

Ask HN: Do you use Managed Servers? - Complete

Im wondering: Do you use manages servers for hosting your applications? I do so and would like to discuss the pros and cons of various providers. But I have the feeling most of you here on HN use servers where you have root access.<p>To me, it seems very logical to use managed servers. Because it abstracts away some more parts of the whole stack. What do you think?
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dotBen
I could write an essay on this subject, but here's a few thoughts:

Managed servers != no root access. Most good managed server providers will
give you root and their 'managed service' is to keep things patched, deal with
issues that span your cluster, higher tier of support than just making sure
the machine is booted and network is available to the device, etc. Sure, there
are some providers don't give you root, which brings me to...

Be very cautious of providers who don't offer root and want to do all your app
deployments for you. If you subscribe to the "devops" concept then deployment
is part of the development process and can't be thrown over the wall and given
to someone else to do in isolation. Also, agile methodologies are now enabling
us to deploy once a week/day/many times a day rather than the more infrequent
cycles enterprise software is used to. These non-root folks are not going to
handle a deployment for you on a daily basis. To not give the customer root is
to really not subscribe to these new ways of thinking and new ways of doing
business.

I would ask why you want to go down the managed server route in the first
place? If you need help with your initial setup and deployment find someone in
your network to help you on a consultancy basis. Simple on-going server
maintenance should be something most technical people can pick up, and if you
get stuck go back to your consultant. You'll probably still be better off $$
given the cost savings of managed vs dedicated hardware. Plus VPS and/or EC2
solutions might fit you better than 'bare metal' hardware solutions, but both
are (usually) non-managed services.

The only managed services I do recommend is if you want to go down the Heroku
route, which is excellent if it fits your technology stack and business. But I
don't think that is what you were referring to.

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Complete
With managed servers I meant: Keep the LAMP stack up, running and secure. No
App development. From my point of view it makes sense that a managed server
provider does not give out root access. So theres no discussion whos
responsible for what.

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spooneybarger
We tried going that route but it meant we didn't control enough of the stack
to avoid issues related to updates etc.

Bugs would arise. Didn't work out.

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Complete
What kind of bugs did you encounter?

