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By tprevia on
Currently have website hosted on cheap web hosting during development, it is as expected slow. Launching new site soon and expect a pickup in traffic.
Got a package at Digital Ocean and told my drupal developer to use it. He responds that we should go with a managed hosting because with cloud we'll have a lot of work to do to set up the server and and maintain it. He also says if we go with a cloud solution we'll have to hire an administrator to handle the server.
I am a bit confused. I understand how a managed account would be easier I never thought that it would be that complicated to host on the Cload, especially since companies like Digital Ocean seem to have a set up assistant (thought I never saw a button for Drupal:)
Like the idea of being alble to ramp up servers with the Cload but don't like the idea hiring an administrator and having to deal with another person and cost associated with this. I guess another benefit of managed is the email provider solution they often have packaged.
Advice welcome.
Sorry if my questions are a bit newbie.
Nickolas
Comments
Here's a start
Here are some different types of hosting:
Shared hosting - the hosting provider sets up a powerful server, and puts several accounts on it. The exact setup of the server is in your provider's hands. Some hosts put just 8 accounts on a server, and sell it as "semi-dedicated". You pay for the privilege, but it suits some. Others put 4000 accounts on a server, and everything runs really slowly. Somewhere in between is a good number that is responsible rather than over-crowded, but does not require them to charge steep rates. There is no single number of accounts to fit onto a server - it depends on the server and how it's managed. Hosts vary enormously - some are more generous than others when it comes to the amount of memory PHP can use and so on. For Drupal, you want one with more generous limits.
VPS - The hosting provider divides a server into a number of "virtual" servers. You are using a slice of a bigger server, but you get your own RAM and disk space, you install your own operating system, software firewall, MySQL server, web server, etc.
VPS divide into "managed" and "unmanaged". With managed, the host will set it up for you, and install anything else you ask them to, and trouble-shoot for you. With unmanaged, you install Centos, Debian, Ubuntu, etc. out of the box, and then it's over to you.
Digital Ocean are basically an unmanaged VPS provider. They have the whole "cloud" label, which complicates things a little, but you still basically get an unmanaged VPS. That means you have to administer, secure, update and maintain the server yourself.
If you don't have the expertise to do this, and it's not part of what your site developer is agreeing to, then the developer is quite right. You would need to hire someone to do it for you. Or, go for either a managed VPS, or a non-overloaded shared host.
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^this
Yep. This is it in a nutshell.
Digital Ocean are great and cheap and powerful : BUT you need to be your own fully-qualified systems administrator, security analyst, backup monitor and maintenance guy.
Not even the one-click (well, short setup wizard) tool they provide will do any more than set it up once. There is much ongoing care and feeding needed to keep a server working, clean and safe and up to date. The wizards don't warn you about all the *next* steps involved in the responsibility you are taking on.
Those skills are *not* cheap and do take a long time to learn.
If you do not have those skills and the additional hours-per-month needed to dedicate to this - you truly are better off with a managed or partially-managed host that provides a control panel, andSLA and on-call troubleshooting.
.dan. is the New Zealand Drupal Developer working on Government Web Standards
From your experience,how many
From your experience,how many hours per month approximately would a system admin work on a server for the security,backups,maintenance etc?
I need to figure out if he does worth the money or change to a managed hosting provider.
That can of course be all
That can of course be all over the range, depending on the type, size, and importance of the site and services. Whether you hold information that would be a target (eg financial or personal info, or political significance), or that demands up-to-the day security patches (monthly is fine for almost all non-enterprise sites). Whether you would panic if the site was unresponsive for an hour or if it's OK to leave it for a weekend and get someone to fix it on Monday. And what it would mean to you if it all went away tomorrow.
For someone who thinks that their website is a vital asset to their business - a *minimum* retainer for having a professional admin on call would be 4 hours a month, just to keep an eye on things and resolve unexpected issues. And that means professional or semi-professional hourly rates, (excluding physical hosting costs). Yes, that makes even Acquia Cloud hosting look reasonably priced.
(That's only speaking to my personal level in the market : projects $50,000-$200,000)
If that's not in your budget, but you do care about your website, just go with a bigger, more generic fully-managed service that provides automated backups and a control panel and a helpdesk (and lots more things they don't even bother you about, like pro-active monitoring). They will be both cheaper *and* more effective at the job because they have the tools and experience and economy of scale.
But unfortunately an independant sysadmin who can sorta manage to set up a machine for you while charging anything competitive with the managed hosts is unlikely to be doing it well or consistently. If something eventually does go wrong, they are much more likely to be caught flat-footed.
The exception there would be if the hosting was provided by whoever actually builds and maintains your website itself. You get added value from the synergy there, so you should be able to pay whatever you feel comfortable with, and shifting to fully-managed may not be especially cost-effective in the long run.
All just opinions here, and it's a huge discussion that can be had, as scoping websites could cover a huge range of scales.
.dan. is the New Zealand Drupal Developer working on Government Web Standards
how many hours per month
Depends on the server OS and what stack is being used (LAMP, MAMP, etc.)
(for CentOS, Apache, MySQL, PHP w/ cPanel)
Personally I work on a server about 1 minute per day for reading csf/ldf/backup reports. The $15 - $45 / month to cPanel is well worth it for security updates and server automation.
cPanel setup does take hours, but after setup and initial box tuning, there is very little done to a server.
Unless you're running half a dozen servers or more, I can't see having your own server admin, as it's easy enough to find a hosting firm who'll charge your ~$50 per month to do it.
Best,
Michael
Drupal Hosting
NIH Cancer Study: Supplemention with both vitamins and fenbendazole exhibited significant (P = 0.009) inhibition of tumor growth.
I think the best solution is
I think the best solution is managed hosting based on Digital Ocean.This is what Cloudways do.They provide managed hosting and you select as servers the Digital Ocean ones.
http://www.cloudways.com/en/drupal-cloud-hosting.php
Managed Solutions
I am also a user myself and would vouch for CloudWays as the easiest way. You can quickly launch a server with pre-installed Drupal or migrate your own install for free. Support is fast around the clock.
Btw! You can get a free trial over here -- and deploy a DigitalOcean server straight through their cloud hosting portal.
For a list of managed solutions for Digital Ocean; see these reviews over here.
Hope that helps!
Chiappa
DevOps platform for Drupal and DigitalOcean
If you're using DigitalOcean, you should try our Wodby
It works like that: you connect your DigitalOcean account and Wodby creates CoreOS droplet and install docker infrastructure on it.
Then you deploy your Drupal website in a click from the Wodby dashboard, every drupal website has integration with varnish and redis out of the box
Thank you for the info,I didn
Thank you for the info,I didn't know of your platform,I will give it a go.
ServerPilot vs CloudWays
I recently checked out available solutions for low-cost managed hosting with SSH command line access, which you normally don't get with shared hosting. In the end, I was left choosing between serverpilot.io and cloudways.com.
I chose serverpilot.io combined with Linode, since ServerPilot seemed more light weight and gave me more freedom than CloudWays. So I did a test run with a 1GB Linode ($5/month) managed by ServerPilot, and it worked out great.
I also tried ZoHo's free mail service, which was difficult to set up due to their convoluted GUI. I got it working in the end, but I would probably recommend something like FastMail in stead, which is $5/month.
Here is a comparison between ServerPilot and CloudWays:
http://www.finalwebsites.com/wordpress-hosting-serverpilot-vs-cloudways/
Here is an article where people discuss serverpilot.io:
https://www.digitalocean.com/community/questions/experiences-with-server...