What is VPS?
For Java hosting, why VPS is better than shared hosting?
Shared | Private (VPS) | |
---|---|---|
Private JVM Heap | No - JVM Heap is shared among other java web apps residing on the same shared tomcat instance. | Yes - you get a your very own dedicated JVM Heap which equates reliability, security, and availability of your web app. |
Ability to Start/Stop Application Server | Yes - With scripts which you can execute and the Shared Tomcat will be restarted within 60 minutes or send email to support. | Yes - you can restart tomcat at anytime either via SSH or via our online web console. |
Access to Application Server Admin / Manager | No | Yes |
Easy deployment of WAR files | No - you will have to upload your WAR and manually unpack it yourself. Tomcat's automatic detection and unpacking of WAR files is disabled due because this is a Shared Tomcat environment. | Yes - you can deploy your WAR files via Tomcat Manager, SSH or simply upload it and Tomcat automatically detects and unpacks it. |
Ability to install different software versions of JDK, Tomcat, JBoss, etc. | No - Yes. You can select from different JDK versions and when your account is set up select different Tomcat versions 5.5 and 6.x since it's a shared tomcat environment, you're bound by the shared tomcat version available which is version 5.5.x and JDK 1.5 | Yes - you can have custom versions installed for you. |
Interference with other application | Yes, you are affected by other application | No, you don't have to worry about other's application. |
Memory/Heap Size Increase | No - with shared tomcat you cannot increase your JVM heap size since you're on a shared JVM heap | Yes - you can request additional JVM heap increase. |
VPS vs Managed VPS
VPS: is just a virtual machine with root access and you do everything on your own.Managed VPS: As VPS and you have root access as well but you get extra functionality with extra cost, such extra functionality is different between hosting providers. Sample of services are:
-
-
- GUI web control panel.
- Fast script installation.
- Operating System updates.
- Server hardening.
- Backup.
- Monitoring.
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VPS Comparison
The following providers were selected as constantly repeating in all comparisons on the Internet.# | Factor | Linode | DigitalOcean | RoseHosting |
---|---|---|---|---|
1 | Bandwidth limitation (min - max) | 2 - 20 TB | 1 - 9 TB | 2 - unlimited TB |
2 | SSD (Solid State Drive) | Yes, all | Yes, all | Yes, all |
3 | Processor series | Intel Ivy Bridge E5-2680 | Intel Hexcore | Quad core or Dual Quad core Intel Xeon CPUs |
4 | Processor speed | 2.8 GHZ | 2.0 - 3.0 GHZ | Didn't reply |
5 | Processor range (min-max) | 1 - 20 cores | 1 - 20 cores | 2 - 10 cores |
6 | Vertical scaling RAM range (min -max) | 1 - 96 GB | 0.5 - 64 GB | 1 - 32 GB |
7 | Load balancing support documented and well defined on level of application server | Yes | No, being built, you can have node balance as droplet. | No, you need to build it using Nginx, HAproxy or similar |
8 | MySQL support clustering or not | Load balancing supported for MySQL | Support Master/Master, Master/Slave, Load balancing | Help you setup MySQL clustering |
9 | Redundancy level | No details provided by their support. | Offered in different layers. | Yes, details in comment. |
Managed VPS | Linode | DigitalOcean | RoseHosting | |
10 | CLI (Command Line Interface) | Yes, free | Yes, & alternative, but seems community based. | Root access |
11 | API (Programmatic interface for automating tasks) | Yes, free (In Python, Perl, PHP, Ruby, Java, Node.js) | V1 stable, V2 Public Beta | No |
12 | GUI web control panel. | Yes but included in high price Managed requires 100 $ / month | Yes | Yes within their managed hosting service free |
13 | Fast script installation. | Yes | Yes, but few | Yes, by request |
14 | Operating System updates. | No, have a look at support question in comments section. | No, after looking to support answer link, they help by diving details, or user from community, and you have to do it yourself. | No, your responsibility, but they can help. |
15 | Automated Backup. | Yes | Yes | Weekly free |
16 | User initiated Backup. | Yes | Yes | Not sure |
17 | Monitoring. | Yes | Yes but you need to built as droplet | Basic monitoring included |
18 | Mobile application monitoring on the go | Yes management & monitoring iOS, Android | Yes by contributors: iOS, Android but seems for management only not monitoring which is much important. | Yes by deployed to another server for monitoring. |
19 | Scheduling | Yes, through cron | Yes, through cron | Not mentioned in knowledgebase but I think will be through cron as well |
20 | Professional service for support & installation | Yes but included with estimation & costing | Yes try for help as per the comments section | Yes try for help as per the comments section |
Application Server Supported | Linode | DigitalOcean | RoseHosting | |
21 | Tomcat | No, have a look at support question in comments section. | No specialty rather than try to help as per the comments section | They can help install them if we are not sure how to do it. |
22 | JBoss | No, have a look at support question in comments section. | No specialty rather than try to help as per the comments section | They can help install them if we are not sure how to do it. |
23 | Glassfish | No, have a look at support question in comments section. | No specialty rather than try to help as per the comments section | They can help install them if we are not sure how to do it. |
Support | Linode | DigitalOcean | RoseHosting | |
24 | SLA* | 99.9% | 99.99% | 99.9% Network 100% for server with refund policy |
25 | Support model | Web tickets 24 x 7 | Web tickets 24 x 7 | Web tickets 24 x 7 |
26 | RPO (Recovery Point Objective) | No, have a look at support question in comments section. | No clear answer from email received | No clear answer in email |
27 | RTO (Recovery Time Objective) | No, have a look at support question in comments section. | No clear answer from email received | No clear answer in email |
Pricing | Linode | DigitalOcean | RoseHosting | |
28 | Price for initial launch** | 40 - 80 $ / month | 40 - 160 $ / month | 60 - 80 $ / month |
29 | Free plan | No | No | No |
30 | Price for development server | 40 $ / month | 40 $ / month | 60 $ / month |
31 | Support cost | 0 | 0 | 0 |
32 | Backup cost | 10 - 20 $ / month Snapshot is supported within the backup service without extra cost, it allows a single snapshot to be kept for every linode, i.e. when you take another snapshot it will ask you to override existing (Details). |
Backup: 20 % of virtual cost = 8 - 32 $ / month Snapshot: 0.02 / GB / month |
Backup: 0 for weekly |
33 | Monitoring cost | 0 - 20 $ / month | 10 $ / month As new droplet | 0 they seem partner with SolidAlert for web site monitoring |
34 | Load balancing cost | 20 $ / month | 10 $ / month As new droplet | 20 $ / month as new server |
35 | Total cost for initial load (development, production server, Support, Backup, Monitoring) | 90 $ / month | 98 $ / month | 120 $ / month |
Documentation | Linode | DigitalOcean | RoseHosting | |
36 | Video | No dedicated channel, but there are lots of videos as tutorials and setup from people using it. | Official Channel, but there are lots of videos for tutorials & setup especially OceanCasts | None |
37 | Blog | Yes | Yes | No |
38 | Forum | Yes | Question & Answers | No |
39 | Documentation site | Yes, comprehensive | Tutorials, comprehensive | Very limited compared to Linode or DigitalOcean |
40 | Extra | They pay 250$ to the community when submitting articles to encourage sharing information. | They pay 200$ to the community when submitting articles to encourage sharing information. |
SLA*:
99% SLA means your cloud access could be disrupted by 7.3 hours a month
99.9% SLA translates to about 44 minutes of downtime over a month
99.95% SLA translates to about 22 minutes of downtime over a month
99.99% SLA translates to about 4 minutes 23 seconds of downtime over a month
Price for initial launch**: For normalization assumption for application is composed of 1 VPS with following configuration:
-
- RAM: 6 GB
- Processor: 2 Core
- Storage: 100 GB
-
- RAM: 4 GB
- Processor: 1 Core
- Storage: 50 GB
Conclusion
I think Linode is best option & more production ready than the other VPS provider. It is all based on your needs, and your criteria of selection.
I hope this evaluation helps someone there who might take it as basis and add to it what other relevant factors that is best suited for his/her needs.
Conclusion After 4 months of Linode trial
The server availability is great. Support is quite responsive, and I'm happy customer :)
I have submitted article (Java Development with WildFly on CentOS 7) in their documentation & have been granted 250$ chosen to be credited to my linode account to support my servers ;)
I have submitted article (Java Development with WildFly on CentOS 7) in their documentation & have been granted 250$ chosen to be credited to my linode account to support my servers ;)
Dropped providers
- JustHost: No SSD support.
- Arvixe webhosting: Partial SSD support.
- HostJava: No SSD support.
- Myhosting: It seems their Java support is outdated as talking about Java 6 SE.
- JSPZone: No SSD support and plans with very little hardware.
- Dailyrazor: No SSD support.
- oxxus: They seem rather slow as ordering server takes around 4 hours.
- VPS.net: I searched in their knowledge base for Java, Tomcat, Jboss and no results returned, so we will suffer when try to get help. And their prices are higher than Linode or DigitalOcean so no need to add them.
- A small orange: Prices are higher than Linode or DigitalOcean, and also their knowledge-base doesn't have reference to Java only 2 links with nearly nothing to mention.
References
- Hosting in Canada.
- What is difference between un-managed and managed VPS?
- Digital Ocean a review & comparison
- We are migrating to Digital Ocean
This was a support email to Linode, and their answer after 30 mins :)
ReplyDelete--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1. What is the core speed? or its MHZ range?
Details on the exact CPU cores that are allocated to our new Linode plans can be found in our blog post, detailing the hardware upgrades.
https://blog.linode.com/2014/04/17/linode-cloud-ssds-double-ram-much-more/
As noted, the new plans are allocated Intel Ivy Bridge E5-2680 cores clocked at 2.8Ghz apiece.
2. What is the redundancy level supported? I know you have multiple
regions but is it by default or need special setup?
Unfortunately I am unable to provide the details about our infrastructure but please note that we do have redundant systems in place. That being said, I would highly recommend our Backup Service to add another layer of redundancy for your Linode.
https://www.linode.com/docs/platform/backup-service
3. How you handle OS upgrades or batches? I need more details or if it
is required from my side to subscribe to specific extra service than
hosting price.
4. Do you provide any special service for Java technologies (Tomcat,
JBoss, GlassFish, ...) through your support?
We simply provide the server infrastructure where you can select a Linux distribution. Everything else, including upgrades and other services, will have to be performed and installed by our customers.
5. For backup: what are RPO (Recovery Point Objective) & RTO (Recovery
Time Objective)?
We would not be able to provide this information because this is completely dependent on the size of the server you select and the amount/size of the files you store on your server.
This was a support email to DigitalOcean, and their answer after 9hr 30mins :((
ReplyDelete-----------------------------------------------
1- What is processor series & core speed? or its MHZ range?
We use server-grade Intel Hexcore processors between 2.0 GHz and 3.0 GHz. To view the clock speed and other details of the CPU on the hypervisor you are assigned, run this command on the command line: cat /proc/cpuinfo
2- Do you handle operating system updates after initial creation?
Certainly! As an example, here's a guide on updating Ubuntu 12.04 to 14.04: https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to-upgrade-ubuntu-12-04-lts-to-ubuntu-14-04-lts
3- Do you provide professional services support for applications or packages not mentioned in your website?
Our support is available 24/7 through our in-account ticketing interface. As an unmanaged provider, we do not have access to users' droplets to perform actions on their behalf, but do work with our customers to try to help them resolve any problems they might be encountering.
4- Do you provide any special service for Java technologies (Tomcat, JBoss, GlassFish, ...) through your support?
See above.
5- For backup or snapshots: what are RPO (Recovery Point Objective) & RTO (Recovery Time Objective)?
Our backups and snapshots are essentially copies of the entire droplet at that point in time. Deploying from a backup or snapshot effectively puts you in the same place you were at when the image was created. (it's not a file-level service, it's an image-level service)
This was a support email to RoseHosting, and their answer after 55mins :)
ReplyDelete----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1- What is the core series & speed? or its MHZ range?
All virtual servers are running on powerful enterprise grade servers featuring Quad core or Dual Quad core Intel Xeon CPUs, with a minimum of 32GB DDR3 ECC memory and enterprise hard disk drives or SSD drives in mirrored RAID1 or RAID5 arrays for superior performance.
2- Do you support load balancing between application server?
All our VPS hosting plans provide full root access. This means that you can easily setup your own load balancing using Nginx, HAproxy or similar.
3- So you support MySQL clustering?
Yes, we can help you setup MySQL clustering.
4- What is the redundancy level supported?
We have multiple redundant OC-3 (155 Mbps) and Gigabit connections through Savvis, Cogent and Broadwing. You can ping 206.196.110.254 for a quick latency test. We also have a couple of backup loops to Qwest and Sprint, but those are used only in case of an emergency. Our data center infrastructure is monitored 24 hours a day, 365 days a year by the industry's leading engineers and is fully redundant to provide the highest level of system and network availability and reliability.
5- Do you support CLI interface to manage servers?
Yes, you will have full root CLI access to your server(s).
6- Do you support fast script installation?
Yes, we can help you install any software you like that can be installed on any other Linux OS.
7- How you handle OS upgrades or batches? I need more details or if it is required from my side to subscribe to specific extra service than hosting price.
OS and service upgrades are your responsibility. You have to keep all your services, scripts, applications etc... by upgrading whenever a new version is available. We can also help you with your OS/applications upgrades if you don't know how.
8- Do you provide any special service for Java technologies (Tomcat, JBoss, GlassFish, ...) through your support?
All our virtual servers support running Tomcat, JBoss, Glassfish and we can help you install them if you are not sure how to do it.
9- For backup: what are RPO (Recovery Point Objective) & RTO (Recovery Time Objective)?
You will have your server weekly backup mounted to the '/dc-backup' directory on your server, allowing you to access it if you need to restore some files/directories at any time. Please note that all our virtual servers are backed up once weekly. Each weekly backup overwrites the previous week's backup, i.e. we will have one backup copy of your server.
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