Planning on moving the Pelican Forums Servers to the cloud, any experts here?

[KFC911]

Mick and Keef won't like this

[SeanPizzle]

Cloud, like AWS or Rackspace is a good option for some people. Keep in mind that once you are migrated, it is very tough to get out of the cloud in case you want to bring it back.

I would imagine that the traffic on this site is pretty static with a nominal growth rate. You arent in the business of IT, you are in the business of providing car parts. How much time to you spend managing this site vs what could you be doing to build your core business? How much is the monthly hosting fee and whats the ROI compared to the aforementioned activities?

read the fine print and SLA (service level agreements). Make your it is spelled out what uptime you can expect every year. What does downtime cost you per hour?

[stomachmonkey]

I've done a couple of things cloud based.

I still prefer to run dedicated servers in multiple locations for ping and redundancy.

Have you looked into co-location?

[herr_oberst]

Originally Posted by KC911

Mick and Keef won't like this

Will Pink Floyd eventually be Obscured by Clouds? I hope not.

[flipper35]

Originally Posted by stomachmonkey

i've done a couple of things cloud based.

I still prefer to run dedicated servers in multiple locations for ping and redundancy.

Have you looked into co-location?

+1

[motion]

I'm moving my stuff to Amazon AWS currently. Its a lengthy process. Wish I could share more info, but just starting.

[Bill Douglas]

Just my opinion, and it may be a bit outdated.

Keep a full system backup off site, maybe even out of the state. And backup the days data only to some cloud sort of place each day.

The servers, switches, routers in a "strong room".

If the big one came along, pray to God, all of the Gods LOL, it doesn't, You are out of action for quite a while anyway.

And keeping the boxes local you have more control over optimizing, restarts etc.

[sprio]

Make sure you know where your data resides - preferably in the US, and not overseas - it's the first question we ask.

[mikester]

I know stuff...

[Brando]

For a blog? Good idea. E-commerce? Good too. Pretty much anything that is static and not updating frequently.

You may want to reach out to a rep at Rackspace or Amazon and get an quote. Be sure to highlight that you have a community site (forums) with thousands of active users.

I would vote to keep the forums dedicated but look at implementing a CDN (content delivery/distribution network) to speed users' load times. The e-commerce side of your site could easily be moved to the cloud.

Of course, it wouldn't hurt to get a few quotes from various providers or IT professionals.

[Scott R]

Go with AWS, price keeps dropping month to month and you could probably use reserved instances since you likely know your servers pretty well.

[stomachmonkey]

Originally Posted by Brando

....I would vote to keep the forums dedicated but look at implementing a CDN (content delivery/distribution network) to speed users' load times....

Generally agree but Wayne keeps the site pretty clean, as in the forums are pretty much text only with exceptions like Random Pics threads so a CDN may be overkill.

For CDN I would look at Highwinds. Steam is run on cluod + Highwinds and probably serves in an hour what Pelican servers in a month. No offense Wayne. Steam is the Walmart of video game digital distribution

[mikester]

Wayne, I know stuff.

If you want me to stop by your office some time to discuss it with you I would be happy to talk to you about this kind of thing.

Sometimes cloud makes sense, sometimes it doesn't - you really need to look at the different factors involved for your business.

Also - I know that running this stuff is something that at least in the past you have enjoyed. Putting it off on someone else could be because you're ready to move on to other challenges and that's cool - there is value in that line of thinking.

Really the conversation starts with 'What is it that you want to accomplish' followed by 'what are your requirements along the way?' and then which solutions check the most boxes in the best way.

It's kind of like an exotic car, you can have fast, sexy and reliable for the right money but usually you have to pick two.

[M.D. Holloway]

could always relocate to Tejas...would love to have ya! Oh ya, bring the stable of P-cars

[pmax]

Originally Posted by Wayne at Pelican Parts

...
- These machines are quite old (2006 vintage), but have been upgraded with SSDs for the databases. They are running Windows 2003. I do not want to transition to Linux at this time.
...

- Run an instance of 2008 or 2012 to run the front end of IIS (I do not want to move to Linux at this time - I have too many windows-based scripts, etc. running on the current box).

...

- Main reason for moving to the cloud? Consolidation of server resources into a single scalable server instance, and also into a single database instance. Better reliability / uptime in case of natural disaster (earthquake, etc.). Offsite backups would continue to provide protection against Amazon going out of business or having some large event that would wipe the cloud. The servers are nearing 10+ years old. Windows 2003 support expires 1 year from now. It's time to upgrade.
...

Wayne

Windows Azure looks perfect for your Windows based shop. It has 20% market share and has been growing like crazy.



No affliation.

[sammyg2]

I recently traded in my flip phone for an S4 so I'm pretty hep to technological stuff.

Seems to me that keeping all your 'puters out of the rain should be a priority

[intakexhaust]

Been out of it for some time but had great experience with NetSuite. For wholesale to dealer orders only, used it between five warehouses / distribution and factory. Good support and will create exactly to ones needs. 1st class - They really listened and put up with the most miniscule details and needs. If I recall, took awhile to get all on board and tweak but well worth it.

[GH85Carrera]

Originally Posted by sammyg2

I recently traded in my flip phone for an S4 so I'm pretty hep to technological stuff.

Seems to me that keeping all your 'puters out of the rain should be a priority

Yea, I always wonder if the clouds that they run things on are rain clouds or if they can become wall clouds and cause tornadoes.

[MrScott]

AWS is useful for small sites expecting large spikes or very large sites utilizing their advanced featureset (likely not Pelican.) Otherwise it's expensive and often slow relative to alternatives. I'd look into standard VPS offerings. Even Rackspace (one of the more expensive providers) will be cheaper to significantly cheaper depending upon usage.

My experience is based on open source software -- IIS may be better suited to AWS for reasons I'm not aware.

[gacook]

I'm a security guy (DOD); I don't like cloud computing/storage.

Having said that, we're currently migrating most of our stuff to the cloud...ESPECIALLY in my line of work, I think it's a horrible idea.