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Ask HN: Where do you host your webapp?

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Re: Ask HN: Where do you host your webapp?

#111

Post by limmeau »

jasonkester wrote: post #75
andrewvc wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Depends on where you live, but your house doesn't have redundant connections and service contracts to fix them ASAP. Your home net connection may be reliable, now, but if something bad happens it could be down for days, not hours.

When you're starting out, your service can, quite frankly, be down for an entire day and it won't kill you. Once you've got enough traction that downtime could be a money-losing issue, you can step up. But let's be realistic. Plenty of real businesses host their public site from their own office. At least, several of the startups I've worked for have their own server closet. Many of them don't have redundant internet…

Depends on the business. I wouldn't outsource, say, my bookkeeping to a startup web company whose servers I notice to be unreachable for a longer amount of time.

Re: Ask HN: Where do you host your webapp?

#112

Post by visava »

wizard_2 wrote: post #106
visava wrote: post #74

I am currently using 2 Linode 512 MB servers for a simple free application. One of my Linode got hacked recently. But for another paid app I am exploring other options like PEER1 for managed Security such as IDS and Managed Firewall / Load balancer. It would cost significantly more than ($600 - $1200) Still not sure whether I should be managing my own security using tools such as OSSEC/Snort or outsource it. What are…

Do you mind sharing about how you got hacked?

Linode guys contacted me that my server was being used to carry out ssh brute force attacks. I saw that somebody had created a user named test on my Linode. I think it might be related to postfix or dovecot. After I stopped those services so far there have been no problems. The other services I have running are Apache, Tomcat and ssh.

Re: Ask HN: Where do you host your webapp?

#113

Post by startupcto »

mark_l_watson wrote: post #97
startupcto wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Heroku is horribly slow, I wouldn't recommend it. Go with Linode, slice host or Rackspace cloud

I have seen this comment before, but I believe it is only valid for free accounts which get swapped out after a short period of no incoming requests. I think that for any paid plan, your app is always loaded so there is no loading request delay. You might want to give it another try with the lowest cost plan and see if your results are different.

Yes I'm referring to the free plan. I don't get it, why let trial users try with a subpar offering, it really is bad for "showing off" what Heroku is. I would put free trials at 30 or 60 days limit and give trial users something to talk about.

Re: Ask HN: Where do you host your webapp?

#114

Post by pbhjpbhj »

andrewvc wrote: post #68
jasonkester wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In two years of self-hosting, we had a few minor downtime instances, but nothing to do with the DSL: http://expatsoftware.com/articles/2007/08/redundant-is-never... You run the same risks hosting at home as you do in a datacenter. Things can go down and it's your job to put them back up. There's no greater chance of the ISP cutting off a Business DSL line that happens to point to a residence than to a business downto…

Depends on where you live, but your house doesn't have redundant connections and service contracts to fix them ASAP. Your home net connection may be reliable, now, but if something bad happens it could be down for days, not hours.

>Depends on where you live, but your house doesn't have redundant connections and service contracts to fix them ASAP.

Might not be a problem if you can pick up the server and relocate it to another DSL terminal (and re-point your DNS). Indeed a home based server might be more robust, line goes down or electric is off then move the server. YMMV a lot.

Re: Ask HN: Where do you host your webapp?

#115

Post by petercooper »

buro9 wrote: post #9

Linode. Found their machines to be faster than Slicehost, the service to be superb, they have datacenters around the world that you can select to be your location (I chose London, UK as my users are here), and recently they upgraded the RAM for free in all VMs they run. Hosting with them has been a delight. Slicehost are a very close 2nd in my opinion, but Linode are #1 currently.

I used SoftLayer for a few years. They're a great dedicated server provider. Perhaps even the best in unmanaged. But.. I downgraded to Linode to save some money and was amazed at how performant even their small VPSes are. I could run what I ran on a $200 box at SoftLayer for about $80 spanning 2 VPSes at Linode, no trouble.

Re: Ask HN: Where do you host your webapp?

#116

Post by petercooper »

avar wrote: post #51
DrJokepu wrote: post #45

I wonder if anyone could recommend a VPS service that runs Windows (too)?

It might be cost-effective to just buy a Linux VPS and run Windows on it with VirtualBox. You'd take a performance hit, but maybe it wouldn't matter that much.

Wow. I can't believe that idea has never crossed my mind..! (I'm not being sarcastic.) Do you do this? A blog post or two about this and how it's worked out for you would be awesome reading.

Re: Ask HN: Where do you host your webapp?

#117

Post by petercooper »

mrkurt wrote: post #93
meroliph wrote: post #49

If it really needs to scale: AWS EC2 For DNS: Dnsmadeeasy. For low latency content delivery: Akamai For dirt cheap makeshift content delivery: several servers from 478east For servers that need lots of RAM(>24GB) on the cheap: webnx

Here's a general rule of thumb: If you're paying for Akamai, you're paying too much. :)

What does this mean? That Akamai commonly provide free services to high profile, high traffic sites that need their levels of throughput? Or..?

Re: Ask HN: Where do you host your webapp?

#120

Post by terrellm »

I use Engine Yard for an e-commerce Rails app. Deployment is simple with a post commit hook. I simply commit and push to Github and the rest is done. You are on your own unless you fork over at least $250/month for a support plan though.

I've used Heroku for smaller Rails and Sinatra apps.

For my Windows Dedicated running some .NET apps and a Linux VPS for a few Wordpress blogs, I use Liquid Web. I feel they are better than most hosts as far as speed, support, and reliability but not yet a Rackspace.

I use Amazon Cloudfront for content delivery and S3 for backups for all of these sites.

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