[Brug-talk] RoR hosting provider

[Peter De Berdt (10-forward)]

On 25 Oct 2007, at 16:54, Tom Klaasen wrote:

> - Rimmuhosting and a few others that were discussed here, are  
> actually virtual private servers. Don't compare these to a shared  
> environment. They each have their advantage, and each has a  
> different target group depending on sysadmin knowledge of the  
> customer, type of application etc.
>
>
> Frank's right: if your core competence is development, you'll be  
> happy to outsource the sysadmin nitty gritty to people who love to  
> do that. If you want to provide hosting for your customers, the  
> picture is different, I imagine.

I agree up to some point. You do need to have quite some linux  
knowledge to correctly setup and most importantly secure a vps or  
dedicated server (e.g. setting up a firewall, disabling root access,  
only allow ssh by ip or keys, automatically monitor and restart  
services, …), . Once it's well setup, maintenance should be minimal.  
Rimuhosting's support will go a long stretch to help you set up a  
secure server, i.e. they will do it for you and then send you a mail  
explaining every step they took and how to configure the services.

If you're going for shared hosting, you depend on the goodwill of  
your hosting provider to provide you with the tools you need, like  
installing gems (some do it, some don't), how your rails app is  
served (FCGI, mongrel, mongrel cluster, …), svn access. Our apps very  
regularly use extra command line utilities or for example  
imagescience instead of rmagick, all of these need sudo rights to  
install. Having a VPS or dedicated server allows you to do whatever  
you want.

Also, be well aware of what shared hosting is and what makes it a  
cheaper option than a VPS or dedicated server. All I'm saying is, if  
you go for shared hosting, make sure you inform yourself on what a  
hosting provider will do for you in terms of what you think your apps  
will need and how shared their shared hosting actually is (how many  
accounts per server, server specs, …). Also know that all other sites  
hosted on a rails hosting servers can the culprit for bringing the  
entire server down, including your account. And there are a lot of  
seemingly fantastic offers out there that can turn very sour really  
quickly once you start using them.

But since Openminds seems to be very openminded and helpful, you  
should consider them very seriously.

Best regards.


Peter De Berdt
Research & Development
Software Expert

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