

Ask HN: What and How many VPS/hosts/servers for side projects? - davidwparker

I'm wondering how many VPS, etc other HNs use for side projects?  I currently have one shared hosting (for blogs) and one VPS (for real apps).<p>I do a good bit of Rails, but also have a couple of Django projects and I've lately been dabbling in node.js and Clojure.<p>My current setup is dev (local), test (local), staging (VPS), production (same VPS), but I only have Ruby/Rails and Python/Django on the VPS (Apache).<p>I'm thinking Google App Engine, Heroku...&#60;p&#62;What have you found best so that you can have multiple projects out there and keep your costs down?<p>Thanks.
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maqr
I was just asking myself the same questions. Here's the best way I can explain
what I do:

I use Linode as my VPS and have had amazing results. I pay ~$20/mo for their
most basic VPS and I'm currently running a web server (lighty) and asterisk on
it, both of which have very low activity levels (as in, I have one phone and a
couple low traffic static websites), but it seems capable of running much
more. I've had mail servers, databases, a Quake server, and all kinds of other
random things running on it at the same time, and it just performs really
well. Performance and uptime have never been issues. If you go with a VPS,
definitely go with them.

For anything I want to test, I just build into ~/local. Including the latest
python, ruby, etc. It's very easy to setup your paths so that you can have
your own little OS for your user inside of your VPS. If I need to test
something out that's hard to do on Windows 7 (my main OS), I develop directly
on my VPS with screen and vim.

I've also become more accepting of using web services. For example, instead of
installing blogging software of my choosing, I just use Tumblr (it's
surprisingly flexible, and it has a supportive community). Instead of hosting
files on my VPS, I just host them with S3 or Dropbox. Instead of running a
mail server, I use Google Apps. You get the idea.

On the whole GAE vs Heroku thing:

My impression of Heroku is that it's really hard to figure out what they're
offering. Linode tells me what to expect for RAM and storage, and GAE is very
explicit about what their free limits are. With Heroku, I get the impression
that if I'm wondering how the pricing will work out, I may not be the kind of
customer Heroku wants.

I've used GAE a few times now, and I like it. If you stay in the path of what
Google expects you to do with it, it seems pretty easy to handle. I plan on
using GAE for new all my new web app projects, because GAE doesn't restrict
features for non-paying users, they just put limits on how much you can use.
Google doesn't want me to care about how many worker daemons and web server
daemons I'm running; they just do the hosting and it works. If I blow up and
have billions of users, I have confidence I can just pay Google to raise the
limits and they'll figure it out without me ever speaking a word to them.

With Heroku, spending any less than $70/mo seems like it will place serious
limits on what I can achieve, even if I have hardly any traffic. I know it
costs at least $36/mo just to get one background worker; so if I want to code
anything that uses background tasks, it looks like I need to sign up. If I
want to handle two web requests at a time, I'm up to $72/mo. That is just
silly expensive, given what my Linode can do at $20/mo.

I don't know if this is intentional and Heroku simply wants to keep out the
riffraff who aren't yet ready to scale up; or if Heroku wants to bring in
indie developers and doesn't realize how inaccessible their platform seems to
be for the little guy.

~~~
davidwparker
Thanks for the reply maqr.

I've had similar successes with Slicehost. I've been wanting to look into
Linode and Prgr, but 1) haven't found the time, and 2) can't really justify
the cost of two VPS yet.

I'll definitely try out GAE for my clojure projects (I'm under the impression
they'll work okay), and see if I can't convert some of my Django projects to
see if they'll work there too.

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corin_
Personally I have five VPS servers (all hostname'd / subdomain'd after US
presidents):

\- 1x UK VPS for websites (hst. / truman)

\- 1x US VPS for websites / backups (jfk. / kennedy)

\- 1x UK VPS for apps/services e.g. VPN (usg. / grant)

\- 1x UK VPS for testing/dev (fdr. / roosevelt)

\- 1x US VPS for.. nothing, really (gwb. / bush)

Not 100% sure why I still have gwb... hence it's name, I guess.

Not the most efficient use of servers, but only $100-200 (cant remember) a
month, and it's nice to have that level of flexibility.

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staunch
I have one semi-beefy dedicated server. A dual core 4GB. That can handle
everything I do easily and it's only $80/mo.

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ehsanul
Colocated? If not, what is the provider? $80 a month for that seems quite
cheap.

~~~
staunch
Pretty bare bones no frills low cost provider: <http://joesdatacenter.com/>

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famfam
Wow. I think their prices are really good. How's the stability and support?

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staunch
Two minor outages so far (in 4 months) and support has been good for the few
tickets I have opened.

If you don't need much hand holding and don't care if your server is
unavailable for 20 minutes every few months I would recommend them. Otherwise
it's probably better to go for one of the bigger (and more expensive) players.

