I am looking for a new web hosting company suitable for a WebConnect installation. I have a fairly small project to build, but I like knowing the server capacity can grow if the project becomes busier. I was considering Amazon Web Service, and wondering if anyone has had experience with Amazon and could advise me.

Joel Aiken

You can host a Web Connection on any Virtual Machine platform (AWS, Azure, Vultr etc.) as long as they support Windows.

I haven't worked with AWS, but Azure is terrible for low end VMs. Personally I have used and like Vultr - they have very fast, reliable and relatively cheap VM packages. A VM that's comprable to a live server I host today (which hosts 25 sites) is about $90 a month. I think the minmum viable VM is about $40 or so (you definitely want at least dual core with 4 gig of memory).

If you search around a bit you can find comparables, but I've found Vultr to be a good mix of perf, price and reliabilty. the big providers have more features (like auto-redeploy with bigger or smaller hardware that's missing from Vultr) - but it's much more expensive for comparable virtual hardware.

+++ Rick ---

Rick, Thanks for the info. The Vultr package with dual core and 4 GB memory only has 60GB SSD. I'm using more than 60GB on one app running on a Rackspace VM. So, with vultr I would need to step up to the 4 CPU/8GB Ram to get more SSD space, up to 100GB. Disk space seems more an issue for me. Just wondering, do you use remote data servers, or is your data on same machine with the WC apps?

Regardless, I can save money by moving from Rackspace to Vultr. I'm embarrassed to tell you what I pay Rackspace for a VM with 180GB SSD 4GB RAM and 4 processors. When looking at Amazon VM servers, it's so hard to figure out what it's going to cost, they quote in cents per minute of CPU time... or whatever.

Joel

Yeah the nice thing with Vultr is that other than excessive bandwidth there are no extra charges. Both AWS and Azure charge for disk usage and some CPU but these charges tend to be minimal.

As to disk space you can also create external data volumes that are cheaper, but I if you use those for FoxPro data you're likely to see a big performance hit so it's probably better to stick to local disk and especially SSDs that they use. I've tried quite a few providers in the last few years and Vultr easily feels like the best bang for the buck if you can live with the minimal feature set (ie. fixed size VMs that you can't scale up automaticaclly).

+++ Rick ---

Thanks Rick. Your comments are always loaded with helpful info.

~Joel

FWIW, I'm considering moving my server over to Vultr in the near future. I'm thinking about the $96 package (6 cores, 16gb, 200gb) which should provide the equivalent of my current server. When I tested this in the past when it was 4 cores with 150gb drives) perf was nearly on par with my 4 core 7 year old Xeon physical server I have in a rack at a local provider.

Vultr also has dedicated instances - I think the 4 core version with 16gb and 2 x 120gb drives is $136 which is a pretty good deal especially since it also comes with 20 terrabytes of transfer data.

For small apps the $36 option works for small apps, and the $56 option is good for more cpu intensive apps. All of these are reasonable prices IMHO and frankly I'm surprised that Azure and AWS are so incredibly uncompetitive in this space.

+++ Rick ---

In your last comment on this topic, I'm wondering if you ever move?

Also do you still feel the same about where to host.

Thanks

Rick had suggested VULTR to me some time ago. I am pretty happy with it. I can push a button and spin up a saved WWWC image in about 5 minutes. Pretty sexy really and CAF (cheap as ____).

I never moved because it's just too convenient to have a dedicated box for the price I have. Moving to VULTR would cost me a little bit extra over what I have now with a little less flexibility. But then I'm cheap mainly because the Web site itself is not really generating a revenue stream to support itself 😃

It's also a big job for me to move to a new box. I have 25 Web apps running on my server. A couple of hosted apps for friends and family and the thought of moving all this stuff over and setting everything up again is enough to make me not ever find the time to do it 😃

I have to do something soon though. My server is going on close to 10 years now and it's bound to fail at some time in the future. Having a cloud hosted machine surely is more secure and not bound by hardware failures.

+++ Rick ---

+1 on the recommendation for vultr.com!

I've got my a few clients hosted on their servers including my own. Only had one outage instance where it was down for any length of time. They had an issue with some hardware upgrades they were performing but that was a few years ago. No issues since.

I know what you mean about having a dedicated machine within reach, there is something nice about being able to touch the hardware, make adjustments or speak to a human at the ISP.

On your old machine, have you upgraded to SSD drives? The reliability issue goes way up especially in a raid configuration. Just blow out the dust and keep going! Remember, new hardware fails... old machines just get older and at this point in our lives, I think we need to start thinking older is not so bad! lol

As far as having the time to move, it sounds like the shoe maker who never has time to put new shoes on his children.

Thanks for all the good tips.