cloud web hosting in europe?

[Tsakali]

a friend of mine is looking for a solid web service for a greek content website. anyone over on that side have any recommendations? apparently he is all stuck up with looking for cloud server hosts. the idea seems novel but how is it any better than regular non dedicated services?

[obsidian]

Sounds like marketing jargon. From what I understand, "cloud server" is just a more trendy name for a distributed or virtual private server. Resources are juggled between different servers depending on demand. I think most web hosts already do this and it's only an issue if you need a large amount of bandwidth (if your site is super popular), in which case your hosting company will offer different bandwidth packages.

I think most people overestimate their needs and think their website will instantly become the next Reddit or something. If he's not sure what kind of server is best for him then he probably won't even need all that much. Start small and grow bigger if needed.

By way of comparison, I'm pretty sure Q3W is running off of a 486 with a hamster wheel for a power supply that DooMer uses as a foot rest (he may also try to stick his penis in the 3.5" floppy drive from time to time, not sure tho).

[Tsakali]

that explains the downtime but it usually lasts no more than a minute

[MKJ]

exactly what obs said.

[4days]

if UK hosting is okay, Krystal (krystal.co.uk) are pretty good and can scale an account up from shared hosting to your own box - or you can have as much or as little of your site as you need in their cloud. support is very good, but the main reason for recommending them is that in the 6 or 7 years i've had domains/hosting with them, they've only fucked up once or twice, never very badly and never for very long.

[seremtan]

greek content: a picture gallery of empty cash registers, bank vaults and wallets, with a few action shots of homeless people and fascists for variety

[DooMer]

You normally pay at the end of the month for the resources you use, and if there's any server downtime, the container will instantiate on another node for increased stability.

[GONNAFISTYA]

greek content: a picture gallery of empty cash registers, bank vaults and wallets, with a few action shots of homeless people and fascists for variety

...you forgot the empty bottle of Ouzo.

[Tsakali]

.. but the main reason for recommending them is that in the 6 or 7 years i've had domains/hosting with them, they've only fucked up once or twice, never very badly and never for very long.

that's the kinda info I need!

will look them up,thx.

[PhoeniX]

tsohost or vidahost are well recommended and cheap.

For work we rent a couple of dedicated servers through Poundhost which are awesome also (and they do cloud hosting).

[Tsakali]

will look them up, thx

[duffman91]

a friend of mine is looking for a solid web service for a greek content website. anyone over on that side have any recommendations? apparently he is all stuck up with looking for cloud server hosts. the idea seems novel but how is it any better than regular non dedicated services?

Let's clarify some things:

"Cloud" refers to how a service is delivered. In particular, you won't have or need the access to the underlying hardware infrastructure. The application or OS is presented to you via some sort of web interface necessitating a network connection. Modern practice is for the software and/or Operating Systems to be completely virtual running in a virtualization farm. The hypervisor can move the OS to a different node as necessary, or the application can re-connect to another server on the farm. A cloud service may charge on demand as you grow what you're offering. These are often expensive but guarantee uptime.

"Distributed/Non Dedicated" refers to multiple instances of an application running on the same logical server. For example several customers may have SSH and Apache/IIS instances running on the same single server cluster. These may be fault tolerant or they may not. These are often charged with a flat rate and with the expectation of an uptime baseline.

With that said, I use fatcow.com for my web hosting needs (non dedicated). I run a few websites with very small databases. FatCow offers the access to these resources via web interface and has impressed me through the years. I believe they're located in the UK as well.

[Tsakali]

hmm it seems that he is under the impression that "cloud" means that the site is being served from multiple locations for better servicing various regions, instead of being dependent on a single location, that could be compromised more easily.

[obsidian]

Just saying "cloud" doesn't guarantee anything. Again, it's marketing jargon that doesn't tell you anything about what services they are offering. It's a bit like saying, "our website is now Web 2.0 ready"... what does that even mean? It's not a technology or a standard or anything else concrete. Anyone can claim the same because it essentially has no real meaning. Many hosts will have redundant off-site servers, but just hearing the word "cloud" doesn't mean that they do this.

[duffman91]

Obsidian,
I don't like the term as much as the next guy. To me cloud-computing should keep the computer science definition. However, here's a nice breakdown I found on another site that gets into more detail for Tsakali.

•Shared hosting - This is the most common type of host. You are placed on the same server as hundreds or even thousands of other websites. Each account on a shared server has it's own passwords and permissions so that they act independent of one another. Typically these are used for low-traffic web sites, if your site uses too many resources you will be warned or even kicked off the server. These are the cheapest hosts, see the overselling section for reasons why.


•Dedicated server - This is exactly what is sounds like. You lease your very own server from the hosting company. You are the only account on that server, so you may use all the CPU/bandwidth that you like. You are also responsible for maintaining your server, including security updates and installing software.


•Virtual dedicated server - Using today's virtualization software, a host can turn one physical server into many 'virtual' servers. This is a mix of dedicated and shared hosting. Although your virtual server exists on the same physical server as many others, it is separate as far as data is concerned. You are usually guaranteed resources such as memory and CPU, and will perform much better than a shared hosting plan.


•Co-location - Similar to a dedicated server, except that you provide the server instead of leasing it from the company. You can configure everything on the server before sending it to your hosting company, where they set it up in their data center. Typically you will have to pay data center technicians to perform hardware repairs on your server, or you can drive to the data center and do it yourself.


•Managed host - A managed host is similar to a dedicated server, but data center employees perform software updates and installation. Often times you will not have administrative access to the server.


•Cloud hosting - A relatively new type of hosting, similar to a virtual server. Your resources are hosted on a cluster of machines to provide higher reliability, and you can typically purchase more 'units' of storage/power so that you can scale your package up as your needs increase.

[Tsakali]

nice post. So basically, cloud hosting should be what the description says, but the catchy term can fall victim to marketing fluff.

He is not going to pay for any real service in the beginning anyway, so he's prolly better off going with shared plan. I'll just explain to him that there really isn't much to gain by window shopping on the subject..you basically get what you pay for, and a $20 /month 'cloud' plan is prolly not what it should be.