You can start a low budget using cloud and just expand it by adding more cores, ram, and load balancers. A CDN will also do great performance with lesser load to your apache or nginx. Usually the starting server will cost around $50 to $200 depending on your setup but if you're planning big, I suggest to start with APACHE/NGINX + mySQL on different server.

If you need some free consultation, feel free to message mo on skype at hacksider@gmail.com

Well said Ken If your budget permits, start with digital ocean, http://digitalocean.com

Appreciate the input guys - thanks!

Anyway, here's a basic stuff you might want to know when handling a server
1. A single core server (2ghz) with 2GB ram can accommodate around 0 to 100 users at the same time
2. Double the capacity should accommodate up to 300

Those are just estimates since it will also depend on what template, plugins and other components you use.

I suggest you also have different SQL and apache server to bump up the performance and make things easier in the future.
Usually a server (cloud) can give up to 16 cores and 64 gig of RAM per instance (depending on the providers).
The server location also gives a performance boost, the nearer the server, the lower ping reply you get from your user (ms)

I also suggest digitalocean if you're quite experienced in hosting since you get the lowest cost per server but you will have to deal with a lot of manual installation and upgrades yourself (ssh). But then again, digitalocean is the cheapest out there! They even give you a free trial for a month or two!

Thanks for sharing Ken

I signed up with Digital Ocean but have yet to create a droplet. As far as hosting control panels, I'm looking at cPanel/WHM but wanted your input as there are a number of options out there.

Thanks.

Hello Justin,

Stay clear from cpanels because they add a tad load on your server too! If you can follow simple rules on building a LAMP / LEMP stack on linux machines, it's really simple.

1. Update your yum repository. yum is like a package manager and it's really extremely easy to update. To update your repository, it's as easy as invoking the command `yum update -y`

2. Setting up LEMP on Centos https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to-install-linux-nginx-mysql-php-lemp-stack-on-centos-6

3. Install Joomla and other extensions.

4. Install mod_pagespeed https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to-get-started-with-mod_pagespeed-with-apache-on-a-centos-and-fedora-cloud-server

5. Every week, run a `yum update -y` to ensure that you are always on the latest version to avoid any known 0day exploits.

Wow! Thanks so much for the links and information Mark! I can put my cPanel budget towards a subscription EasyBlog & EasyDiscuss

Thanks again!

You are most welcome Justin Yep, unless you run a webhosting company, don't ever go with cpanel / directadmin / plesk. It's a no brainer to add these control panels if you are just going to host a couple of your sites for yourself. I know how heavy they are and it's pretty pointless if you are adding this just for hosting a couple of sites.

Very true Mark. For the most part, the only tools I use in cPanel are to create a database, a cronjob, an email account, or manage domains. And if not using cPanel helps with server load, all the better!

Thanks again!

Yep, stay with a lean OS and you are good to go If you want us to setup your LEMP stack for you, we could do it for some charges but I strongly recommend that you try it out yourself first, this is what building a website is all about. You continuously learn and step up to the game

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Thanks Mark! I'll give it go on my end just to learn how to make (and break ) things. It may sound nerdy, but I'm pumped to try all this out!

Yep, go ahead and you will learn a lot from failing. I did fail many times before I was able to pull this off

Really Mark after I built our new server with cPanel you are suggesting not to use cPanel? LOL!

Well, our new cPanel server is kind of beefy, 24 CPU, 32 Gb RAM, separate MySQL server running on CloudLinux and Mark is right. It is slow I am thinking of moving back to building a new lean server.

Jackson

Linode.com is another good option if you want an alternative to DigitalOcean.com. Personally I have had best luck with LEMP stack with NGINX, php-fpm, APC and ngx_pagespeed on Debian 7.5.

I do actually have Virtualmin GPL installed. However, I had never considered to look at that from a load perspective. Is it worth considering removing Virtualmin?

I am never into any control panels and that is probably just my preferences because I like things running within my own control as I know what to fix if it breaks down (I am a control freak ). If using control panels, you are also binding yourself with:

1. Unnecessary monthly expenses (If you are only going to host a couple of domains)

2. Unnecessary resource usages on the server (If I recall correctly, these control panels also run some wild tasks in the cron)

3. Unnecessary security risk (Control panels are web apps too and there are times when there are security breaches too)

None of our servers, vps or sites runs on any control panel at all but again, this is just my preferences. I do not have anything against them. Take a look at one of our server's load (I am not going to tell you which machine this is to avoid any hack attempts to bring it down, haha)

 15:41:27 up 906 days,  8:46,  1 user,  load average: 0.05, 0.02, 0.00

P/S: This machine is only on 512mb of memory, 30GB of SATA disk space and it's still serving us very well

Hi Mark,

Would you recommend as far as email management and any type of security?

Thanks.

We use gmail for most of our emails so there's no need for us to install any mail services on the server As for security, I don't think those control panel installs any security either?

I believe you're right as far as security. I came across a few thread on DigitalOcean that mentioned CloudFlare, but users also recommended it's better to treat an attack on a case-by-case basis.

How much is saved if I uninstall mail capability from server? (I am using gmail now)

@JOSH - For the server specs you had recommended (16gb ram, 1000gb, 15TB bandwidth, etc..), wouldnt that usually cost $300/- or more per month easily?

How much is saved if I uninstall mail capability from server?

I am interested to know that too...

With the Cpanel, I do use them. I understand what Mark says about it being a server bloat, but if you are new to server administration and if the command line is intimating, then cpanel does make it easier due to the UI. So the extra server load is a price you pay if you are a newbie. But if you have a decent server specs to manage your site traffic, then I dont see a huge impact with cpanel (unless ofcourse your site is starting to outgrow your server capacity).

Yeah it does.. thanks for your insight. With the server migration, I have done that before and it took like upto 72 hours for it to be updated worldwide. Sometimes a tough pill to chew for big sites. At the same time, having a 4GB server and splitting the resources with another 16gb server also sounds like double expenses considering the 16GB might be big enough to power the whole site without needing to share with a 4gb.

Anyhow, as of this moment 2gb ram itself does it for me and I am planning to upgrade it to 4GB by end of this year. So the 16gb resource requirement will still take a bit of time for my site to grow that much. But this topic has been interesting and helpful so I can plan ahead when upgrading my server in couple of months.

Josh wrote:

And I'm not gonna sit here and give away all my secrets But google is now ranking websites do to who has https.... Many many people pay $700-$3000 a year for this. Now Mark, if you'd like to implement this hit me up Email and let me know. I'll give you the info, you scratch my back, I'll scratch yours. I know how to implement https for every single page within a website and at a price you couldn't imagine - $40 every 5 years - at 2046 bit key for the server (you can't go lower as required by law) with 248 bit encrypt key coming off the site (ex. click on googles https and more info and it will show you they have 248 key coming off the site.

Hey Josh, care to share a link to the affordable encryption solution you are referring to? Most of the ones I know are overpriced.

Hey Josh,

Yep, I am actually aware of the upside on implementing https:// and how Google ranks sites with https:// better but bear in mind that browser's are still having issues dealing with https sites and it's always often much slower compared to a non https site. We actually already have the capability to run all the links on our sites as https:// but prefer not to as of yet but when the time is right, we might move on to https

Hello Josh,

Yep, I absolutely agree with your view here too! But we're still considering this as we'll also be losing our social counters too

I played around over the weekend with DigitalOcean and came across ServerPilot (great for newbies like me!). It's incredible! I set up a test site on my own cloud package with SiteGround and one on the starter $5/month on DigitalOcean. Both site's using the blank T3 framework and a few htaccess tweaks. Page Speed listed the DO test site at 92/100, while the identical test site on SG was 68/100. Using the Joomla admin panel in the DO install is lightening fast.

Thanks again for bringing DigitalOcean to my attention!

I was reading about the 248 bit encrypt key, SSL etc.. but I really dont see a need for it. Especially if you are running your site as a hobby. Its not a bank and if you are not taking sensitive information on your site then why worry about it?

Apparently Google now gives you a higher page rank if you use https . It's kinda silly if you ask me but I think if your site is based on a lot of ads, it would make sense if you implement it since higher page rank would also mean that you get a higher CPC

I was reading about the 248 bit encrypt key, SSL etc.. but I really dont see a need for it. Especially if you are running your site as a hobby. Its not a bank and if you are not taking sensitive information on your site then why worry about it?

Apparently with a social network in mind, users information is very important and without SSL you can easily intercept/sniff any communication easily (try using CAIN to know) within the network.

As per cheap SSL, I suggest checking this link https://www.namecheap.com/security/ssl-certificates/comodo.aspx

256bit is strong enough to enough (usually they are paired with 2048 bit RSA) and is cheap enough too.

How much is saved if I uninstall mail capability from server?

If you're using cpanel, then you're just making nightmares on yourself if you uninstall it since it doesn't add any cost. But I highly suggest if you're creating or planning something big, to use a postfix server or an external service (just like stacksocial using amazon mailer). It will add cost per email BUT lessen the load of your apache/nginx to 10% or more depending on how you are sending the email.

As per site grows, it's usually the RAM that's usually being abused. You can easily lessen the load of CPU by adding cache (and making it faster) but it will consume a lot of memory.

I do actually have Virtualmin GPL installed. However, I had never considered to look at that from a load perspective. Is it worth considering removing Virtualmin?

Virtualmin is a resource hog just like cpanel but then again. If you're using it to monitor something or do something that you think is necessary, then I suggest not removing it. I myself highly suggest you try first a baremetal setup before jumping in to a bandwagon and managing everything using SSH. Using only the services you want really makes everything faster and you can squeeze every drop of power in your machine focused only on the website and nothing else.

Thanks for sharing Ken, you seem very knowledge-able It's great to see different types of customers on our forums

Mark wrote:

Thanks for sharing Ken, you seem very knowledge-able It's great to see different types of customers on our forums

Not wrong, I'm going to start bookmarking these threads. In Easysocial of course

As for the server, you might sometimes see there are some hiccups or sudden slowdown. You can easily check who's the culprit by typing in the console

# ps -auxf | sort -nr -k 4 | head -10

As per security is concerned, I just always go to the standard by always updating the server, better yet automatically updating it, though sometimes risky since it does breaks some stuffs, debian builds do automatically backup, I'm not aware of this on ubuntu but i also do auto backup in my ubuntu machines. In debian (I'm more into centos) you can easily do this by

0 8     * * *   root    test -x /usr/sbin/cron-apt && /usr/sbin/cron-apt0 8     * * *   root    test -x /usr/sbin/cron-apt && /usr/sbin/cron-apt

That automatically updates your server every 8 hours.

Also for security and stability, it's always better if you know what's up with your server. I suggest you check new relic. It helps you monitor errors, slowdowns and almost everything in your server (and even applications). New relic is really a good tool and I can say it's worth an investment. By the way, they offer a free trial of the full version and free tool too (a minimal version of the full version).

I'll add up some more details tomorrow. Or better yet, feel free to ask! I'll give you guys free consultation here

I'm testing out Google Apps using my own test domain to host email. One question I have is about the daily email cap. I'm guessing with a busy social network, email volume would be extremely high with the various notifications that would be constantly sent out via Joomla/EasySocial. If you have 200 users active everyday, and a mailing list of 3000 users, I'm guessing it wouldn't take much to reach Google's daily maximum.

Hello Justin,

If you are looking at sending transactional emails, don't use Google apps to do that. It's too pricey and crazy. There's a couple of cool transactional emails provider

http://mandrillapp.com
http://sendgrid.com
https://postmarkapp.com/

Are you saying SMTP via Google Apps is a bad idea? (I have the original free google apps from before they removed that)

Is there a daily limit for Google Apps e-mails?

Thanks for the links Mark,

So a transactional email would be "John joined Group ABC" as an example in EasySocial?

Basically a service like mandrillapp can be used to deliver Joomla based email and then use Google Apps for daily communication outside of Joomla?

Are you saying SMTP via Google Apps is a bad idea? (I have the original free google apps from before they removed that)



Is there a daily limit for Google Apps e-mails?

In a way, I wouldn't use this because once you're tagged as a spammer (some people just click spam instead of unsubscribing) it will be hard for your normal email to get through. Secondly, you can be blacklisted by google easily by sending more than 500 emails in an hour. I also suggest what Mark said, use a third party mailer. Sendgrid is one of the best I tried since they're very easy to implement. If you want a free account for life, feel free to contact me (sending limit is 20,000 emails per month, then 0.001 cent in excess)

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Ken wrote:

Are you saying SMTP via Google Apps is a bad idea? (I have the original free google apps from before they removed that)



Is there a daily limit for Google Apps e-mails?

In a way, I wouldn't use this because once you're tagged as a spammer (some people just click spam instead of unsubscribing) it will be hard for your normal email to get through. Secondly, you can be blacklisted by google easily by sending more than 500 emails in an hour. I also suggest what Mark said, use a third party mailer. Sendgrid is one of the best I tried since they're very easy to implement. If you want a free account for life, feel free to contact me (sending limit is 20,000 emails per month, then 0.001 cent in excess)

Ah thanks for the clarification. I would genuinely appreciate a free for life account with sendgrid. Please get in touch at jannik.laursen@statusselect.com

Following..

Hi Jannik! Email sent

Fantastic, thanks a lot Ken!

As per email, I and Jannik is talking about CDN. basically, CDN means content delivery network. It will be the middleman of delivering STATIC contents to your visitor. There are 2 kind of CDN, the ACTIVE PULL and PUSH as far as my knowledge know. The difference between those two are

PUSH - Something like the amazon cloud cdn, you will be given an api key, you upload the file directly to them and pull everything from them. This is quite easy to implement if you're starting with them.

Active Pull - Something like softlayer have, basically it will look up to your domain for all the files and you can just change the path to something like

old: youdomain.com/file.jpg

new: cdn.yourdomain.com/file.jpg

As for me, active pull is easier to implement than push since you will just create another redirection and just change the path of the file to your subdomain.

What are the advantage of CDN?
- It lessens the load of apache, since every file like js, css, jpg and other files are being ofloaded to the CDN and not your main server.
- Improves the speed and performance of the site by using the nearest server to them, and giving you more resources in RAM and CPU in your main server (ofloaded files remember?)

hehe, yeah I am picking his brain a bit via e-mail ;-) but as we have seen on these forums lately, Ken is not only knowledgeable, but he is generous with his knowledge and shares it with this great community. I have said it many times, Stackideas forum is the best Joomla community I have ever seen, and it is always great to see members share knowledge with each other here on the forums. Once again, thanks to Ken, Mark and the many other people who take the time to answer technical questions on these forums, even if they extend beyond basic stackideas product support.

No problem, hope I can help! And glad to hear you enjoyed our communications. I'm basically more into servers than into programming (though I'm also a programmer). I worked as a consultant in many big companies to optimize their servers and UX (user experience) so I have lots to share on this matter.

I can tell It is refreshing with more people with knowledge about server optimization in this community, and more threads about it. Because, it is not enough to have nice layout and good features, it has to perform well too. So the more us Stackideas subscribers learn about server optimization, the better experience we all will have

Thanks for sharing this Ken

Interesting, subscribed!

For php caching, is there any point of using APC for a new server set ups anymore? Some say apc is gonna be a part of php core but I see that php 5.5 has zend optimiser included. some say apc doesn't work with 5.5 and it's slowly going to die as zend optimiser might take over. I know there are a lot of php opcode caching out there and some are no longer actively developed. So for the present day in 2014 considering, what do you recommend works best when using joomla 3.3 + ES + the latest php version + Apache on Linux?

Neel, I don't know how 5.5 will turn out. But on 5.4 APC works incredibly well

I highly suggest you guys enable APC and MEMCACHE

To install APC, just

sudo apt-get install php-pear php5-dev make libpcre3-dev

sudo pecl install apc

Restart your apache after. Then in your php.ini make sure the apc is enabled

extension = apc.so

You can also add in php.ini this lines below

apc.shm_size = 128

apc.stat = 0

128 Means you're giving your APC a 128 MB RAM (you can modify it as your server grows to give it more boost), the apc.stat = 0 will check if you have a new recompiled php and give it a fresh start

Hey Ken, can you explain the benefits of using both? and isn't MemCached better than MemCache?

I Jannik, I believe it's the same (LOL) Anyway, as per memcache and APC. Memcache is for mySQL while APC is for PHP process. Both can be use to optimize the website.

Memcache and Memcached actually are different. They started off as the same base and then split off. Memcached is to Memcache, what MariaDB is to MySQL... or what Joomla is to Mambo. Supposedly Memcached is faster and has a few more features.

That said, I agree with your statement about using APC for PHP and Memcache(d) for MySQL. However, last time I tried to setup Memcache(d) to handle MySQL it broke my website. Do you have any good guides on how to do it and make it work with Joomla? (Note: I am on Debian)

For memcache(d) you can edit first your configuration.php

public $caching = '0';

public $cache_handler = 'file';

Edit them and change the code to:

public $caching = '2';

public $cache_handler = 'memcache';

public $memcache_server_host = 'localhost';

public $memcache_server_port = 'xxxxx';

I highly suggest that you have different memcache server than mySQL to really improve performance. Though, you will only see difference if you have 1000+ users or more using your site.

What do you mean by? "I highly suggest that you have different memcache server than mySQL to really improve performance." P.S. I use MariaDB if that changes anything.

You can setup a different server to handle memcache than your mariadb/mysql
apache -> memcache -> mariadb/mysql

Fascinating. Ok, so let me see if I understand correctly, I create a VPS with the sole purpose of powering memcache? and make my Joomla config connect to the IP of that memcache dedicated server?

So keep php and mariaDB on my main server, but make it connect to another server (VPS?) with its own operating system and memcache?

yes, you can setup a different memcache server to improve performance

Ken wrote:
I highly suggest you guys enable APC and MEMCACHE

Thanks @Ken and @Jannick.

I am still considering if APC will be a good choice as of today. I know that it has been very popular (and favoured) over the years and many many websites are already using APC for opcode caching. But my concern is, it doesnt seem to be updated or maintained anymore. The last release I saw was dated back 2012 and that is still marked on Beta. Since then php has also come a long way. Some people claim that it causes trouble with php 5.5. Last month end, php 5.6 was released and it has improved the Zend Optimizer that comes bundled with it. I think it is a good idea that php includes its own opcode caching now (finally!). Therefore it is perhaps safer to assume that Zend optimizer might be better maintained and more compatible with the latest php version since it is included with php core. So I am considering to perhaps I should use that instead of APC if I was to install php 5.5 or 5.6. Especially when I installing a brand new server with recent php, I also need to consider what will be more stable / works best considering the present and future versions of php as well.

Another question I have is about Nginx. I am not comfortable using Nginx for everything. In my current server I am using Nginx as a revere proxy to Apache. But in the new server I am thinking of perhaps using Varnish as reverse proxy and Apache doing all the backend work. I was reading a lot of good reviews and benchmarks on Varnish and with 3.0 release, it seems more promising. It appears for Apache, varnish might do a better job as reverse proxy than Nginx since it is specifically designed for that. Your views? Has anyone actually tried varnish + Apache with Joomla setup here?

Neel as far as I know Varnish and Joomla don't cooperate well.

Ok, so I decided to upgrade to PHP 5.6 and try out Zend Opcache. Works quite well. Additionally I have installed memcached, but it seems to be slowing down my site rather than speeding it up.... any advice on how to configure memcached to play nice with Joomla?

Memcache might not be for everyone and I have also heard from others that it actually slows down the site in some cases. If your benchmark shows that, why would you need memcache?

Also thanks for trying out Zend. I am gonna buy a server today (as my bday present today) so I can install and break stuff to test things out. I 'll surely share when I find something that works best for me.

No worries, your thoughts sparked my curiosity so I decided to compare 5.4 + APC with 5.6 + Zend... and so far first impressions are good. I actually just managed to get Memcached to cooperate too btw

Whats the general opinion of progressive vs conservative cache for EasySocial, EasyBlog, EasyDiscuss, jReviews site?

I always use conservative cache with Joomla. We are serving up a ton of dynamic data so I want to be able to control on a module by module basis what is being cached. I always also use just the default "file" option for the cache and put all sessions into memcached. I have found that memcached actually slows things down when used as the main cache, the file system is faster, that being said we are using SSD disks. Using a SSD will add a dramatic performance boost across the board for file caching and database tasking.

I also use memcached in front of the database and keep the database well optimized. Database tweaking is not simply a fire and forget operation, it needs monitoring every few days and readjusting. My SQL tuner is a very good tool to install and help you achieve this. As you have mentioned the latest version of PHP already has a built in opcache and in my experience is faster than APC and almost makes APC redundant.

I have also had great success with Varnish 4 (the latest version). I have had to write all of my own custom rules and have also modified some of the joomla core in regards to how it handles cookies. Now it is optimized it will serve most content direct from memory and does not even touch the PHP or SQL. It helps greatly to keep everything stable and fast during heavy peak times. There are some companies out there that will help you integrate varnish with Joomla (http://massivescale.net/varnish-joomla.html) , however they will charge and I prefer to make my own customizations. In conclusion you can make Varnish work very well with Joomla and have a huge performance boost.

Of course if you are using a LEMP stack (very much recommended), NGINX will serve up static content at blistering speeds all day long with a tiny memory footprint and blows Apache out of the water. NGINX can also be highly tuned. As mentioned stay well away from control panels unless you are running a hosting service. Cpanel and especially Plesk will hog resources like no tomorrow.

Not much else to add really! I love optimizing servers and building stacks so hit me up if you have any questions.

ah thanks for the feedback...

Btw.... dont upgrade to php 5.6 yet, ioncube loaders dont work and are needed for many components... so stick with 5.5 or lower :P

Why do you need ioncube Jannik? We need ioncube solely for Kayako (but we're going to ditch Kayako soon) I hate encrypted source codes!

jReviews needs it :<

Ah, I see That's too bad.

yeah it ***** because I spent hours tweaking and setting everything up the way I liked it on 5.6 and then I discovered all of that work was wasted... so I ended up restoring a backup and trying to build something different with 5.5... and I have not been able to replicate the same results as with 5.6.

Yeah, I totally understand you!

Mark wrote:

We use gmail for most of our emails so there's no need for us to install any mail services on the server As for security, I don't think those control panel installs any security either?

@Mark This has peeked my interest on how you have set it up. How do you send the transactional emails that are created in your site then? I am confused about this.. lets say, if I want to use the server to send only transactional emails that are generated from my Joomla - ES installation on my site and want to use Gmail for receiving and replying to emails sent to the website's email address, does it mean I only need to install Postfix and thats it? So in this case, I wont need to worry about installing and configuring Dovecot, POP, IMAP, etc if I am only going to be sending transactional emails from my server and letting gmail handle the rest? I am new to this and learning on setting up a new unmanaged server and I find setting up a mail server to be a bit more difficult to understand than the rest.

Postfix is the fast (and best) way to handle emails. I also wouldn't suggest using gmail. If you need a free account on sendgrid (20k emails per month) feel free to hit my email, i'll be very happy to assist you there.

Thanks Ken. You are very kind and very helpful. I will look at Sendmail. I did have a brief look at all the links Mark you had suggested in one of the posts above (Sendmail, mandrillapp and postmarkapp). The offer you can get (20000 emails / month on free account) sounds interesting. Now, I will dwelve into it more and will surely contact you if I decide to take Sendmail.

Part of me is also saying if I should put the effort to learning and configuring a fully working Mail Server so I get 'full' control over the mail coming and going out of my server which is not possible with Third-party. But it is also intimidating cuz when something goes wrong then my emails are down too until I fix the issue or if its not configured correctly my mails will end up sending to Spam folders or not delivered at all. Couple of questions I have if I was to use a service like SendMail:

1) If I am using SendMail, do I still need to install MDA, POP and SMTP or would that not be necessary? Would just a MTA (Postfix) be enough then?

2) Also, do I need to worry about SSL for mail servers or I dont need that if Sendmail is doing all that?

Can you give be a brief idea on how it works please?


EDIT: Sorry, I meant sendgrind (not sendmail)

Just use postfix as suggested, it takes 5 minutes to install and will happily fire out thousands of emails all day long for you.

^ to what Matthew suggested if cost is a barrier for you. We rely on these services because we need to ensure that emails are 100% delivered and if there's any failure, we get notified. If you are using built in MTA's, you'll need to monitor them yourselves.

1) If I am using SendMail, do I still need to install MDA, POP and SMTP or would that not be necessary? Would just a MTA (Postfix) be enough then?

No need

2) Also, do I need to worry about SSL for mail servers or I dont need that if Sendmail is doing all that?

Most email service gives you options and you can configure them on your postfix easily.

I have been looking at Google Compute Engine and it looks really impressive. It seems to be a good alternative to Digital Ocean, Linode or AWS. Has anybody tried it for Joomla? I cannot find any info on joomla performance in GCE..

Neel, it looks very very impressive. Keep me updated if you try it out. Looks insanely scalable.

I am going to give Linode a try now and see how it goes with their new offering

At first I was gonna use DO but now that Linode had updated their pricing and also has SSD disc, I thought I'll go with Linode instead. I then bumped into GCE and now I am thinking of trying that instead. The price is not bad neither and I like how it uses google own infrastructure than the public internet line. So technically it could have better communication speed and knowing google it should not be taken lightly. Like Janick pointed out, its insanely scalable and it has a lot of features that can be added to it. However the con is, being a new service to public (unlike Aws or linode that have been for years) there isn't much info on public forums and blogs on practical experiences with Joomla. Google docs are good but it it requires a little bit of learning curve to get started. I am thinking of giving it a test drive in the coming week. Will post back when I get a chance to try it out.

In the long run it looks expensive and untested with Joomla as you say. However it should work fine with Joomla as long as you tune it like any other PHP/SQL application.

Why not just get a dedicated server and then maybe another one if you need to scale? I have used virtual networks or "clouds" and they never deliver as fast as your very own server in my experience.

Anyway, if you do try it out please let us know how it goes and performs

Google's pricing is extremely complex and I was never able to figure out how much it really costs haha. By the way, there's another uprising cloud platform, https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/ . Seems to be pretty cool too.

@Mark, I had a look at Azure by microsoft and their prices are a lot higher than Google or Amazon. I agree with what you say, the Google pricing is a lot complex. I find AWS pricing even worse. When compared to Linode, etc I also found understanding GCE pricing hard at the beginning and it appears to be expensive since you are paying for each services and resources. But after spending a full day reading through the docs and features, its beginning to make sense. From my calculation if appears that if I have a VM with: 2 cores, 7.5GB RAM, + 30GB SSD Disc, it comes to around $79.50/- which is pretty good I think. Ofcourse we can scale it up or down based on what we want the price will reflect that.


@Matthew Pate I totally agree with you that a dedicated server or even a fast VPS could do the good job too. Thats what was confusing me. One side I see Linode where the plans are straight forward and also easy to set-up. On the other end I see GCE which appears to be complex but also can help a lot when the site grows really big and you need more resources and scaling. So I still havent decided which will work for me yet.

One of my main preference is Latency for Australia. For US its no big deal since all of them works good for US users. But for Australia its a whole different thing. I tried DO Singapore and I am quite surprised to see that ping still takes 180ms to Sydney. Its even worse (228ms) for Melbourne! Very disappointing. Also I wasnt happy with DO server performance as well. Linode has Japan datacentre as the closest but still its too far from Aus. Aus VPS are ridiculously expensive and not sure how reliable the cheaper ones are. With GCE they dont mention where their Asia Pacific region data centre is located and I am hoping being a big company they might even have datacentre in aus in the future too. Even if not, hoping their asia-pacific network is more reliable than the performance I saw with Digital Ocean. So yeah... I have a lot to consider and be confused about

I am currently on the process of setting up the GCE for a test run and will be playing around with it tonight to get an idea.

Alright here it is... I had a quick test with Google Compute Engine. I think it is good. Its quite easy to set up and I was able to install a fully working LEMP Stack + configure firewall + install phpmyadmin + set Hostnames + disable root from ssh and set a new admin user - all added in one go itself when I create a new instance. That made it pretty easy and I liked it. It took like 3 minutes for google to set everything up and then you got yourself a Nginx web server using php-fpm and MySql. Neat.. I then installed joomla via ssh and it worked good. No issues. When I did the ping test to these servers, I didnt find huge difference in latency or pageload speed between my DO server and GCE server both with similar configuration. GCE was slight better than DO though except for Singapore ofcourse since DO was located there. However I was the only user and I didint check how they handle the load when many users are browsing from difference regions. Perhaps google might work better then I would think. GCE also gave a real feel of how a cloud should actually be and the scalability and their api are amazing. There is so much you can do with it. Its really good for really large global sites but for a simple to medium sized website, it might just be a bit too much.

Also I forgot to count the network charges when I did a rough estimate for GCE before. It is like and extra 21c per GB for Engress and I think that can work out to be quite expensive during a sudden spike and I cant control the threshold limit neither. Compared to that I personally feel linode or DO might be a safer option where you know your limits and know what you are getting. I wont be getting any surprise bill. It was fun testing GCE out though. But I felt like I walked into a 5 star hotel while I feel more comfortable at McDonalds.

In the end, I also found this new provider vultr.com. They seem to be a worthy competitor to DO & Linode. It seems to be a new one probably released only this year but they have 14 datacentres around the world already. More than what Digital ocean or Linode have. What was also interesting is they have one in Sydney which might be perfect for me. Since they are new, I cant find much reviews on them. Might give them a try I am thinking... hmm...

Thanks for sharing Neel. If you are looking for something along the lines of Linode or DO, personally I recommend Linode. Best support I have ever received... and their latest upgrades are quite impressive. I look forward to hearing Marks take now that he is trying them again, post upgrades.

Agreed with @Jannik about Linode's support

Jannik,

I haven't actually had the time to test through thoroughly yet as I haven't even started the migration of our current Rackspace machine Once I have more details of this, I will keep you guys in the loop!