Servers

[bennyboy]

That question doesn't make sense.

But let me say that I run an Azure site, which is a Microsoft-hosted virtual computer.  You can choose any flavor you want, and you can change the details.  Need 100Gb and a Windows Server 2017 running on two virtual CPU cores?  No problem.  Need 10Tb and 16 cores?  Go to your billing portal, and thirty minutes later, everything's backed up and online with the new stats.  And it's a fully functional version of Windows that you can access remotely; you can set up the IIS exactly how you want it, set up any number of FTP or SQL servers you like.

It's about $100 / month, but any dedicated physical server will cost you about 2x or 3x that, and will almost for sure have hardware that's worse that Microsoft's virtual servers, and shitty service as well.

I didn't use Azure before; but Visual Studio is always reminding me of the cloud. I want to try it TBH; the concept of virtual computing is just so tempting.

Free trial.  There are so many options and features that it spins the head, but in a very exciting way.

[WinterHold]

Nothing wrong with a shell. If you have to have a GUI, it should be web based. No reason a server should be wasting resources on a fully fledged desktop manager.

“Server GUI” should be an oxymoron.

Yeah.  Punchcards were a lot better.  Let's go back to that.


To each his own, I guess.  But seeing as I'm in Korea, and internet is basically a giant LAN, I'm very happy to treat my Server as a second desktop, with all the ease that entails.  I'm actually a busy solo programmer, so every second I can save is another second I can apply toward new features for my site.

I like them both to be present, sometimes I just get sick of typing. But nothing on old fashioned typewriting enthusiasts !

---

Yeah, Azure is nifty but expensive.  My Linode works just fine for what I need.  A full, 100% customizable linux server I can simply SSH into.  None of the projects I've worked on (or likely will work on) require more than that.

On a slightly different note, I just learned about NGINX Unit.  Very nifty.  Really seems to be made for containers.

In terms of expensive: it is.

---

I didn't use Azure before; but Visual Studio is always reminding me of the cloud. I want to try it TBH; the concept of virtual computing is just so tempting.

Free trial.  There are so many options and features that it spins the head, but in a very exciting way.

My subscription would end before the end of this year -with my host-; so it worth a trial
VS became very heavy on my machine; I'm also not very inclined to keep using C# and Razor. NGINX sounds very interesting.

[Tiberius]

You can get a cheap VPS for $5 a month at Digital Ocean, with 1GB RAM, 25 GB HDD, and 1 CPU.

Will support Nginx with multiple sites, MySQL, etc as long as you're not going crazy with it.

[WinterHold]

You can get a cheap VPS for $5 a month at Digital Ocean, with 1GB RAM, 25 GB HDD, and 1 CPU.

Will support Nginx with multiple sites, MySQL, etc as long as you're not going crazy with it.

Digital Ocean's VPSs have no support like the usual "shared servers". I guess it will be a turning shift in my approach to website management if I chose that route, because no support=more leaps of faith; but the prices are very exciting !

[KevinM1]

You can get a cheap VPS for $5 a month at Digital Ocean, with 1GB RAM, 25 GB HDD, and 1 CPU.

Will support Nginx with multiple sites, MySQL, etc as long as you're not going crazy with it.

Digital Ocean's VPSs have no support like the usual "shared servers". I guess it will be a turning shift in my approach to website management if I chose that route, because no support=more leaps of faith; but the prices are very exciting !

No support isn't quite accurate. Both Digital Ocean and Linode (they're essentially the same thing, offering the same kinds of packages at the same price points) have decent tutorials describing how to set things up. They (at least, Linode... haven't looked at Digital Ocean) also have forums. They also have a support ticket system, but that's more for notifying them of hardware issues and not general "how do I do X?" questions.

If all you want to do is host a few sites, then that kind of VPS is the way to go. Azure is definitely overkill.

[Tiberius]

You can get a cheap VPS for $5 a month at Digital Ocean, with 1GB RAM, 25 GB HDD, and 1 CPU.

Will support Nginx with multiple sites, MySQL, etc as long as you're not going crazy with it.

Digital Ocean's VPSs have no support like the usual "shared servers". I guess it will be a turning shift in my approach to website management if I chose that route, because no support=more leaps of faith; but the prices are very exciting !

What do you mean "shared servers"?

[KevinM1]

I think he's referring to shared hosting.

[Tiberius]

Ah. I don't know of any VPS that has that kind of support, the whole point is you manage your own server. Even Azure seems to have free basic support (which is documentation and self-help guides) whereas if you want someone to actually give you support, you need to pay up.

Honestly my advice is to play around with it, it's $5 a month, and they bill by the hour, so even if you spend a week trying it out, you're not going to be billed full price.

[bennyboy]

Ah. I don't know of any VPS that has that kind of support, the whole point is you manage your own server. Even Azure seems to have free basic support (which is documentation and self-help guides) whereas if you want someone to actually give you support, you need to pay up.

Honestly my advice is to play around with it, it's $5 a month, and they bill by the hour, so even if you spend a week trying it out, you're not going to be billed full price.

I'm not 100% sure but it seems to me MS will support you for free during your trial month.  So if you have problems setting up, installing things, and so on, they'll be there for you. I did have a couple moments with tech support, and the quality of service gave me a tiny orgasm. I was like "Oh. . . THIS is how the other half lives." It's hard to go back once you've seen that world.

I'm curious about the performance of these VPS options.  When I chose Azure, it was because I'd had a really bad experience with other options in Korea.  I was looking at a dedicated server (like an actual rack in a warehouse that I was going to admin or pay someone to admin), but I stumbled on Azure as an option and I thought I'd give it a spin.  It works so well that I decided to migrate my old site to Azure permanently.

---

I think he's referring to shared hosting.

Well, that's pretty much how I read "virtual" as well.  You're going to be sharing actual hardware with other users: internet bandwidth being a big one, actually. My experience with sharing anything in big internet companies is bad. Really, really bad. Like-- Godaddy bad!

[KevinM1]

Godaddy sucks terribly. For shared hosting, I found ICDSoft to be the best. I mean, it’s shared hosting, but they did as well as possible with it