[Web4lib] web hosting in the cloud

[c]

The situation for me has been that I like the ability to tweak php and mysql
settings as well as all of my modules on a separate box where I can test the
results of all those changes without impacting my production environment.
Truthfully I can get by with a 2 stage environment as long as I completely
blow away the testing/staging box each time, make it an exact copy of
production and then run my tests on only one thing at a time.

One thing that has been a difficulty in the past is that I frequently have
several projects going at the same time. I might be testing something that I
am working on more long term when an issue comes up on production. If I have
a 2 stage environment, I then need to wipe the state of staging, recreate it
from production and work on the highest priority issue, losing some of the
work I was doing on the longer term project.  That is why I lean towards a 3
stage environment. Yes, I could have multiple copies of production running
on the staging server in different directories and just accept that I have
to be really careful when I am messing about with mysql and php settings.


Chris

On Fri, Feb 4, 2011 at 10:33 AM, Cary Gordon <listuser at chillco.com> wrote:

> I can see justification for having a separate dev box, if you are
> actually developing software, as opposed to developing content. I
> could probably write a (depressing) book about my adventures in
> blowing up dev boxes. Who knew a comma in the wrong place could make a
> floppy disk catch fire?
>
> On modest-scale systems with single application/webservers, it is
> probably better to actually stage content on the same server to
> eliminate environmental differences.
>
> Cary
>
> On Fri, Feb 4, 2011 at 7:04 AM, Ross Singer <rossfsinger at gmail.com> wrote:
> > I guess I have a few questions here:
> >
> > 1) why do you need a lot of hardware for PHP and MySQL?
> >
> > 2) why do you feel you need 3 VPSes?  It doesn't seem like you're
> > doing anything that could just as easily be done with one - just use
> > different Apache ports and database names
> >
> > 3) how much PHP/database tuning do you really foresee?
> >
> > I get the desire to move to a more stable network, but there are other
> > considerations: who will administer and back up your VPS?  Will you
> > have any sensitive (for instance, personal) information in your hosted
> > MySQL db?  If the campus network is so flaky, isn't it just as likely
> > that you won't be able to get to the library sites, too?
> >
> > It seems perhaps as worthwhile to focus on fixing the campus
> > networking problems as it would be to move into the cloud.
> >
> > -Ross.
> >
> > On Thu, Feb 3, 2011 at 11:57 AM, c <cbpurcell at gmail.com> wrote:
> >> My boss would like me to look into the potential of hosting all of our
> >> library sites in the cloud. Boss likes the hardware redundancy potential
> of
> >> the cloud. I like this as well but I have my concerns and thought I
> would
> >> shoot out a question to see what other people's experiences and opinions
> >> are.
> >>
> >> Right now we run a pretty uncomplicated stack:
> >> - drupal
> >> - wordpress
> >> - mysql
> >>
> >> I really would like to have a 3 level environment, at least for our
> primary
> >> site (production, staging and test). In this situation I have the
> ability to
> >> actually change php memory settings, tweak drupal, mysql, and wordpress
> as
> >> needed, without my tweaks on test potentially impacting the controlled
> >> environments on production and staging.
> >>
> >> It seems to me that we would need 3 VPSs then and I am not sure that we
> gain
> >> much since that is basically the setup we have with central IT, except
> that
> >> with external hosting we are not down when the campus network is down
> and
> >> any host is going to have more hardware than we do.
> >>
> >> My initial thought was to look into dreamhost and mediatemple. Has
> anyone
> >> had any good experiences with them or any other hosts?
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >> Thanks,
> >> Chris Purcell
> >> Web Developer
> >> _______________________________________________
> >> Web4lib mailing list
> >> Web4lib at webjunction.org
> >> http://lists.webjunction.org/web4lib/
> >>
> >>
> >
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > Web4lib mailing list
> > Web4lib at webjunction.org
> > http://lists.webjunction.org/web4lib/
> >
> >
>
>
>
> --
> Cary Gordon
> The Cherry Hill Company
> http://chillco.com
>



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