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Ask HN: Managed Hosting Service Recommendation for Windows environment

2 points by desigooner 16y ago

We are currently using a .NET / DotNetNuke based product that runs on Windows 2008 / IIS 6 / MS SQL Server 2005. Currently, it is hosted in-house but due to resource issues, we plan to move the web infrastructure to a 3rd party provider. I was wondering if anyone had recommendations for a Windows/.NET Managed Hosting Service Provider. Also, would it be a good idea to look at Cloud services providers? We need a provider with a solid track record as far as security of data and data availability are concerned as we do store confidential information like SSNs and handle payments. Thanks.

LeBlanc 16y ago
Given that you are running your servers in house, your best bet is probably not to use a managed hosting solution, but rather something like Amazon EC2 (for windows) or Linode (for linux). Back in the spring I was looking for a managed hosting solution for a small .NET project and the best I could find was GoDaddy which ended up being a terrible experience as you might expect. If you get an EC2 server, it should be fairly easy to port your current setup to Amazon's cloud since you will have root access. I'm running my linux servers on a Linode right now and I love it. http://aws.amazon.com/ec2/ http://aws.amazon.com/ec2/
- brudgers 16y ago
  Pardon my ignorance, what are the concerns about Godaddy? How do they relate to price of service?
justrudd 16y ago
I've never used a 3rd party vendor for this. I've used ServerBeach, Rackspace, etc. But it was always with my hardware sitting on their network. Regardless, be very careful when choosing your 3rd party vendor because of PII laws. Some 3rd party hosts won't allow you to store PII on their hardware. You can use their network (i.e. colo), but they won't manage the hardware for you because they'd then have theoretical access to that data.
desigooner 16y ago
To be a bit more specific as to what our needs are, we have a database server and a front end / business logic server (times 2, 1 instance for production and 1 for development). I might have bungled up in saying Managed hosting but what I meant was dedicated hardware with full access or probably a cloud setup.

2 points by desigooner 16y ago

LeBlanc 16y ago

Given that you are running your servers in house, your best bet is probably not to use a managed hosting solution, but rather something like Amazon EC2 (for windows) or Linode (for linux). Back in the spring I was looking for a managed hosting solution for a small .NET project and the best I could find was GoDaddy which ended up being a terrible experience as you might expect. If you get an EC2 server, it should be fairly easy to port your current setup to Amazon's cloud since you will have root access. I'm running my linux servers on a Linode right now and I love it. http://aws.amazon.com/ec2/ http://aws.amazon.com/ec2/

brudgers 16y ago
Pardon my ignorance, what are the concerns about Godaddy? How do they relate to price of service?

justrudd 16y ago

I've never used a 3rd party vendor for this. I've used ServerBeach, Rackspace, etc. But it was always with my hardware sitting on their network. Regardless, be very careful when choosing your 3rd party vendor because of PII laws. Some 3rd party hosts won't allow you to store PII on their hardware. You can use their network (i.e. colo), but they won't manage the hardware for you because they'd then have theoretical access to that data.

desigooner 16y ago

To be a bit more specific as to what our needs are, we have a database server and a front end / business logic server (times 2, 1 instance for production and 1 for development). I might have bungled up in saying Managed hosting but what I meant was dedicated hardware with full access or probably a cloud setup.