

Deploy to Linode and wait or go direct to AWS? - philgo20

Hi guys,<p>I know this been asked a gazillion time in different form but ...<p>we''re about to launch our startup (matchFWD) and need a true hosting solution. We're tempted to go with Linode as it's cheap and easy to set-up and deal with the fact that we'll need more in a few months when it's time... or go directly to AWS, take the extra time to set it up and be done with it.<p>Any advice and experience with either approach ?<p>Thanks,
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pedoh
What are the reasons you think AWS is your ultimate destination instead of
Linode?

My advice would be to use a DevOps tool like Puppet or Chef to create recipes
to make deploying new infrastructure as painless as possible. If you take it
far enough, it could completely build your new infrastructure in a new
datacenter, but even in its simplest form it will help you when it comes time
to migrate. Spooling up more nodes in your current datacenter to handle spikes
in traffic becomes much easier, too.

~~~
philgo20
Main advantage I see to AWS is the ability to scale up and down easily but it
might take a little while before we have such need.

A friend has been talking to my lead dev quite a bit about Chef. I'll spin it
to him again.

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jggube
Long-term, it seems wise to just go AWS. The difference of learning AWS versus
deploying right now in Linode (if you have experienced web server engineers)
is negligible. I'd say even 30-40 hours worth of learning/testing can get you
up and running in AWS.

Also, you have to think about possible downtime migrating from Linode to AWS
(or increasing your Linode resources) or setting up a mechanism for no-
downtime.

I agree with what you say here: "go directly to AWS, take the extra time to
set it up and be done with it." To me, if the initial time/resource cost is
negligible (which in this case, IMHO, it is), I'm going for the permanent
solution instead of what seems to be a stop-gap solution. Less headaches, more
time to devote to other parts of your start-up at a time of growth where your
time and resources will be scarce, and fewer things to worry about. I'd rather
pay the time up front when I'm still starting out, rather than later where it
will be more difficult and most probably more costly.

This applies only because you already know AWS is the end-game. Otherwise, I'd
just launch in Linode first since it's quick and I (and you) know how it works
already, then deal with scaling later when you actually know you need to
scale.

And don't knock Linode; it can take a beating.

~~~
philgo20
no knocking Linode, I know it's good. But it's hard to see re-deployment as
anything else that lost cycles at the point we're at. I hope we won't need 30
hours to be up and running on AWS though.

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autalpha
I actually have this debate with myself every time I think that I am close to
the point of deploying my work (heh, that's another story). But every time I
do the calculation, I just don't get how AWS would be more beneficial to me vs
sticking with Linode. AWS' pricing would be much more than Linode's model. So
for a while, I think I am set on this resolve:

Using Linode for my app and host static files on S3 and maybe another cloud
provider like Rackspace for failover in case the clouds go down.

I am hoping that I would have a luxury problem once my app is doing well. When
I have that kind of traction, it's a different story. But until then, it's
more logical to stick with a VPS.

By the way, are you making updates to your production site frequently? Your
carousel isn't working correctly yet.

I know you use django (from another post I think). Have you thought about
using social network login? I used django-allauth and it has been working very
well for me. Good luck!

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philgo20
We push to production 3-4 times a day. You mean the carrousel on the home page
? I'll take a look. That page hasn't really been touched since we started
developing and needs a complete makeover. Thanks for the heads up !

We currently our own LinkedIn login to create account as we use their API to
match candidates and jobs. Next step is to add Facebook and Twitter as
alternative login.

We were thinking to go with django social-auth to cover al bases.
[http://uswaretech.com/blog/2009/08/django-socialauth-
login-v...](http://uswaretech.com/blog/2009/08/django-socialauth-login-via-
twitter-facebook-openid-yahoo-google/)

Had you compared it to allauth ? I'll take a look, hadn't seen that one.

thxs !

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matdrewin
I think you should go with Linode first and when you hit the upper limit, you
can move to EC2 or dedicated servers.

AWS is somewhat expensive and doesn't deliver the same performance as Linode
type hosts.

The only advantage to EC2 is the insane flexibility it allows (i.e.
dynamically spawn new nodes based on traffic)

To start off, I'd go with Linode or Rackspace. Keep it simple. Worry about
scaling later.

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rgacote
go with both. As has been demonstrated, any cloud can go out of service. Being
on both Linode and EC2 spreads your risk across different services. Chance of
them both being down is significantly smaller than either one of them being
down.

~~~
philgo20
true. We already have some environment on WebFaction so we'll probably keep it
for such case.

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carbocation
What type of traffic volume do you expect to see in the first month and year?

~~~
philgo20
all depends when I can truly divide my time between the marketing hat and dev
hat. I think any prediction would be wrong.

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ddemchuk
The reason you should go with Linode (or any other dedicated or VPS host) over
a cloud solution is if you can predict your growth. Cloud solutions are useful
for rapid scaling, but tend to be overly expensive over long periods of time.
Traditional servers are harder to scale quickly (arguably) but end up being
cheaper usually.

