 128MB...
Support response and ease of submitting requests is important.
(I will leave siteground because of this in a few months)
Well ... what?
Thanks Philip, but 'Server vs. Hosting' seems to be an ongoing and updated topic. Obviously I'm unaware of the Drupal aspects to this discussion, and there's no readily summarized information on this topic in the common locations - eg, http://drupal.org . This, by the way, is a crucial problem I keep running into with Drupal, hence my questions here for insight.
"Insight" means knowing a few more details behind the recommendations, so I would appreciate some references to this 'Server vs. Hosting, for Drupal' topic or at least some tips where and how to look.
A Google search for 'Drupal server versus hosting' yields some old and scattered discussions (like http://groups.drupal.org/node/12354 ) but nothing definitive nor related to hosting options in Switzerland. Topic http://blamcast.net/an-hosting-review says database speed is the key factor, although this item seems more like an advertisement. Site http://drupalhosts.net looks promising, but seems to be a collection of forum posts without a summary or Swiss references.
The Swiss Dynamic-Net "product wizard" ( http://www.dynamic-net.ch/dynamic/website.php/produkte/wizard ) offers a partial comparison of their products. With this company, a root-access server provides ssh access. But increasing technology allows some vendors to provide this already with a hosting product. And I bet this situation changes rapidly with technology.
Another use-case for a virtual server could be e-commerce, where more general isolation and security would expected, but I'm not doing e-commerce. (yet?) Upwards-scalability might be easier with a virtual server, but I think a site whose configuration is well-managed (organized, automated) can be readily moved to a new server when the time comes.
Any other guidelines? I do appreciate this information!
Well_#3
Instead of evaluating for too long, I would simply play safe and take a 'dedicated root server' or a 'virtual server with root access' (usually non-managed). Why? That way there are surely no major problems/issues later on. Issues, which might occur in 1, 2, 3 or 6 or 12 or 24 months with shared hosting -- and usually exactly at times one can least afford such problems. Well, a list of possible problems I could easily imagine: ressource/capacity issues, access/freedom issues, extension/modification issues etc. etc. These details are endless.
Yes, technology might move fast, truly true. We could, for instance, also talk about cloud computing and Drupal in the cloud (plenty of Drupal presentations as PDF documents available on DrupalCamp websites around the world!) But at the moment I [personally] would play safe!
Anyway: http://www.dynamic-net.ch/dynamic/website.php/produkte/vserver seems an appealing offer to me, definitely!
[EDIT:] My current conclusion (price/performance orientation):
---
PHILIPP-SCHAFFNER.COM {Text 3.0 & Web 3.0}
Tempting!
Yes this evaluation is taking rather long. I like the play-it-safe strategy, but I do consider the cost factor. I'm aiming for under CHF 20 per month at this time. In your listed niches (thanks!) I guess this means one of the lower two choices, either "Least expensive" or the lowest "Middle range".
The low-end VPS from Dynamic-Net costs CHF 19.90 per month (VPS standard P1), whereas Cyon Kiwi hosting is CHF 16.90 per month. Hmm, not much difference!
Let me confirm that Dynamic-Net has a physical hardware (data) presence in Switzerland. That's part of my criteria, and yes I'm prepared to pay extra for the cost up to my budget limit. Note: http://kb.dynamic-net.ch//questions.php?questionid=95 says: "Ein Anspruch auf einen bestimmten Standort besteht nicht." in August 2008.
dynamic-net.ch
I myself have with Dynamic-NET already placed more than 10 Drupal installations for customers without big problems. To technical problems, the company responded in a reasonable time (within 24 hours) - not only as a promise!
Freundliche Grüsse
Roger Ramuz
(Zentralschweiz)
Yes, playing safe can save
Yes, playing safe can save you from reaching a dead end with your shared hoster after having signed up. But this method of playing safe needs you to manage and configure the server. And that's a task that often just is to much work and prevents you from focusing on your core business.
Most of the time you won't just need a web server but also an email service for your client. And that is a real pain in the ###.
We didn't find the optimal way yet
-----
Servit Open Source Solutions
Swiss Drupal Development & Outsourcing
Dynamic-Net webhosting is out
Web hosting from Dynamic-Net is out, they don't offer ssh.
This is their lower-end offer (http://www.dynamic-net.ch/webhosting.php) for CHF 10/month. I find their service offerings confusing as they reuse product numbers P1, P2, ... across web hosting, virtual servers, Confixx Application Pack, dedicated server, and server housing lines. (Opportunities for customer confusion! Why do this? Unique letters and numbers are free.)
I'm still awaiting their feedback on geographic location for VPS (starting at CHF 20/month).
Dynamic-Net virtual server is out
Virtual server from Dynamic-Net is out, the hardware is not in Switzerland.
Cyon says
Regarding their Kiwi (green) hosting plan ( http://www.cyon.ch/hosting/overview.php ), Cyon in Basel says:
These settings can be changed in your own php.ini.
This setting is enabled.
We will be happy to install your certificate that you bring with you. At the moment we do not offer certificates ourselves. The requirement for installing a certificate is a kiwi or orange hosting plan.
We run Apache 2.2.x currently.
I hope their shared servers aren't overloaded, as mentioned in this concern:
Any tips for benchmarking a Drupal site built with shared hosting?
Cyon experience
I've been using Cyon for over 2 years now and have pretty much the same requirements as you (including SSL). I can attest that Drupal runs fine and response times are fine, too, even when the whole Drupal site runs under SSL. However, we have hardly > 10 concurrent users for our Drupal sites.
You can have a custom PHP.INI which is nice, but it took me a little while to figure out that the PHP.INI used for SSH/command line is not the same PHP.ini you can modify in the control panel for the web server. Cyon support recommended creating a BASH alias pointing to the correct PHP.ini for Drush. In fact, without that, you don't get Drush to run, because per default, PHP calls to external tools are disabled (and Drush calls wget for downloading modules).
Cyon keeps improving over the years; they had once their whole infrastructure disconnected from the Internet because of an outage of Init 7, their network provider; they have now signed up for a second network provider: http://www.cyon.ch/blog/archives/151-Doppelt-genaeht-haelt-besser-Multih... for redundancy.
What you might like less is that their custom control panel is entirely in German. They don't have the AJAX file manager, either, that you find in other control panels, but with WinSCP and SSH, you get even better comfort for untaring files remotely.
So from a Drupal side, I'm quite happy with Cyon (although I find the limit of 20 MySQL databases a bit outdated), but there have been outages that have affected mailing traffic and partially destroyed the trust of our end users in the hosting company. As a consequence, we keep one eye open for alternatives, but so far, I haven't seen any I like. Also, Cyon promised improvements, and the new multihoming mentioned earlier is a nice touch.
Anyway, sites like http://www.aremysitesup.com are very useful for your own monitoring.
Thanks for feedback
Thanks Gerald.
I appreciate hearing about real experiences, especially if there were negative episodes. These don't kill the choice for me, but instead, give a sense of reality to the offering and let me know what I'm getting into. Far worse - in my opinion - is hearing nothing at all about a vendor. This means that potential problems haven't been discovered yet, and with my luck, I'll be the first one to stumble across the problems and then waste my time fooling-around with someone else's technology.
After all these discussions, my top-two contenders now are Dynamic-Net's P1 VPS offering, and Cyon Kiwi. Having a physical presence in Switzerland is a key criteria for me, and this is yet to be confirmed by Dynamic Net.
VPS: 1) Basic VPS can be
VPS:
1) Basic VPS can be worse than share hosting, because they limit all stuff they can limit (available memory, swap, ) . If you go in that direction, be sure to take an advanced one
2) You should have strong sysadmin skills, .. do you ?
3) Did you plan to spend time on it , to wake up early morning on sunday if one of the service crash and your customer is not happy ?
Shared hosting
.. It's also a matter of luck, if you share the server with a heavy loaded site, you will have bas perfs
and most of the time they put you on a new server, so in the beginning it can be very reactive, and then as the server fill up, getting slower and slower
Which type of site you plan to build, if it is mainly for consultation, use boost module, and you will get a very reactive website even on a bad server ..
re: Basic VPS
Thanks mkalbare. My professional work is often as a Unix sys admin, and indeed I sometimes put my own real servers on the Internet for various purposes and admin them myself. So why all this discussion?
Because I'm also a businessman. No, I don't intend to be paged on Sunday morning for Drupal problems. To be more specific: I want the hardware and Internet-stuff (eg, DNS) managed for me... ie, someone else's Sunday morning problem.
I'll take my chances ("best effort") with software errors like bad Drupal updates from another Drupal admin - in theory, even external Drupal admins could help if necessary.
I'll assume that software errors at the OS or Apache or MySQL level are rare enough not to be an ongoing business problem, and I propose that most of this risk is a matter of configuration management - which I intend to control quite firmly, using a VCS, configuration management tools, automation, and the usual DEV/TEST/PROD server separation.
So from a project-management viewpoint I want to spend technical time upfront to get this going in a good way, then not worry much about sys admin, mostly focusing on Drupal expansions as the project goes on. There will be other Drupal admins involved; they are not PHP programmers, but they're happy to follow the guidelines I set up.
Thanks for all your tips so far.
You have an excellent point
For any unmanaged VPS, the time to manage, patch and troubleshoot the beast has to be counted in, plus some monitoring for SMTP and HTTP should be set up. Or you take a managed VPS server, and then you are in different league financially.
What do you use for monitoring? Or do you have a different approach?
Monitoring?
Something basic, maybe http://www.aremysitesup.com to get started, and relying on word of mouth during the non-critical start up phase. I'm hoping that most potential problems are either data- or Drupal- related, in the sense that my team of sub-admins can handle this. So, a fully unmanaged VPS could be more difficult in this scenario because I don't expect my team to be Unix admins.
SMTP monitoring?
Can you recommend something similar for SMTP monitoring?
re: SMTP monitoring?
Basic checks with some scripting is easier than web monitoring. From another site, send mail to a dedicated email address, which is then forwarded elsewhere and/or delivered. That first site then pauses and polls to check that the mail is received and/or delivered. Of course, there are more complex scenarios like configuration screw ups - I suppose you would build and customize a solution based on your needs and your preferred monitoring tools.
A basic Internet search show these options, among many more:
http://www.bigsister.ch
https://www.alertsite.com/aslp_email_mon.html
http://www.dotcom-monitor.com/network-monitoring.asp
Thank you!
Great list!
(I meant the SMTP monitoring tools list sorry, I missed the correct thread for this reply)
I chose Cyon
Hi folks, I've settled on Cyon Kiwi webhosting for my next Drupal sites. Thanks for all your tips and suggestions.
FYI: rsync over ssh works great, from my home Mac to the Cyon server:
mac$ rsync -rvt --rsh=ssh --rsync-path=/usr/local/bin/rsync test_dir login@server18.cyon.ch:tmp
building file list ... done
test_dir/
test_dir/xxx
sent 106 bytes received 48 bytes 6.55 bytes/sec
total size is 0 speedup is 0.00
mac$ rsync -rvt --rsh=ssh test_dir login@server18.cyon.ch:tmp
building file list ... done
sent 58 bytes received 20 bytes 52.00 bytes/sec
total size is 0 speedup is 0.00
Would be nice if you keep us
Would be nice if you keep us updated about your experience with Cyon. :)
-----
Servit Open Source Solutions
Swiss Drupal Development & Outsourcing
Experiences - secure FTP accounts for multiple users
Will do. Here's my first report.
I've noticed that it's hard to tell just what is behind these web hosting companies.
Although their tech sheets have appealing features, it seems the implementation
is commercial software like Plesk or cPanel. If a technical issue arises, then you
aren't necessarily speaking with the real experts, but rather, other users of this
hosting software who may or may not have good familiarity with the details.
For example, I need to setup multiple file transfer accounts (FTP) for users, but
I insist on a secure connection to avoid packet sniffing hackers. This means,
some sort of encryption like SFTP or SSL. In the past I was pleasantly surprised
that FTP-over-TSL "just worked" on another vendor's Plesk-based hosting. But
this seems not to work at Cyon which uses cPanel. The vendor says they don't
support SSL this way. The only supported configuration is SFTP, and only for the
master account, not per-user.
Or...? I did some reseach on this cPanel software (new to me), and their website
claims FTP-over-explicit-TSL/SSL ("FTPES") does indeed work, and with some
testing, I succeeded. Hmm, so when did "cPanel specialist" get added to my
Drupal know-how requirements list?
http://forums.cpanel.net/f34/creating-sftp-142921.html
But anyway, why didn't it "just work" for me as with Plesk?
The problem appears to be with my client: FireFox / FireFTP, running on my iMac G5 ppc,
when connecting to the cPanel site. The recommendation is to try FTP over SCP instead.
That requires a large configuration (of Putty), and when I did that, I noticed another
blurb saying this works only on Intel Macs. Not mine.
Cyon suggested I try FileZilla, which is there recommendation. No luck there either,
the security component appears to be confused by a mis-matched SSL certificate.
(I'm relying on the cyon.ch certification, even for my own hostname.
Hey, trust is my decision, not a failure case for the software developer!)
After researching the cPanel site, I came across their recommendation for CyberDuck
on the Mac (Hey, Swiss software: http://cyberduck.ch !!) and suddenly everything
"just works" again. I can get FTPES with multiple user accounts. Next to check is
which software & config is needed on my user's Windows PCs.
This type of system integration problem is what worries me about Drupal. There's no
one piece of failure or one source of info, and while solutions might be simple, the
risk is spending (wasting?) lot's of time - one thing after another. Module integration
is an example. I think a wysiwyg editor in a CMS should be standard, but with Drupal,
you're already talking about multiple modules. And then come views. Etc...
Re - secure FTP accounts for multiple users
My first big set back with Cyon: They don't support secure file transfer (FTP) access for multiple users. Apparently they weren't even aware of this topic until I reported problems with this expected method, and that's a bit disturbing.
cPanel claims to support secure FTP access as shown in the forum link above, but the Cyon infrastructure apparently wasn't installed that way in the beginning and now it's too inconvenient for them to change.
I'm surprised that the user community doesn't already insist on secure file transfer access.
Are you guys happy with unencrypted authentication?
I would never go for it. There are enough Internet hacks as it is.
Are there other vendors out there which might offer this as a matter of course,
rather than as a "first time I've ever heard of it" such a thing?
It's common problems like this which give pressure to use instead the
cheaper USA or DE hosting services rather than sticking with local providers.
Experiences - multiple domains on one site, Plesk vs. cPanel
Another experience so far. The type of web hosting account I'm interested in have plenty of capacity to host several independent low-to-medium usage web sites, and I intend to do this. But doing so is not that simple.
I made a small foray into doing this with another vendor's Plesk-based hosting. There, when you create a new domain (within your contractual limits, typically 5 or 10 or 20), you get a completely separate file space (and database space) for each. Admin-users can login to each domain's file area (using FTPES and FireFTP :-) which are separate from each other, so security and role-based work is good. Another useful side effect is, with one subscription you can get both TEST- and a PRODUCTION- Drupal sites completely independent of each other, as long as you stay within your contractual limits of disk space (etc).
The Cyon cPanel site works differently. There, "multiple domains" are implemented with a "parking / addon" concept. In other words, they simply allow you to have multiple domains and sub-domains pointing back into the same area, and the control panel seems to do nothing more than adjust the Apache config file and create a sub-directory. But there is only one file space area (public_html) shared by all sites and potential admin users, although you can isolate specific sub-directories.
While Drupal supports multisite installations (http://drupal.org/node/43816), I'm still trying to figure out how to get both TEST- and PRODUCTION- versions at the same time without contradicting myself. This includes related topics like how to do the associated URL rewriting.
While this situation isn't necessarily bad nor anyone's fault, I wish I already had this info before I picked a vendor. Well, I'll keep you informed of my ongoing configuration adventures.
Dev vs. Prod
On Cyon, I use different Drupal installations for Dev and Prod - just in different sub-directories pointing to different databases. Since I'm the only Admin dealing with Drupal, there is no problem. Only select users get a link to the Dev version for early testing.
I've been on two other hosts so far in the US - both based on cPanel - and found the same setup for multiple domains as at Cyon. So your description of truly separate domain spaces sounds very nice and something I had not considered before.
There is always the 60 days money-back guarantee.
Name of the plesk-based hosting company?
John,
After the second complete outage this week-end at Cyon within 11 months (web site and mail traffic down), we are moving away from Cyon ASAP. The new hosting company should also provide support on week-ends, and they don't have to be a Swiss company.
Could you please share the name of the plesk-based hosting company you mentioned earlier? Just want to explore all the options.
Cheers,
Gerald
Re: Name
Yes, it's YourSite Hosting in Graubünden: http://yoursite.ch
I first signed up with them, as they are quite inexpensive.
But they don't have a login mode for Drush, which is the driver of this topic.
Other than lacking this feature, their service has been good and reliable.
Sorry for interrupting
I have maybe an other alternative for this thread. (I know you has found your solution, but I think is an enrichment)
Do somebody of you know linode?
It seems to be an interesting option, with good service.
Have a look to it, and comment it, please.
http://www.linode.com/
Re - Linode
It may look good, but they are not located in Switzerland.
Let's keep this discussion limited to Swiss-based ISP's.
Thanks.
I was just reading this
I was just reading this thread, I don't know if you already found a host but anyway this might be helpful for other users.
I have several drupal websites running on infomaniak http://www.infomaniak.ch/
They are pretty serious, the support is excellent and they have an ecology charter.
I also used it for french clients for middle size projects as i couldn't find any host able to offer the same quality.
But now they opened offices in belgium and france http://www.infomaniak.be http://www.infomaniak.fr
Let's hope they can keep the same level, so far i have nothing to say.
Your requirements look quite specific, I don't know if this could work for you,
but for the others it's a really good choice if what you need is a reliable shared hosting.
Never use infomaniak for drupal
Don't use infomaniak.
- no ssh access
- no sftp
- time limit 10 seconde (you can't use backup and migrate)
- MySQL only accessible with PHPMyAdmin (not from your computer with your IDE, terminal, sequel Pro, ..)
- 1 domaine only
- expensive
With infomaniak you are sure to do the wrong choice.
I am also currently located
I am also currently located in Switzerland but have absolutely no intent to move the server here. The US is a much safer heaven in case of trouble and providers here are expansive and don't give 24 hours support like my US provider does.