I'm looking at the Amazon EC for a small Linux hosting setup of up to a dozen site that I want decent performance for standard PHP/MySQL sites. I would like opinions about the value-for-money of Amazon's service when considering:
speed of response/page load ...
cost ...
ease of setup/maintenance...
... in comparison to other similar priced Linux VPS hosting setups.
I understand scalability is a big bonus with Amazon, but I'm more interested in the above 3 factors.
Amazon EC2 / cloud is mostly relevant if you need on-demand, scalable infrastructure. Your analysis seems to be more of a "what's in the box" query, which is more relevant to a VPS vs. VPS analysis.
But since you ask:
1) Speed: It's a bit like asking how long is a piece of string... Are you interested in IO, BW, inter-server comms etc.? Anyway, with EC2 you are paying for a box that's as large as you need. So in theory any problems with the physical speed of the box can be alleviated by just procuring larger EC2 hardware.
2) Cost: Linked to item number 1. Need a really big box and you'll be paying several dollars per hour. We actually run a relatively large business using only the 'Small' box instances, which cost us about 10 cents/hr. In general EC2 may have a higher annual cost than a fixed term VPS lease (which makes sense, cause EC2 is about on-demand infrastructure and not fixed infrastructure).
3) Setup: My personal opinion is that EC2 can be a challenge to get used to on first contact. It may also require some understand of security (pub/priv keys) and scripting. But once understood, it's actually a pretty neat infrastructure to use and maintain.
We actually had a recent set of blog entries that may be of interest:
http://blog.labslice.com/2010/11/cloud-vs-vps-vs-shared-hosting.html
http://blog.labslice.com/2010/11/when-is-cloud-suitable-for-basic.html
http://blog.labslice.com/2010/11/why-your-business-really-needs-cloud.html
Related
Is cloud hosting the way to go? Or is there something better that delivers fast page loads?
The reason I ask is because I run a buddypress site on a bluehost dedicated server, but it seems to run slow at most times of the day. This scares me because at the moment the sites not live and I'm afraid when it gets traffic it'll become worse and my visitors will lose interest. I use Amazon Cloud to handle all my media, JS, and CSS files along with a catching plugin, but it still loads slow at times.
I feel like the problem is Bluehost, because I visit other sites running buddypress and their sites seem to load instantly. Im not web hosting savvy so can someone please point me in the right direction here?
The hosting choice depends on many factors such as technical requirements, growth rates, burst rates, budgets and more.
Bigger Hardware
To scale up hosting operation, your first choice is often just using a more powerful server, VPS, or cloud instance. The point is not so much cloud vs. dedicated but that you simply bring more compute power to the problem. Cloud can make scaling up easier - often with a few clicks.
Division of Labor
The next step often is division of labor. You offload database, static content, caching or other items to specific servers or services. For example, you could offload static content to a CDN. You could a dedicated database.
Once again, cloud vs non-cloud is not the issue. The point is to bring more resources to your hosting problems.
Pick the Right Application Stack
I cannot stress enough picking the right underlying technology for your needs. For example, I've recently helped a client switch from a Apache/PHP stack to a Varnish/Nginx/PHP-FPM stack for a very business Wordpress operation (>100 million page views/mo). This change boosted capacity by nearly 5X with modest hardware changes.
Same App. Different Story
Also just because you are using a specific application, it does not mean the same hosting setup will work for you. I don't know about the specific app you are using but with Drupal, Wordpress, Joomla, Vbulletin and others, the plugins, site design, themes and other items are critical to overall performance.
To complicate matter, user behavior is something to consider as well. Consider a discussion form that has a 95:1 read:post ratio. What if you do something in the design to encourage more posts and that ratio moves to 75:1. That means more database writes, less caching, etc.
In short, details matter, so get a good understanding of your application before you start to scale out hosting.
A hosting service is part of the solution. Another part is proper server configuration.
For instance this guy has optimized his setup to serve 10 million requests in a day off a micro-instance on AWS.
I think you should look at your server config first, then shop for other hosts. If you can't control server configuration, try AWS, Rackspace or other cloud services.
just an FYI: You can sign up for AWS and use a micro instance free for one year. The link I posted - he just optimized on the same server. You might have to upgrade to a small server because Amazon has stated that micro is only to handle spikes and sustained traffic.
Good luck.
My web application requires as little lag as possible. I have tried hosting it on a dedicated server, but users on the other side of world have complained about latency issues.
So I am considering using CDN or Amazon services.... would either help resolve this?
The application uses a lot of AJAX, so latency can be an issue.
Amazon's Cloudfront, part of the Amazon Web Services (AWS) that you can purchase, is a CDN (Content Delivery Network) -- so asking whether to use Amazon or "a CDN" strikes me as a weird question, akin to asking whether you should drink Coke or "a soda" (given that Coke is "a soda"). Rather you should ask "should I use Amazon or another CDN?" just like you'd ask "should I drink Coke or another soda?".
Your decision among CDNs must be based on many parameters - cost, reliability, convenience, speed, and so forth. Unfortunately I have no first-hand experience of CloudFront; however, on paper, it seems particularly simple to use (especially if you're already using other AWS components, since getting data e.g. from S3 to CloudFront is fast and cheap indeed;-), and reasonably priced (based on usage). But I have no experience about its uptime record or delivery speed.
A content delivery network is a great idea to speed up delivery of static content (images, javascript, etc). You could even use this in combination with a dedicated server if you want.
You may also consider using a tool such as YSlow to analyze what may be causing your latency issues.
A CDN will only improve the performance of your static content -- if your Ajax code requires active content, then it won't help for that.
Amazon AWS might help, but it depends on the details of your application. Amazon isn't particularly well-known for delivering a low-latency solution.
Most apps that require low latency end up addressing the issue from many directions. A combination of a CDN and dedicated servers is certainly one approach. One key there is choosing the right data center for your servers (a low-latency hub).
In case it might help, I wrote a book about this subject: Ultra-Fast ASP.NET, which includes a discussion of client-side issues, hardware infrastructure, CDNs, caching, and many other issues that can impact latency.
I am trying to compare cloud computing (on EC2) against traditional hosting on the following grounds to determine whether any of these features present unique benefits in the world of cloud computing versus more traditional hosting strategies:
Real-time monitoring
Server virtualization
Deployment automation
High performance computing
On-demand elasticity
As far as I can see, (1) monitoring is just as easy in both areas; (2) server virtualization is also present in both areas thanks to server farms which allow traditional hosts to beef up resources at will - and of course the same applies in the cloud; (3) deployment can be equally automated in both areas since the same tools often can be applied to both; (4) in the area of high performance computing maybe you get an extra boost from the cloud theoretically but I'm not so sure - you have to pay for that boost whether it's the cloud or not; (5) elasticity is the only real benefit that i can see of moving to the cloud - resources can be pumped up at the flick of a switch.
So my question is, is this really the only benefit of cloud computing from this list that offers a real benefit over traditional hosting or is my analysis flawed?
The main difference here is the cost model. While it's true you can gain all of the same benefits from your list with both Cloud Computing and traditional hosting, you pay up front for traditional hosting. You have to buy and maintain your own servers, while cloud computing allows you to pay a variable cost.
This is the reason cloud computing is so attractive for startup companies.
Not only do you have elasticity, but you have, in theory at least, a greater total amount of resources available than you could have with any static hosting solution.
Also, a side effect of elasticity is decreased electricity usage, which may or may not be a factor for you.
The company I work for is getting ready to move from self-hosting to a cloud provider (EC2). One thing I am greatly looking forward to is not having to worry about managing hardware. I don't need to worry about lead time for ordering parts. The need to have spare parts on-hand to cover unexpected hardware failures is gone. I don't need to worry about UPS or any power. We aren't big enough for cooling to be a concern... but now we never will have to worry about that either.
Depending on your own datacenter costs, a cloud computing platform can be much cheaper, as you don't need anybody to manage physical devices. Cloud services can provide bulk computing resources at likely a lower cost than you can provide if you bought the machines and hooked them up yourself.
Assuming your "traditional hosting" involves a single server, there is a very real benefit to high-performance computing in cloud / grid environments. Specifically, virtually unlimited performance, since you can have n cores working at the same time, whereas with a single server, you are limited by the maximum server capacity.
To put it more clearly, if the most powerful computer in the world is a 1000 - core system with 20 terabytes of RAM, then that's the most power you could have on a hosted server. However, a cloud consisting of 100 of these machines could do 100x the work in almost the same amount of time.
Additionally, it's generally less expensive (financially) to distribute work across multiple smaller machines than it is to get one powerful system capable of doing the same work.
And if you'd like to talk about disaster recovery....clouds can be geographically distributed, meaning if a tornado rips your data center out of the ground, plucks the server into little shards of metal and plastic, and embeds them in telephone poles...you experience a slight dip in your performance because your other 99 servers are still operating.
Elasticity of the computing, storage and network capacities is just a feature. Yet, it brings a huge number of economical benefits for the companies. For example, by implementing a Cloud Bursting scenario a small SaaS company could easily and cheaply handle traffic and usage spikes that might take an expensive hosted solution down.
Elasticity is only useful if you have a problem that can be solved horizontally. For example a web server to serve a static site, if the load increases, add more web servers to server the exact same content. On the other hand, even a simple blog site breaks under that scenario as comments entered into one server's database are not reflected in the other machines.
The resources to scale is not the same thing as the ability to scale. Cloud computing will not solve scalability issues with your application.
A good example of this is a video hosting site: using AWS to deliver the videos results in a disappointing experience since the EC2 cannot deliver the I/Ops necessary to deliver video. Throwing more machines at the problem won't solve the issue with how data gets from disk to network. (Yes I'm aware of the ridiculously expensive high-iops instances)
I have an application that takes days to process data. Is there a service that would let me run my application on powerful computers?
I'm not running a website or a web service. This is taking lots and lots of data files, running them through a big custom application, and outputting a result.
It takes days on my PC and it's something that needs to be done every once in a while, but not continuously.
Cost isn't really an issue, in the sense that my company will pay for it, but of course it should be cheaper than buying a big-ass machine ourselves.
Have you considered Amazon EC2? You pay by the hour for what you use. No more, no less. You could event rent many servers at once to split the work load.
I'm not sure if that meets your requirement of "powerful computers", because they're just average servers, but at least it will give you a pay-as-you-go solution for running the program off of your own computer.
Amazon's EC2 Service is an excellent solution for your needs. You only pay for the time you use, and you can scale up to as many machines as you need.
From their information:
Elastic – Amazon EC2 enables you to increase or decrease capacity within minutes, not hours or days. You can commission one, hundreds or even thousands of server instances simultaneously. Of course, because this is all controlled with web service APIs, your application can automatically scale itself up and down depending on its needs.
Flexible – You have the choice of multiple instance types, operating systems, and software packages. Amazon EC2 allows you to select a configuration of memory, CPU, and instance storage that is optimal for your choice of operating system and application. For example, your choice of operating systems includes numerous Linux distributions, Microsoft Windows Server and OpenSolaris.
If your application is not parallel, you won't get many advantages by running it in a "big machine", unless the bottleneck is in the virtual memory swapping. Even the Top500 supercomputers are not essentially faster than any PC for sequential workloads.
If your application can exploit parallelism maybe you could use your company's existent resources more efficiently than just deploying it in one and only pc. If you have a few dozens of computers, you could set up a loosely coupled heterogeneous cluster (or local grid, terminology changes with fashion).
I recommend CPUsage.
It is a "startup" in grid computing.
It's speciality is that any individual can join to the grid with spare cpu cycles. That makes the grid management cheap, thus the grid usage prices are also very cheap.
They have an API which if you integrate into your program, it will be able to run on the system.
I have been doing some catching up lately by reading about cloud hosting.
For a client that has about the same characteristics as StackOverflow (Windows stack, same amount of visitors), I need to set up a hosting environment. Stackoverflow went from renting to buying.
The question is why didn't they choose cloud hosting?
Since Stackoverflow doesn't use any weird stuff that needs to run on a dedicated server and supposedly cloud hosting is 'the' solution, why not use it?
By getting answers to this question I hope to be able to make a weighted decision myself.
I honestly do not know why SO runs like it does, on privately owned servers.
However, I can assume why a website would prefer this:
Maintainability - when things DO go wrong, you want to be hands-on on the problem, and solve it as quickly as possible, without needing to count on some third-party. Of course the downside is that you need to be available 24/7 to handle these problems.
Scalability - Cloud hosting (or any external hosting, for that matter) is very convenient for a small to medium-sized site. And most of the hosting providers today do give you the option to start small (shared hosting for example) and grow to private servers/VPN/etc... But if you truly believe you will need that extra growth space, you might want to count only on your own infrastructure.
Full Control - with your own servers, you are never bound to any restrictions or limitations a hosting service might impose on you. Run whatever you want, hog your CPU or your RAM, whatever. It's your server. Many hosting providers do not give you this freedom (unless you pay up, of course :) )
Again, this is a cost-effectiveness issue, and each business will handle it differently.
I think this might be a big reason why:
Cloud databases are typically more
limited in functionality than their
local counterparts. App Engine returns
up to 1000 results. SimpleDB times out
within 5 seconds. Joining records from
two tables in a single query breaks
databases optimized for scale. App
Engine offers specialized storage and
query types such as geographical
coordinates.
The database layer of a cloud instance
can be abstracted as a separate
best-of-breed layer within a cloud
stack but developers are most likely
to use the local solution for both its
speed and simplicity.
From Niall Kennedy
Obviously I cannot say for StackOverflow, but I have a few clients that went the "cloud hosting" route. All of which are now frantically trying to get off of the cloud.
In a lot of cases, it just isn't 100% there yet. Limitations in user tracking (passing of requestor's IP address), fluctuating performance due to other load on the cloud, and unknown usage number are just a few of the issues that have came up.
From what I've seen (and this is just based on reading various blogged stories) most of the time the dollar-costs of cloud hosting just don't work out, especially given a little bit of planning or analysis. It's only really valuable for somebody who expects highly fluctuating traffic which defies prediction, or seasonal bursts. I guess in it's infancy it's just not quite competitive enough.
IIRC Jeff and Joel said (in one of the podcasts) that they did actually run the numbers and it didn't work out cloud-favouring.
I think Jeff said in one of the Podcasts that he wanted to learn a lot of things about hosting, and generally has fun doing it. Some headaches aside (see the SO blog), I think it's a great learning experience.
Cloud computing definitely has it's advantages as many of the other answers have noted, but sometimes you just want to be able to control every bit of your server.
I looked into it once for quite a small site. Running a small Amazon instance for a year would cost around £700 + bandwidth costs + S3 storage costs. VPS hosting with similar specs and a decent bandwidth allowance chucked in is around £500. So I think cost has a lot to do with it unless you are going to have fluctuating traffic and lots of it!
I'm sure someone from SO will answer it but "Isn't just more hassle"? Old school hosting is still cheap and unless you got big scalability problems why would you do cloud hosting?