Ask HN: Heroku or AWS or?

#1

Post by bryang » Wed, Mar 05, 2014, 12:52 AM UTC

I'm currently in the development phase of my new venture and looking to compare services. My site revolves around text tables and a very limited amount of images (none uploaded by users). I do NOT expect to have 50k users within 6 months of launch, but there is a possibility it may happen. Within a couple years however, I do hope to be in that 100k+ range.

So, what do you fine folks recommend?

Looking forward to hear your thoughts, thanks!!!

Re: Ask HN: Heroku or AWS or?

#2

Post by artellectual » Wed, Mar 05, 2014, 1:58 AM UTC

Start out with Heroku, so you don't have to waste time configuring and managing servers. You can learn all that stuff once you start to scale. Then move to something like Linode or Digital Ocean or cloud66.com

Re: Ask HN: Heroku or AWS or?

#3

Post by avenger123 » Wed, Mar 05, 2014, 2:37 AM UTC

artellectual wrote: post #2

Start out with Heroku, so you don't have to waste time configuring and managing servers. You can learn all that stuff once you start to scale. Then move to something like Linode or Digital Ocean or cloud66.com

Is it really that involved to manage your own server? Especially if you are starting out and its just one or two servers. There's so many good guides out there that I would say might be worthwhile to spend that time now.

Re: Ask HN: Heroku or AWS or?

#4

Post by z3bra » Wed, Mar 05, 2014, 2:57 AM UTC

Once you want to scale and go big, you might want to use AWS, until that moment it's a matter of how much you want to tweak the server.

SUper powers and full customization --- > LINODE Deploy + Deal with it acttitude to the server guys ----> Heroku

Re: Ask HN: Heroku or AWS or?

#5

Post by bliti » Wed, Mar 05, 2014, 3:30 AM UTC

avenger123 wrote: post #3

artellectual wrote: post #2

Start out with Heroku, so you don't have to waste time configuring and managing servers. You can learn all that stuff once you start to scale. Then move to something like Linode or Digital Ocean or cloud66.com

Is it really that involved to manage your own server? Especially if you are starting out and its just one or two servers. There's so many good guides out there that I would say might be worthwhile to spend that time now.

It does take time due to the security risks to be managed. But its not that much time and can be mostly automated. If the OP is new to server management then it might be a bit uphill.

Re: Ask HN: Heroku or AWS or?

#6

Post by bliti » Wed, Mar 05, 2014, 3:31 AM UTC

I would start on the free Heroku stack and if it grows then move it to a good webhost, then to a VPS, then to AWS (or your own boxes).

Re: Ask HN: Heroku or AWS or?

#7

Post by bryang » Wed, Mar 05, 2014, 3:35 AM UTC

bliti wrote: post #5

avenger123 wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it really that involved to manage your own server? Especially if you are starting out and its just one or two servers. There's so many good guides out there that I would say might be worthwhile to spend that time now.

It does take time due to the security risks to be managed. But its not that much time and can be mostly automated. If the OP is new to server management then it might be a bit uphill.

I am new to server management but I've got some much better dev guys on my side too. This is my mostly for my own research and seeing what the community thinks!

This is all super helpful as this is my first major undertaking.

Re: Ask HN: Heroku or AWS or?

#8

Post by avenger123 » Wed, Mar 05, 2014, 3:44 AM UTC

bliti wrote: post #5

avenger123 wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it really that involved to manage your own server? Especially if you are starting out and its just one or two servers. There's so many good guides out there that I would say might be worthwhile to spend that time now.

It does take time due to the security risks to be managed. But its not that much time and can be mostly automated. If the OP is new to server management then it might be a bit uphill.

Have you done any Django installations? I have a VPS with Ubuntu 12.04 and looking at how best to go about this? Currently looking at Chef.

Re: Ask HN: Heroku or AWS or?

#9

Post by gexla » Wed, Mar 05, 2014, 3:47 AM UTC

avenger123 wrote: post #3

artellectual wrote: post #2

Start out with Heroku, so you don't have to waste time configuring and managing servers. You can learn all that stuff once you start to scale. Then move to something like Linode or Digital Ocean or cloud66.com

Is it really that involved to manage your own server? Especially if you are starting out and its just one or two servers. There's so many good guides out there that I would say might be worthwhile to spend that time now.

There is, more so than Linode for example. EC2 isn't a hosting provider. The instances can just disappear and everything on that instance is gone. If you are going to host a site there and do it right, then you need to fire up multiple instances and wire them together. There are tools to help with this. For persistent data storage, there is EBS. There are also tools available to running your application across multiple servers. These tools also create more complexity and failure points. For example, I believe EBS has been the cause of sites going dark in past AWS outages. Then you have AWS challenges such as crap IO on the smaller instances and more cost / complexity for getting around that. Dealing with all this gets expensive for the "just starting out" stage. It's probably okay for the "middle" stage when you are getting a lot of growth and have the cash to spend.

If you are just starting out, it's best to go with a more conventional provider.

I'm not a guru with AWS or systems admin in general, but these are the sorts of issues I have run into in the past.

Re: Ask HN: Heroku or AWS or?

#10

Post by dirktheman » Wed, Mar 05, 2014, 7:59 AM UTC

gexla wrote: post #9

avenger123 wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it really that involved to manage your own server? Especially if you are starting out and its just one or two servers. There's so many good guides out there that I would say might be worthwhile to spend that time now.

There is, more so than Linode for example. EC2 isn't a hosting provider. The instances can just disappear and everything on that instance is gone. If you are going to host a site there and do it right, then you need to fire up multiple instances and wire them together. There are tools to help with this. For persistent data storage, there is EBS. There are also tools available to running your application across multip…

Yes, but on the other hand: if you pay for your mistakes now, things aren't that bad because you haven't got many users yet. If you're in the need of scaling things up you still have to figure out how AWS works. Who would you rather offend by downtime: 10 users while you're starting out, or 10,000 paying users a little down the road?

I highly recommend getting started with AWS now. They have a free tier (1 year) which you can use. Heck, you could play around with it, just using it for the company blog.

AWS is great in terms of autoscaling. True, the I/O isn't great, at least for the free tier (all the more reason to start now, while server load isn't that big yet). I wrote a blog post on starting out with AWS last year, check it out if you like.