Recently I stumbled across mongoDB, couchDB etc.
I am hoping to have a play with this type of database and was wondering how much access to the hosting server one needs to get it running.
If anyone has any knowledge of this, I would love to know whether it can be set up to work when your app is hosted via a 'normal' hosting company.
I use Mongo, and so I'm really only speaking for Mongo, but your typical web hosting environment wouldn't allow you to set up your own database. You'd want root-level (admin) access to the server to set up Mongo. To get that, you'd want something like a VPS or a dedicated server.
However, to just play around with Mongo, I'd recommend downloading the binary for your OS and giving it a run. Their JavaScript shell interface is very easy to use.
Hope that helps!
Tim
Various ways:-
1) There are many free mongodb hosting available. Try DotCloud.com. Many others here http://www.cloudhostingguru.com/mongoDB-server-hosting.php
2) If you are asking specifically about shared hosting, the answer is mostly no. But, if you could run mongoDB somewhere else (like from the above link) and want to connect from your website, it is probably possible if your host allows your own extensions (for php)
3) VPS
How about virtual private server hosting? The host gives you what looks like an entire machine... hard drive, CPU, memory. You get to install whatever you want, since it's your (virtual) machine.
In terms of MongoDB like others have said, you need the ability to install the MongoDB software and run it (normally as a daemon). However, hosted services are just beginning to appear, such as MongoHQ. Perhaps something like this might be appropriate once its out of beta (or if you request an invite).
It appears hosted CouchDB services are also popping up, such as couch.io or Cloudant. I personally have no experience with Couch so I can be less certain than with Mongo, but I'd imagine that again to run it yourself, you'd need to install the software (and thus require root access).
If you don't currently have a VPS or dedicated server (or the cloud-based versions of the aforementioned), perhaps moving your data out to a dedicated hosted service would be an ideal way to go to avoid the pain and expense of changing your hosting setup.
You can host your application and your database in the different hosting servers.
For MongoDB you can use mongohq or mongolab with space 0.5 Gb for free
Related
I am running a local ElasticSearch server from my own home, but would like access to the content from outside. Since I am on a dynamic IP and besides that do not feel comfortable opening up ports to the outside, I would like to rent a VPS somewhere, setup ElasticSearch and let this server be a read only copy of the one I have at home.
As I understand it, this should be possible - however I have been unsuccessful at creating any usable version that lets another server be a read-only version of my home ES-server.
Can anyone point me to a piece of information or create a guide, that would help me to set this up? I am rather known to ES-usage, however my setup-skills are still vague.
As I understand it, this should be possible
It might be possible with some workarounds, but it's definitely not built for that:
One cluster needs to be in one physical region; mainly because of latency and the stability of the network connection.
There are no read-only versions. You could only allow read access to a node (via a reverse proxy or the security plugin), but that's only a workaround.
How would I go about setting up a backup for heroku downtimes set up on a vps like linode? (using nginx/unicorn)
Essentially very simply, but also with a whole world of hurt.
Simply create an instance of your application of said VPS.
Then you need to ensure that you're able to flip your DNS from Heroku to said VPS without waiting for a TTL to expire, or someway of letting the world know your application has moved.
Then figure out a reliable way of ensuring that the code on both environments is exactly the same, and works on both different server setups
Then figure out how you can keep the data up to date in both environments so that when you do need to flip, the data will be the same in both environments.
Then you need to figure out a way to remind yourself to keep this secondary VPS up to date from a server management point of view. Software updates, security patches etc etc.
Then you need to figure out a way that you can notified when Heroku is down 24/7
Then you need to hope that when Heroku is down that Linode isn't
... or just accept that any host will go down, and it can cost a hell of a lot of money to ensure that your site doesn't. To be honest, it's probably better for you to look at some sort of hosting setup that allows redundancy and failover across several locations (which won't be cheap)
There are third party services which provide the ability to keep your site (parts of) up if your server goes down - At least it appears to the user that your site is up but it's not working properly behind the scenes. CloudFlare is one such service. It sits in front of your site/application and performs magic (quite simply). It works with static/dynamic sites - and if your server goes offline then they are able to serve static parts of your site. See http://support.cloudflare.com/kb/what-do-the-various-cloudflare-settings-do/what-does-enabling-cloudflare-offline-browsing-do
Lots of time, We build a web application in our own personal system, with a local server that comes in packages like WAMP, XAMPP. But, the configuration we have on our system hardly matches 100% with the server where we host that application. This adds up to the debugging complexity a lot. Specially when the server you host is configured to hide the errors. Relying on error logs to debug everything, is a uncomfortable options, which is also not guaranteed to be available.
What are the measures we can take to minimise such differences?
You guys might say, it depends on web server as the configuration might be different from server to server. Even in this case, or shared hosting, I would like to know of the pointers to take, before hosting a application or even start building it.
We use a staging server that is a clone of our deployment server. Running code by the staging server (using version control) is both fast and a reliable way to ensure that the new code/code changes work as expected on the live environment.
That said, we use Ubuntu servers and I've opted to use Ubuntu as my development environment as well, makes stuff so much easier.
I've been using DreamHost for a long time - mostly for blogs and such.
But now that I'm developing web apps, I think it's time to switch. One reason is that DreamHost limits the number of emails I can send per hour/day. But I also don't see any startups using DreamHost, which is another sign.
What should I switch to? I haven no server experience at all besides my time with dreamhost.
I'd recommend you get a VPS with a decent hosting company.
Pay the extra for a control panel (CPanel or Plesk are the main ones usually) so you have an easy way to add services, create virtual hosts and configure dns.. will save you some time.
You'll also get root access to it so you can do anything you want after that - including breaking it.
EC2 is a good option, depending on your budget. You can get the equivalent of a dreamhost shared account, but with root, the price depending on the services you select. You can also go much, much better if you have the money. A lot of startups are starting to use it, it does make many things much easier.
There is some server work though. There are "point and click" server AMI's out there, but you will have to learn some server tasks a little beyond FTP (or SSH if you used it on dreamhost).
Good luck! I am in the process of switching from dreamhost to EC2 for most of my development. I'll still use dreamhost for a couple of things here and there, just no actual applications.
I'm considering moving a number of small client sites to an unmanaged VPS hosting provider. I haven't decided which one yet, but my understanding is that they'll give me a base OS install (I'd prefer Debian or Ubuntu), an IP address, a root account, SSH, and that's about it.
Ideally, I would like to create a complete VM image of my configured setup and just ship those bits to the provider. Has anyone had any experience with this? I've seen Jeff talk about something like this in Coding Horror. But I'm not sure if his experience is typical. I suppose it also depends on the type of VM server used by the host.
Also, do such hosts provide reverse-DNS? That's kinda useful for sites that send out e-mails. I know GMail tends to bounce anything originating from a server without it.
Finally, I'd probably need multiple IP addresses as at least a couple of the sites have SSL protection which doesn't work with name-based virtual hosts. Has anyone run into trouble with multiple IPs through VPS? I wouldn't think so, but I've heard whisperings to the contrary.
Slicehost (referral link, if you so choose) offers reverse DNS, multiple IPs ($2/month/IP), Ubuntu/Debian (along with others). The only criteria it doesn't support is the ship-a-VM one, but it does let you clone VMs you've set up in their system via snapshots. You could thus set it up once, then copy that VM as many times as you like.
If that's a sacrifice you're willing to make, I highly recommend them - they've had great customer service the few times I've needed to contact them, decent rates, and a great admin backend.
I like XenPlanet, their prices seem to be comparable, but they also allow you to purchase extras like added disk space. Not sure if they let you buy additional bandwidth.
I have used them for a number of different machines and found their service to be very good.