Comments on: Server farm daydreams via Amazon.com

By: Michael Hampton

Michael Hampton — Thu, 27 Aug 2009 01:07:21 +0000

I long ago decided I didn’t want to worry about hosting other people’s web sites. Now I just lease a couple of boxes and a couple of VPSes from various places, and I’m much happier.

By: diego

diego — Sun, 23 Aug 2009 13:38:43 +0000

My mistake. I misinterpreted what Mike wanted. Feel free to delete my comments then. Sorry for the misunderstanding.

By: George Donnelly

George Donnelly — Sun, 23 Aug 2009 01:59:57 +0000

if Mike wants to set up a hosting company, none of those options really work for him.

Slicehost I don’t like after trying them bc it’s 64bit, so everything uses gobs more RAM than it does under 32 bit – so it turns out to be more expensive.

By: Kevin Dean

Kevin Dean — Sun, 23 Aug 2009 00:56:52 +0000

I would recommend against Slicehost, actually. They have a great reputation, but they were bought by Rackspace. Rackspace ALSO has a great reputation, but my experience with them wasn’t something I’d do myself, let alone recommend to others. Slicehost might never reflect Rackspace’s issues, but they might.

I’ll send you an e-mail about my recommendations. Depending on what you need specifically, it would change.

By: diego

diego — Sun, 23 Aug 2009 00:34:35 +0000

Maybe you should take a look at WebFaction. I was daydreaming myself. I was going to experiment with the Factor language and needed a host. As long as your software can listen in on a port, you can run it on their “shared hosting” plans. Full shell access included.

“Shared hosting” does not do them justice. They have a proprietary setup where it’s something between “shared” and VPS. More info. under “Scale as much as you need” here: http://www.webfaction.com/why-webfaction/

You can combine different shared accounts, do load balancing, and manage then within a single browser window.

I plan to take a small site I have on Heroku and moving it to WebFaction. They also have a blog post on shared hosting myths: http://blog.webfaction.com/3-myths-about-shared-hosting

SliceHost (VPS) is the one I would use if I were brave/smart enough to setup my own box: http://www.slicehost.com/

By: Mike Gogulski

Mike Gogulski — Sat, 22 Aug 2009 23:16:33 +0000

@Kevin: I keep looking at VPS plans and thinking: “Can’t I do this more cheaply with my own box in a colo?” You’re right, though. Got any VPS provider recommendations?

@George: I did say it was a daydream Started browsing around Amazon and these were the sort of items that came up. Sure, I don’t really need 2x8TB db/fileservers with 64GB of RAM each, but if I’m gonna dream, baby, I’m gonna dream big!

By: George Donnelly

George Donnelly — Sat, 22 Aug 2009 23:13:45 +0000

You don’t need to spend all that. Cisco? HP? Gah why throw your money away?

First, to get started, I think it’s best to lease servers.

But if you want to colo right off the bat, lease a 1/4 cab at a place that gives you ethernet drops. No need to get a router off the bat. If you do want one tho, get one of those HP ones, much cheaper and just as good.

Servers, go generic supermicro. Very cheap and good quality. I don’t remember the name of my old supplier right now but I can hunt it up if you like.

By: Kevin Dean

Kevin Dean — Sat, 22 Aug 2009 23:12:47 +0000

You’re talking about stepping up from a shared-hosting to running a cluster… sounds like you’re planning on geeking out more than getting work done.

A well-provisioned VPS will give you just as much uptime, bandwidth and reliability as coloing your own stuff. Full root without having to fuss with hardware failures and failed RAID cards.