Cloud Hosting

[10032012]

Amazon (AWS) or Rackspace?

Which one is better?

What one would you choose, and why?

 

[Cromulent]

Amazon (AWS) or Rackspace?

Which one is better?

What one would you choose, and why?

Personally I would (and have) chosen to use AWS. The simple reason being is that there is lots of documentation available, it has support for several programming languages (Java and Python being the two I am most interested in), it has tons of features ranging from databases to content delivery network to automatic scaling as your requirements change and offers fantastic flexibility.

Having said that I think Rackspace is a better solution if you are not as comfortable running and administering a potentially complex stack. Amazon give you the basic tools but you have to turn them into the service that you wish to deploy. Rackspace on the other hand offer very good managed hosting and might well be a better choice if you are not as experienced with Linux or Windows server administration.

 

[Dominic Taylor]

Both are very similar Xen-virtualised products but AWS does have a huge breadth of extra services.

Rackspace will manage a 'cloud server' (whatever that is - they sell Xen VDSs like almost everyone else) for +£65/month iirc...

Find out what you want to do first, then worry about all the marketing terms

 

[10032012]

Thanks for your replies.

Dom: I need two separate solutions

1) Database hosting for a network of websites (Amazon RDS/Rackspace CloudDatabase)
2) A CDN solution (Amazon S3/Rackspace CloudFiles)

As complicated technically they may be, both providers don't seem to market it as simple enough to be able to clearly understand what each is about - I guess its their shared USP to avoid a direct comparison with competitors

I am not sure whether a database in the cloud would be better than a dedicated server strictly for MySQL - the sites will use heavy caching - every requested page is cached once daily so only retrieve data from database once per day per page. In theory the sites should use heavy database load for first 2-3 hours a day then the database server wont be queried until the following day.

 

[Dominic Taylor]

Remember that "the cloud" runs on physical hardware...a Rackspace cloud server is a Xen instance, so essentially a slice of a physical system. Virtualisation is a great way to run servers at low cost when you don't require the full power of a dedicated system.

In terms of CDN, Amazon has CloudFront. You could alternatively obtain several virtual servers around the world and run Varnish on them, creating your own CDN, but the cost/benefit/hassle may not work out.

 

[fisicx]

What exactly is 'cloud hosting'.

The term is banded about but since most websites are hosted in a datacentre of some sorts unless there is some sort of aggregation of data across a range of servers what make it a cloud?

 

[Dominic Taylor]

Gartner's definition (I think) is that the computing takes place at a location unknown to the user, so almost every service is a 'cloud' service...for example your gas bill, or your TV services....both are run by systems many miles away and we (the end user) don't need to care how it operates.

In the hosting world, it can mean anything from pure marketing rubbish, to systems which are designed to be as highly-available and resilient/scalable as possible. So instead of having one server for one function, there are two, and so on.

But just like with 'normal' hosting there are an infinite number of variations from shared cloud systems to private-cloud / infrastructure-as-a-service systems (like AWS where you tell it how many resources you want and it gives them to you, and you're responsible for what runs on the system), to software-as-a-service systems (eg Kashflow - online accounting).

I appreciate this answer probably doesn't help at all so the best answer is to quiz anyone offering anything 'cloud' to find out what they're actually offering.

 

[fisicx]

That's what I thought.

The concept of cloud computing I understand but cloud hosting is mostly marking hype.

 

[DotNetWebs]

...cloud hosting is mostly marking hype...

It's certainly an abused term but there is a world of difference between something like Amazon Web Services and "any website hosted in a datacentre".

Here's a link to a thread where I last tried to define "cloud hosting":

http://www.ukbusinessforums.co.uk/forums/showthread.php?t=245933

Regards

Dotty

 

[fisicx]

Thanks Dotty.

Totally agree with you. People badly misuse the word 'cloud' even to the extent that webmail is now called 'cloud communications' and I saw a backup application called cloud something because it copied your files to a server.

 

[chip_y2kuk]

Thanks Dotty.

Totally agree with you. People badly misuse the word 'cloud' even to the extent that webmail is now called 'cloud communications' and I saw a backup application called cloud something because it copied your files to a server.

that's the problem with "cloud" people who don't really understand it jump in because a "Cloud server" must be better than a conventional vps right?

i've seen vps's sold as cloud servers (no higher availability than an openvz vps from any other provider) but this was a "cloud" openvz vps and cost more than the same thing without the Cloud attached


i've also had a "cloud" vps with a provider who had worse uptime than the cheapest test vps i have.

joe

joe

 

[10032012]

Many hosts were selling cloud servers that were merely load-balanced/cluster servers. That is the content will propagate from one machine to a few others likely located above or below on the rack -or- data stored in one SAN and accessed through numerous servers sharing the load.

For example a fault with the switch/router or network issue the sites will be unavailable.

I think some hosts still do this. Not really cloud hosting at all.

 

[leemason]

Have a word with vmhosts. They are members here and provide a great range of virtualised "Cloud Hosted" system: http://www.vmhosts.co.uk/

 

[astutiumRob]

because a "Cloud server" must be better than a conventional vps right?

If it really is a "cloud" server and not just a rebranded VPS, then _in theory_ it should have a higher level of availability - but most are just bog-standard VPS with a more expensive marketing programme.

 

[chip_y2kuk]

That's what I was getting at. If done correctly a cloud vps would be much better than a normal vps. But a lot of it is marketing hype and rebranding a normal vps

Joe

If it really is a "cloud" server and not just a rebranded VPS, then _in theory_ it should have a higher level of availability - but most are just bog-standard VPS with a more expensive marketing programme.