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I'm currently going back and forth between hosting solutions and deciding what the best course of action is for hosting my apps web service and content. I've built an app that communicates with a PHP web service using a MySQL backend. The app will also deliver payloads of content the user would need to purchase, payloads are around 40-50MB in size.
I've been comparing the different hosting options and have come up with a shortlist that I'm hoping you guys can comment on and maybe share some of your own experiences. Shortlist is as follows for hosting my web service only:
- Amazon EC2: An instance with Amazon would host my PHP / MySQL web service. Major advantage is scalability and speed. Disadvantage is it can get pricey quite quickly and there is a bit of a learning curve to get it up.
- Google App Engine: Was pretty excited about this option when I read the following article: Google App Engine As Back End For iPhone Apps | Games from Within Until I got to the part where it states GAE doesn't support PHP. Unless you use a special version of Quercus for executing PHP scripts. And even when you do get Quercus running your PHP scripts, GAE doesn't support MySQL - you need to use their App Engine datastore which will involved having to rewrite my PHP scripts to work with that datastore.
- Shared Hosting (OneandOne.co.uk for example): Even though I know this option will work as I've used it in the past with websites I've built, scalability is probably my biggest worry with shared hosting. However the other voice in my head is arguing that if the app does require that I scale up, then I'll set up an Amazon EC2 instance and redirect my web service URL to point to the EC2 instance.
The three solutions mentioned above are for hosting my web service only, I've decided that going with Amazon S3 for hosting all my media assets (payloads of content etc) makes the most sense as it's quick and the price plans are decent.
What do you guys think? What are you using for your apps? Has anyone started off with shared hosting and then scaled up to a service like Amazon AWS before?
Another scalable choice would be linode.com . You can scale just like Amazon EC2. And its pricing is much more predictable. They both belong to the VPS category.
The most notable feature of linode is actually technical support. I typically get a response for technical questions within minutes, regardless of the hour of the day. Other than that, you can resize your disk or upgrade via merely a reboot.
I wouldn't count on GAE mainly because I don't want my infrastructure to be locked in. Once you wrote an app based on GAE, it'll be quite difficult to move to other infrastructure because typical VPS providers and Amazon EC2 don't provide similar web frameworks.
Thanks for the feedback! I've taken a look at Linode and Hostgator and both look great, I'll have a deeper look to do a proper comparison. Loving that Linode has a datacenter here in London as my app's main target audience is the UK.
What linux distro did you guys go with? Ubuntu seems to be the most popular. LAMP is pretty much all I'll need to be set up so I would imagine Ubuntu would be the safe bet to go with?
Unless you have some code base to target redhat derivatives, ubuntu will be the way to go. Use LTS versions. It's a lot easier to configure and install software.
Thanks for the feedback! I've taken a look at Linode and Hostgator and both look great, I'll have a deeper look to do a proper comparison. Loving that Linode has a datacenter here in London as my app's main target audience is the UK.
What linux distro did you guys go with? Ubuntu seems to be the most popular. LAMP is pretty much all I'll need to be set up so I would imagine Ubuntu would be the safe bet to go with?
Thanks again!
I recommend the latest stable version of Debian because it uses the least amount of memory with its default install (only about 40 MB of RAM). Ubuntu uses around 70 MB and CentOS uses about 125 MB. When it comes to VPS hosting, the amount of RAM you're guaranteed is almost always the most important factor.
With Linode, you can get a VPS for $20 a month that provides 512 MB of RAM. If the OS only uses 40 MB, that leaves you with ~470 MB for Apache and MySQL, which is plenty.
I also realize you can tweak any distro to get its resource usage to about the same base level but I personally don't want to spend hours doing that.
Great stuff thanks for the advice! I've decided to go with Linode, got myself the $20 p/m 512 RAM package. I'm new to setting up a VPS so I've decided to go with Ubuntu server as that's what Linode recommends, plus all the documentation assumes you're using Ubuntu. When I'm a bit more Linux-savvy I'll definitely give your advice a go, kmk. :)
Thanks again for the help guys! Everything has gone smoothly so far setting it up! :)
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Tony
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The most notable feature of linode is actually technical support. I typically get a response for technical questions within minutes, regardless of the hour of the day. Other than that, you can resize your disk or upgrade via merely a reboot.
I wouldn't count on GAE mainly because I don't want my infrastructure to be locked in. Once you wrote an app based on GAE, it'll be quite difficult to move to other infrastructure because typical VPS providers and Amazon EC2 don't provide similar web frameworks.
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0 • Off Topic Insightful Disagree Dislike Like AwesomeWhat linux distro did you guys go with? Ubuntu seems to be the most popular. LAMP is pretty much all I'll need to be set up so I would imagine Ubuntu would be the safe bet to go with?
Thanks again!
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0 • Off Topic Insightful Disagree Dislike Like AwesomeWith Linode, you can get a VPS for $20 a month that provides 512 MB of RAM. If the OS only uses 40 MB, that leaves you with ~470 MB for Apache and MySQL, which is plenty.
I also realize you can tweak any distro to get its resource usage to about the same base level but I personally don't want to spend hours doing that.
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0 • Off Topic Insightful Disagree Dislike Like AwesomeThanks again for the help guys! Everything has gone smoothly so far setting it up! :)
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Application Hosting | Cloud Computing | QuickBooks Hosting
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