G+_Jason Perry Posted January 2, 2018 Share Posted January 2, 2018 I really want to put up a website using a service like AWS or Digital Ocean. My main reason is for experience for other projects. Let me lead with I am not looking for someone to do all the leg work for me. I am looking for what others experiences are. Who here recommends what and what alternatives am I missing? Right now I am looking at the following questions. How these services work What you get What they cost and What are the implications for someone living outside the US Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
G+_Akira Yamanita Posted January 3, 2018 Share Posted January 3, 2018 I don’t have all the answers but AWS is a group of hosted services. It’s really customizable but you need an idea of what you need because there are so many levels and configurations that you can use. There is a free tier (for one year) that you can play around with. You can get a small Linux VM and some other services. You also need to have an idea of what the services are, although they’ve improved their menus a bit. EC2 is the service you’d want to run a VM. S3 can be used for a variety of things but it’s often used to host public data, like images on a website or maybe a video file that you don’t need to protect and don’t want to use up your hosting space for. The VMs need storage so you have to attach block storage. Smaller EC2 images may have some storage but others need to be given an allocation using EBS (Elastic Block Storage). Oh, and those things are billed as separate items so billing has a base cost plus usage. There are calculators out there to help. Like I said, it’s flexible but you have to manage everything. Digital Ocean has preconfigured “Droplets”, which is basically just a set of pre-defined VMs. Pick one and you’re up and running. You know what you’re getting and how much you’re paying. You’ll have similar experiences with RackSpace and Google Cloud Services, although neither are as simple as Digital Ocean and they have usage costs as well. Although I do run a public site on a VM, in general, I recommend getting a web hosting platform so that you don’t need to maintain it yourself. If you’re running a site that’s somewhat important, backup services could make restores one-click. Otherwise, I’d just suggest grabbing your configs and keeping the site in a git repository or something. Of course, it all depends on what your needs are and what you’re trying to accomplish. For a learning experience, I definitely recommend VMs. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
G+_Travis Hershberger Posted January 3, 2018 Share Posted January 3, 2018 Hosted App IE:Wordpress.com. No maintenance on your part, but no customization outside of what is already included in the app. More money than a VPS, but less than renting a dedicated server. Hosted: Your own web server, but limited to the web apps the hosting provider makes available to you. Cheap. VPS: Your own web server, you have root access and can install anything you like on it. Basically renting a virtual machine. Also cheap, a $2.50/month instance would be plenty. Dedicated Server: Your own server. These generally cost enough that you wouldn't consider them until you start to get 5-10 separate VPS instances, and then you'd consolidate them all on a dedicated server. You have full control of the server, generally picking an OS to start with. "Cloud" IE: Amazon EC2. These are a little different. They're like a VPS in that you're renting a virtual instance, but instead of being locked into a single hardware profile, you can change CPU/RAM/Storage on the fly. These are much more expensive than a VPS to start with, but are great for situations where you could have a need for greatly increased system specs on short notice. Netflix uses EC2 still, and I think they dynamically scale up and down according to demand. All major providers have data centers in different countries. You should be able to find one either in the country you live in or quite close. Most popular non-US based companies have offerings in Canada, Europe, Asia, and a few in Russia. An acquaintance ran a number of performance tests on different platforms in early 2016 if you're interested: mangolassi.it - ServerBear Performance Comparison of Rackspace, Digital Ocean, Linode and Vultr Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
G+_John Sullivan Posted January 3, 2018 Share Posted January 3, 2018 "putting up a website" can mean different things to different people. What exactly do you want your website to do? Are you looking for just a one page presence on the Web, or do you want to sell stuff? Do you need a way to accept credit card payments? Are you going to need a database to keep track of customers and orders? What are you going to use to design how the web page appears? Are you familiar with html and javascript? Are you comfortable FTP'ing your web files back and forth? If all this is more than you need right now, you might just start with a "webhosting" service. I had good luck with 1&1 (www.1and1.com) a few years ago when I setup a three page website for a friend who just needed to advertise their business, but not buy or sell via the web. They have a WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) webpage design program online, and I found it very easy to start by selecting one of their templates, then customizing it from there. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
G+_Jason Perry Posted January 3, 2018 Author Share Posted January 3, 2018 Akira Yamanita thanks, I am going to have to look into Rackspace and Google cloud. Personally, this is only for personal resources, so the winner is going to be the provider that is the cheapest for something a small handful of people are going to be using. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
G+_Jason Perry Posted January 3, 2018 Author Share Posted January 3, 2018 Travis Hershberger thanks, I am going to have to look at your colleagues site. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
G+_Akira Yamanita Posted January 3, 2018 Share Posted January 3, 2018 Jason Perry Travis Hershberger 's link reminded me that Linode deserves a specific mention. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
G+_Ben Reese Posted January 3, 2018 Share Posted January 3, 2018 The absolute cheapest VPS I've found is CloudAtCost. It's hosted Canada in a energy efficient data center (all solar powered, I believe) to keep their costs low. But they also over-provision their hosts to maximize profit. Check out the subreddit before purchasing https://www.reddit.com/r/CloudAtCost so you know what you're getting into. They're super cheap, but you get what you pay for. "Developer Cloud Pro 2" gives you 1GB RAM, 2 cores, and 2 IPs for $14 (USD). If you go the VPS route - regardless of the hosting provider, I'd recommend Vestacp. It's basically a Cpanel alternative that packages web hosting (with LetsEncrypt integration), databases, mail server... Then you can put your website(s) on that. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
G+_Jason Perry Posted January 3, 2018 Author Share Posted January 3, 2018 Ben Reese it's funny. I am sitting here in 15 hrs of darkness and a data center choose solar to offset their costs. it amazes me that solar can bring profitable in Canada. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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