Hey all! I really enjoyed this last meeting! Man, somebody sure gets around...I was searching for Drupal hosting and came across an old post from your Michigan days, Michael:
http://groups.drupal.org/node/5385
I'm looking for recommendations for Drupal hosting. I don't want to manage the server myself and ideally I'd like separate accounts for each client (ie shared hosting). However, a managed server would be feasible too.
Only two requirements:
- enough power for mid-sized Drupal sites (ie multiple sites with 15k visitors monthly, some videos and a lot of Views + Ubercart)
- SSH with SVN (Subversion) installed!
A2 looks pretty ideal, but wanted to see if there was any other input before I take the leap? Right now I've been with 1&1 hosting for a long time - a number of shared hosting accounts and now one cloud server (I don't recommend their cloud server service - brand new and not nearly ready for prime-time!).
Comments
VPS.net
I've been with VPS.net for a few months and have been happy with them so far. Definitely check them out.
I'm not exactly sure what you are looking for with managed hosting but.... you can either start with their templates or go for the Pro-Active Managed Support and they'll do most of it for you. They also include ISP Manager Pro and Komodo SSL certs for free, if you want them.
They're "node" concept is pretty neat. Getting slashdotted to death?. Just move the slider to the right to bump up the specs for a few days. Just last week they announced that each node will be bumped up from 256MB to 375MB- plus an additional 200MHz in CPU (600Mhz per node). Awesome.
As far as installing SVN on Ubuntu goes, it's pretty much just "sudo apt-get install subversion." (Or I bet they'd do it for you with the pro-support option I mentioned before.)
Neat
That is a neat plan.
I second the idea of a VPS, I think it will do just what you want. Don't worry if they have svn installed, like Scott says, it's easy to add when you have a service that gives root access.
I know several people who are using Linode and love them. I'll admit, when I was using them the tech support was really stellar (but that was 3 years ago).
If you're worried about being slashdotted then I would not recommend a VPS. Having been slashdotted a few times (it's happening right now actually) I can say that the only chance you have is if you have a ton of RAM or, ideally, multiple front-end nodes. You see, every TCP connection to your server takes resources (i.e. RAM). If you use something like nginx then the amount is small. With Apache it's a good bit above small. The immense number of simultaneous connections is so high that your server has to have a lot.
You need to plan in advance either by having plenty of capacity at all times, or the ability to scale on demand (automatically) or a very well-tuned and optimized environment. Or all three. All of these are costly.
The good news is, it doesn't sound like you're in that situation. :-)
And regarding videos, I strongly recommend putting them on an external service. I'm using S3 and Vimeo. S3 for downloadable versions and Vimeo for things I want to embed. The cost is so cheap it's ridiculous. (My bill from Amazon just came through and it was under $2) Vimeo is free unless you want embedded HD and then it's still cheap. You get to benefit from their expertise in their field and you can buy less server and bandwidth.
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Matthew Nuzum
newz2000 on freenode
Scale Automatically
I'm curious. What tools/techniques/services/setups would allow me to scale up automatically, without human intervention? I should know this sort of thing.
I bet you get slashdotted and dugg to death practically on a weekly basis, Matthew! Lucky.
Not too often
We only get it about 4-5 times a year but really we don't often notice it any more. This time it hurt because instead of linking to our website they linked to our Wiki. :-(
To answer your question, EC2 allows automatic scaling. It takes a good bit of work to set up and I've not actually done it though others in the org have. We use something like this for running software tests across many EC2 instances (I think that's the actual use case).
A wordpress friend of mine was telling me about Rack Space's "cloud sites". It's not cheap but it works more like a traditional shared hosting setup, which is definitely a plus for apps like drupal and wordpress.
What we do is have a database server with one or two front end nodes and then three or more proxying caches in front of that. We use Squid but nginx would work equally well. We've patched core to make it more cache friendly but there are modules that do this too. With this set up we don't notice a slashdotting and since our peak demands are very predictable we divert resources (via more front end caches) a couple weeks in advance.
So basically what we're doing is the other option I mentioned of just having a ton of resources available.
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Matthew Nuzum
newz2000 on freenode
Great recommendation
Looking at VPS.net now and really like what I see. What you mentioned, newz2000 about having root access to install SVN, is the part I'm wanting to stay away from. Can I manage my own server - yes. Do I want to take the time away from web development to learn how to - no. So the "Pro-Active Managed Support" Scott mentioned (looks like it adds $99 / month) might be well-worth the investment. That way someone else is hopefully responsible for upgrades, etc.
I'll give them a call and see what happens! Scott - if you have a referral link where you'll get a kickback - send it my way!
Great idea, Matthew, on using Vimeo and S3!
Thanks, guys!