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The answer is - "It depends", on a lot of parameters like: 1. Do you need a dedicated box or a virtual OS on a shared box will do? 2. What are your avg monthly

by jnaut 17y ago

The answer is - "It depends", on a lot of parameters like: 1. Do you need a dedicated box or a virtual OS on a shared box will do? 2. What are your avg monthly usage requirements- box and bandwidth? And how these requirements shall change of time. 3. You want to customize you box's configuration before u rent it? 4. You want to pay monthly or yearly or more? 5. Will you need additional throw away on demand computational nodes? How often? 6. Do you just wish to use servers or other services like S3, SDB, SQS, cloud-files(rackspace)? Many more .... So I think if you describe you requirements and budget better, the suggestions provided will be better. About problems like low speed, outages, etc. Yes both have their own set of problems, but still a more relevant answer can be given when you have illustrated you requirements. I have been using EC2,S3,SDB for one of my projects(last 4 months) and Rackspace/Mosso cloudserver for another (last 3 months). Since the durations are short I may not be able to explain everything, but will try my best. :-)

Scott_MacGregor 17y ago
We will be looking for a cloud server that we can self administrate, vs. a cloud site that the host administrates. The budget will be what it has to be to get what we want and need. 1. Q. Do you need a dedicated box or a virtual OS on a shared box will do? A. Virtual on a shared box will do right now. 2. Q. What are your avg monthly usage requirements- box and bandwidth? And how these requirements shall change of time. A. Currently we are still in development, so these are still to be determined. Part of our service will be serving video content. 3. Q. You want to customize you box's configuration before u rent it? A. Yes, we will need to mod apache and harden the OS. 4. Q. You want to pay monthly or yearly or more? A. Cash flow currently dictates monthly. 5. Q. Will you need additional throw away on demand computational nodes? How often? A. “Computational Nodes” as far a grid hosting no. I’m not a cloud expert but if it is handled by the scalability of the cloud probably. How often would still need to be determined. 6. Q. Do you just wish to use servers or other services like S3, SDB, SQS, cloud-files(rackspace)? A. Yes, probably except for SQS. Just a note: We are leaning towards RackSpace because of their connection with LimeLight because of Limelight’s focus on video delivery to the end user.
- jnaut 17y ago
  Most of you requirements except the need for SDB and S3 are well satisfied by Rackspace. Rackspace is also coming up with a new feature, similar to S3 called cloud files. But no equivalent for SDB. Since you are in development Rackspace's low end boxes (like 256M with 512 bursts, etc.)charged nominally for bandwidth will do fine. Whereas Amazon has got fixed boxes with 2G or something as far as I remember, I took it like 5 months ago. For a dev box where there is no/not-much user traffic, a low end shared box from Rackspace if a good option. Its highly efficient on the budget. Once you have used it for dev phase you will have more knowledge and confidence on what Rackspace can do and what not. So you can decide whether to use it for prod or move over to something else. Rackspace has got a monthly billing and anytime cancelling option. It works fine on budget as well as it gives you control over things if they are going beyond what you initially thought, as you can see the usage in real time (may be a few hours late at max). They had a money back policy too, about 4 months ago when I signed up, for the first month if the user is not satisfied. About problems: EC2: very less problems. But remember these are commodity hardware, measly boxes, the moment you start too many process (if doing any mutli processing) the box's response time mounts exponentially :-). Multi-threaded is fine. S3 - have been using for storing images and haven't had a problem so far. You have options to save your EC2 image to your S3 space regularly to keep backup server images. That costs you in terms of the space required on S3. SDB: I hope you are aware but will still iterate that this is a key-value datastore, not relational. I will say it is very much in the works. It does a lot good at most of the times, but lack of a group-by, only text data, only lexicographic sort (which forces the user to put even numerical data in special formats to sort on it), a bit ill defined mutli-valued attributes, number of attributes allowed to put at each request and overall number of attributes for a item are a few bumps in the road. But once you read the docs and be regular with the AWS forums most of these get solved. Rackspace cloud server: Only problem I have faced SSH is slow sometimes. Rackspace cloudfiles: haven't used. But I know that you can automate your cloud server backup to cloud files, that costs. Again, as you mentioned LimeLight, that's another factor, that makes Rackspace more suitable for you. So I guess you best bet is to start off with Rackspace for now and see how it goes. Hope that answer helps.

by jnaut 17y ago

Scott_MacGregor 17y ago

We will be looking for a cloud server that we can self administrate, vs. a cloud site that the host administrates. The budget will be what it has to be to get what we want and need. 1. Q. Do you need a dedicated box or a virtual OS on a shared box will do? A. Virtual on a shared box will do right now. 2. Q. What are your avg monthly usage requirements- box and bandwidth? And how these requirements shall change of time. A. Currently we are still in development, so these are still to be determined. Part of our service will be serving video content. 3. Q. You want to customize you box's configuration before u rent it? A. Yes, we will need to mod apache and harden the OS. 4. Q. You want to pay monthly or yearly or more? A. Cash flow currently dictates monthly. 5. Q. Will you need additional throw away on demand computational nodes? How often? A. “Computational Nodes” as far a grid hosting no. I’m not a cloud expert but if it is handled by the scalability of the cloud probably. How often would still need to be determined. 6. Q. Do you just wish to use servers or other services like S3, SDB, SQS, cloud-files(rackspace)? A. Yes, probably except for SQS. Just a note: We are leaning towards RackSpace because of their connection with LimeLight because of Limelight’s focus on video delivery to the end user.

jnaut 17y ago
Most of you requirements except the need for SDB and S3 are well satisfied by Rackspace. Rackspace is also coming up with a new feature, similar to S3 called cloud files. But no equivalent for SDB. Since you are in development Rackspace's low end boxes (like 256M with 512 bursts, etc.)charged nominally for bandwidth will do fine. Whereas Amazon has got fixed boxes with 2G or something as far as I remember, I took it like 5 months ago. For a dev box where there is no/not-much user traffic, a low end shared box from Rackspace if a good option. Its highly efficient on the budget. Once you have used it for dev phase you will have more knowledge and confidence on what Rackspace can do and what not. So you can decide whether to use it for prod or move over to something else. Rackspace has got a monthly billing and anytime cancelling option. It works fine on budget as well as it gives you control over things if they are going beyond what you initially thought, as you can see the usage in real time (may be a few hours late at max). They had a money back policy too, about 4 months ago when I signed up, for the first month if the user is not satisfied. About problems: EC2: very less problems. But remember these are commodity hardware, measly boxes, the moment you start too many process (if doing any mutli processing) the box's response time mounts exponentially :-). Multi-threaded is fine. S3 - have been using for storing images and haven't had a problem so far. You have options to save your EC2 image to your S3 space regularly to keep backup server images. That costs you in terms of the space required on S3. SDB: I hope you are aware but will still iterate that this is a key-value datastore, not relational. I will say it is very much in the works. It does a lot good at most of the times, but lack of a group-by, only text data, only lexicographic sort (which forces the user to put even numerical data in special formats to sort on it), a bit ill defined mutli-valued attributes, number of attributes allowed to put at each request and overall number of attributes for a item are a few bumps in the road. But once you read the docs and be regular with the AWS forums most of these get solved. Rackspace cloud server: Only problem I have faced SSH is slow sometimes. Rackspace cloudfiles: haven't used. But I know that you can automate your cloud server backup to cloud files, that costs. Again, as you mentioned LimeLight, that's another factor, that makes Rackspace more suitable for you. So I guess you best bet is to start off with Rackspace for now and see how it goes. Hope that answer helps.