Are the amazon's EC2/S3 solutions a viable alternative to dedicated hosting? The thought of capacity/bandwidth/computing power on demand sounds great in theory. Could it host a basic LAMP setup?
If you've done any research in this area i'd love to hear your thoughts. Are they apples and oranges?
I was wondering what people thought of Liquid Web, my friend has his site (twivo.com) with Liquid Web and says they are absolutely amazing. But I want to know what other people think of them.
View 14 Replies View RelatedHope this is the right place for this question. I'm interested in hosting with 1and1.co.uk as they are good value and allow multiple domains to be hosted (incidentally, will nosy people be able to figure that the different domains are hosted on the same package?).
Just wanted to hear your thoughts and experiences? It seems cheaper to host on their American site compared to the British site. Am I allowed to do that?
Anyone use Zayo bandwidth?
How do you rate them?
If you had to choose between Cogent and Zayo, who would you go with?
We are planning to get transit from another carrier and someone recommended Zayo, so just want to hear your thoughts.
I was having problems with shared hosting so I'm having a crack with a VPS from wiredtree. I have been with them 3days so thought I'd post up an early review on my first thoughts then update 3months on, 6months and 12months.
I'm new to the VPS world and have never had any experience with server management/functions other than with-in cpanel so you could say I'm a total noob, so this is coming from a newbie perspective. Ok so here goes for the pros/cons so far.
Pros:
- The set-up was fast once sorted (see the first con).
- The payment system and ordering process was easy to follow.
- The support is very fast helpful and understanding (this is for their online support not phoned them yet).
- The start-up e-mail is useful and gives clear direct instructions.
- The prices are fair and in-line with the market.
- Their 'Grove' control panel is clean and clear and gives you access to vital functions and information, such as DNS, server stats, billing and support.
Cons:
- When I set-up my account they didn't ring to confirm I had to chase them to get it sorted but once it was confirmed my server was up in under 1 hour.
- On their bottom package they give 348mb ram which before you put anything else on the server over 60% of this is used by other functions/softwares. Of course these things can be turned on/off when needed but I feel this should be mentioned at sign-up so people can understand and plan what they are going to need.
- Their knowledgebase has so far failed me as the issues I have had (mostly due to being a noob) are not listed on it and there are no other way other than submitting a ticket to find out about the small easy to solve problems, but their support is fast so no biggy.
Overall its not been a bad start It has had some floors but I'm happy and things are running smoothly.
Like I said these are only first thoughts on the service and I will update at later dates to give a clear picture on their service.
Is security really that critical? If so, why are some of the largest software companies providing such a bad example for the rest of the industry? Why would someone want to target my website? Why is security often overlooked?
These are all common questions that arise on a daily basis within the online industry.
The rest of this article will provide some detailed answers, along with practical examples and true scenarios.
I've spoken with numerous hackers over the past short while. I can't count the number of times I've heard the line "Ignorant site owners deserve to be hacked". In my opinion, that's like claiming that cars without alarms deserve to be stolen, or homes without alarm systems deserve to be burglarized. It's not just wrong - it's illegal.
Security risks and vulnerabilities affect the entire online industry. When a single website is hacked, there are usually multiple other victims. This is most commonly seen with widely distributed software. A potential attacker has the ability to install the software on a test environment, locate the vulnerabilities, then attack random victims even before anyone else is aware of the potential exploits. Once a vulnerability is located, the attacker simply needs to search for other environments using the same software, and within minutes there are hundreds, often thousands of potential victims.
Typically, in the race to market, software providers are encouraged to release their products as soon as the applications are usable. Critical development procedures are often overlooked or intentionally bypassed. One such miss is an application vulnerability assessment. Although the product may be usable, the effects of a vulnerable application could be severe.
Sadly, nobody is "off limits" when it comes to hacking. Most hackers feel safe committing online crime, since the online industry has evolved much faster than the security industry. Many applications are not created with the intent to recognize hacking attempts. Some hackers view their actions as a competition - Who can attack the most valuable website? Who can exploit the most user databases? In many cases, these attacks are bragged about within the hacker's immediate network. The competitive nature of these hacking groups has become so severe, there have been reports of attacks between competing organizations.
You might ask, "If I use industry standards, won't my environment be secure?". The short answer: no, but it helps. Hackers are not restricted by industry standards. Most security companies only implement new standards once at least one victim is reported. This often gives hackers plenty of time to locate other vulnerable environments, and before long, the number of victims can increase rapidly. Hackers are some of the most innovative individuals within the online industry. The most logical way to combat them is to use similar methodology for security purposes.
What are your thoughts of Ultrahosting.com, I didn't find may reviews here on WHT.
I talked with the sales rep. and he said they host people such as: Mazda, Chrysler and Xerox.
Here's some info he gave on their server:
Quote:
Paresh: to provide some way of background...Ultrahosting is part of our parent company Momentum
Paresh: Momentum handles Managed Service Operations for Enterprise level customers
Paresh: Ultrahosting sits in the same data center as these clients
Anyone ever heard of OctaGate Switch ? Any comments, reviews, feedback?
Any good alternatives to this product?
We run our site from a dedicated server at Rackspace and have done for 6 years now. Whilst i'm very happy with the level of service provided we're starting to consider small cost savings by moving to other providers.
We did select LiquidWeb and have attempts a couple of moves to the new server but so far without success (most recent being yesterday with 12 hours of frustration!). A lot of the problems seem to be down to cPanel/WHM being a lot more "locked down" than were were used to with Webmin (that runs on Rackspace servers) and being somewhat unfamiliar with cPanel/WHM.
We have asked advice from LiquidWeb support and whilst they seem to be reasonable in responding, i've yet to feel the "heroic" aspect although this might just be due to being spoilt at Rackspace for many years. Support responses tend to be quite "rushed" and do the minimum asked for rather than going that extra "mile" which was seemingly indicated during the sales cycle.
My question is this - do people have thoughts on potential other fully managed providers? Should we even be looking for a new provider?
Specs looking for:
- Fully Managed
- Dual Xeon Quad Core
- 2GB RAM
- 2 x 73GB SCSI RAID
- Some form of Remote Backup
- Linux
We're currently paying about $850 for the server at Rackspace which has the following specs:
- Single AMD Opteron 246 2.0 GHz
- 2GB RAM
- 2 x 73GB SCSI RAID
- Managed Backup
- RHEL4
- Webmin
I regret to bring this to a public forum but having seen that solarvps has a presence here I am hoping that a resolve to this issue can be found, and any public opinions are welcomed.
Having been a customer with solarvps since 2006 without any cause for concerns it does not make me happy with some recent issues I have had with them. So I have had a vps server hosted with them since 2006. Sometime in February when attempting to login to my VPS I got an error, I left it as this happens sometimes, it happened for 4 days in a row so I thought this is a little strange logged in to my control panel, to see no VPS server was listed under the account. There was no invoice generated either. Ok this is strange but I just assumed it had been terminated, no invoice came through and that particular server was a backup server so I sought hosting elsewhere.
4 months pass I get an email from solarvps stating my account is overdue with charges applied. I contact them back straight away asking what they are billing me for I have explained the situation time and again to them, I have asked the questions why the server disappeared from my account, why I wasn’t able to access the vps remotely and why no invoices got generated at the time to which I have had no response, I have asked more than 5 times now. The only response I keep getting form them is threats if I do not pay to hand over to a collection agency and the possibility of legal action. To which I have replied each time that I will contest any such action and seek legal advice myself.
Granted I should probably have contacted them at the time but really they are at fault more than I am for not asking them what has happened, I truly believe I am not in the wrong here but nobody within solarvps is prepared is looking at the facts of what has happened here.
Well anyway I hope bringing this to a public forum will bring a resolve and maybe some answers. I am getting no response from anybody within solarvps and would be happy to take this away from the public if they are willing.
I am not unfair nor does it make sense that a customer for so long would just decide not to pay you one month and kick up a fuss over such a small amount of money but the fact that I am not in the wrong with this matter, I am not prepared to pay them no matter how much bullying tactics they wish to adopt in trying to make me.
I used to have FDC a while ago, and i want to get your thoughts about fdcservers.net Colocation or dedi?
View 2 Replies View RelatedI had them for about 6 months and it was great until some time in the middle of May I got an email from them saying "my website is overloading/overlimits and even small dedicated sever wont handle the load" I had "Failover Reseller Plans" which allows 10,000MB space & 200GB bandwidth. The only script my website had at the time was a phpBB forum. My forum got about 2-3 posts per day with an average of 300 users per day. How could it cause overloading/overlimits ? Their "abuse team" wasn't very helpful at all! I got fed up with it and moved my site to a new webhost => servint
However, their support team was amazing. They replied to my tickets very fast. They were always online even at 3 or 4 am !! And most of the time they were very helpful and wouldhelp you with anything.
Would I go back to them again? i'm not sure ...maybe or maybe not
Servint
So I moved everything to Servint VPS after this whole incident. I really have no word to say about Servint except that they're AWESOME! I really like them & their support team. I had them for about 4 months and no complaints about them. However due to my financial prob (spend all my $ on gas & rising cost of everything) I had to downgrade to a reseller account instead
Now I'm moving to Hostgator.
I'll give you all my reviews in a few months...
I'm looking for a way to get a little more mileage out of Apache + PHP environment without losing Apache capabilities. In shared hosting environments, losing features such as .htaccess and a real mod_rewrite are not even on the table. I'm also not willing to accept the performance hit and connection issues that are inherent with FastCGI, so that means mod_php.
In this particular situation, there are two busy sites, which are the problem.
These are a few ideas I've been thinking about.
1. mod_proxy + nginx: mod_proxy sends static content requests to nginx. This requires two sets of vhost files to be maintained.
2. mod_cache: Caching common static content such as page graphics .css, .js, etc.
3. squid
If you've been down 2 or more of these roads, I could benefit from your experience.
Anyone ever use this service? I had an issue with tons of spam being sent to my mail servers from amazon, so I placed an IP ban on the entire Amazon network until the issue was fixed. They replied and said that it was coming from an Amazon EC2 client and that it was handled...made me kind of curious about it.
View 7 Replies View RelatedMy services/sites approached the state when DS becomes a must. Currently I have a DS with Server Logix (and am quite satisfied with it, to add), but I suppose I'll need another DS in the foreseeable future, to transfer most active sites there.
Amazon EC2 service offers several types of 'elastic' servers. The smallest one, citing the product page::
1.7 GB of memory, 1 EC2 Compute Unit (equals 1.0-1.2 GHz 2007 Opteron or 2007 Xeon processor), 160 GB of instance storage, 32-bit platform
If run for a month, this instance would cost me 72$. Traffic (bandwidth) is paid for separately; I estimate I'd pay approx $20 monthly for traffic consumed.
The question: are there DS plans matching the EC2 Small instance (i.e., 100$ monthly for the server of similar configuration, with 120Gb of traffic included)?
I have tried the EC2 hosting, to test its efficiency and availability. I should decide, whether to switch entirely to cloud providers, or there are traditional DS hosting that could beat EC2 prices and offer good reliability?
All the comments on EC2 experience and DS providers would be very welcome.
I am interested in USA or Europe-based DS hosting providers, if any. I'd need a server in approx 3-4 months.
Signed up but never really had chance to play with Amazon's EC2. This looks interesting though - non-persistent storage was one of the major downside's of EC2 -
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Many Amazon EC2 customers have been requesting that we let them know ahead of time about features that are currently under development so that they can better plan for how that functionality might integrate with their applications. To that end, we would like to share some details about a major upcoming feature that many of you have requested - persistent storage for EC2.
This new feature provides reliable, persistent storage volumes, for use with Amazon EC2 instances. These volumes exist independently from any Amazon EC2 instances, and will behave like raw, unformatted hard drives or block devices, which may then be formatted and configured based on the needs of your application. The volumes will be significantly more durable than the local disks within an Amazon EC2 instance. Additionally, our persistent storage feature will enable you to automatically create snapshots of your volumes and back them up to Amazon S3 for even greater reliability.
You will be able to create volumes ranging in size from 1 GB to 1 TB, and will be able to attach multiple volumes to a single instance. Volumes are designed for high throughput, low latency access from Amazon EC2, and can be attached to any running EC2 instance where they will show up as a device inside of the instance. This feature will make it even easier to run everything from relational databases to distributed file systems to Hadoop processing clusters using Amazon EC2.
When persistent storage is launched, Amazon EC2 will be adding several new APIs to support the persistent storage feature. Included will be calls to manage your volume (CreateVolume, DeleteVolume), mount your volume to your instance (AttachVolume, DetachVolume) and save snapshots to Amazon S3 (CreateSnapshot, DeleteSnapshot).
I need a very short term solution.....1 - 2 months max
Both boxes ideally would be dual-quad proc minim.
Box 1 not alot of storage needed. Web and DB server running Oracle
Box 1 - storagewise, would be 4 tery requirement.
LOTS of bw inbound and possibly outbound as well.
Has anyone used Amazons EC2 service ?
Inbound & Outbound traffic will be stateside and internaional sources.
I have a new comparison shopping site. The challenge I currently have is that I have a dedicated server on Hostgator ($374 per month). But, I am in the middle of changing programmers after initial problems. While we are working through issues, I would like to bring down costs (there is very little traffic on the site right now).
Does a service such as Amazon EC2 make sense? It is not that I am unhappy with Hostgator. I just want to reduce cost while we fix the site (could take several months), and, position the site for easy growth (which is why I am considering Cloud Computing).
Comparison shopping is a large database intensive effort, so I do not think that a simple "shared" service makes sense.
I've visited their web site (aws.amazon.com), but it seems kind of vague to me. Is AWS the same as S3? (which one does web hosting?) You can host web sites on Amazon's service, right? Do you get the usual stuff? (mySQL, PHP, etc) Do they offer SFTP? Shell access?
Man, I feel like they need a FAQ or a list of features. How come none of these things are mentioned on their site?
Has anyone looked into hosting on Amazon Web Services EC2? It seems to me that a Elastic Compute Cloud node would be a far better solution than a VPS or a dedicated server.
View 14 Replies View Relatedwe recently launched a site that has a you-tubeish clone to it, none the less the media progressive download bottlenecks the the rest of the sites functions beyond video...
I've been looking into solutions with moving the files elsewhere.
I was looking at Lime Light Networks but they were $1/gig, granted i'm sure their service is great but we're currently moving 3tb and have been going up around 500gb every month. So we really can't afford that.
I just stumbled on Amazon S3 and that looks real attractive, has anybody used their services or know of a site that does that I could test it out.
And the last stupid question, I'm trying to figure out how it works, they make it sound like all you have to do is put a CNAME in your zone, but I need the video clips to be put there as they're uploaded...
I have been reading about Amazon S3's service at [url] and I was wondering if it would be wise to use their service for a file host (like rapidshare..) I may be starting?
How good is their bandwidth and what is their policy on copyrighted material?
Or should I buy my own servers from an unmetered provider, such as alphared?
I am launching my site with Amazon EC2, which is a social network (webcams, videos, albums, etc)in PhP, Linux; and I am going to need someone who can do the virtual hands for me, site administration.
View 11 Replies View RelatedI am thinking of running my main MySQL 5 database from Amazon Elastic Cloud Computing (EC2)....
View 5 Replies View RelatedWhat's the best way to set up an automatic file backup to Amazon's S3 service? I have a Linux cpanel VPS. I have minimal VPS administration knowledge but at least the VPS is managed by a good team
Is there any way to do incremental backups to save on the bandwidth charges?
(a full backup for me would be about 15 gigs each time)
Just curious if anyone has some case studies/feedback regarding using Amazon S3 (or similar) services as a way to offset hosting needs and costs.
By that I mean being able to use a lower config server or less bandwidth because media/content is hosted on Amazon servers.