Backend hosting for applications

[fromVB]

Hello all. Anyone have any good advice about setting up a server to be used as a backend for desktop and mobile applications?

I was using my webhost's servers but received a warning that this is not allowed on shared servers.

I now have to try and set up my own server but have no clue where to start. What kind of hosting, what kind of operating system, what kind of software required, yada yada yada.

Please help if you know. I am looking for support forums, good hosts, tutorials and advice. Thanks a lot!


PS. I prefer to set up my own and learn instead of using BaaS services. Once and for all.

[Julian]

You could go one of two ways, "Dedicated Server" or a cloud based virtual service such as Amazon EC2.

Both can give you direct "console" or "desktop" access (depending on OS).

A Dedicated Server service will give you a fixed price to rent a box in the hosts datacenter, xyz per month for xyz space and xyz transfer allowance is usually how its done.

Amazon EC2 would give you more flexibility, the ability to be billed by the hour (so you could start up and shut down your service as required, for example if you were number crunching) but I have found for basic hosting they aren't the cheapest.

So, lets say you go the "Dedicated Server" route to run your own non web based apps on a server.

This means that you have complete control over the server and have direct access to it as if it were in your home (apart from physical access obviously).

Now depending on where you are located in the world, or where your target demographic is will depend where you rent a host from.

I've spent a lot of years in this industry, from setting up hosting for huge companies to having my own co-located space in a datacenter to renting single boxes around the world and I've settled for a company called OVH (for my personal stuff) whom I've had no issues with for many years now.

They are very big in Europe and are expanding in North America with a Candian datacenter (east coast). They have servers ranging from about £5 all the way up, depending on how deep your pockets are.

If you are familiar with Window and not so with Linux then I'd highly recommend going with a Windows 2008/2012 server install, as it'll look almost identical to Windows 7/8.

Thats pretty much all there is to it, you obtain Remote Desktop Connection to your box, which essentially give you the remote servers desktop in a window. FTP across your code/exe's, open a few ports and you're away.

If you're mainly in the US or another part of the world, I can try and find another host for you.

If you let me know the cpu/internet demands of your service then I can probably point you in the direction of what you'd need.

[fromVB]

Thanks Julian. A very detailed answer.

My backends are PHP and MySQL currently on a web hosting server that have them installed default. So I need the same thing. Dedicated and VPS servers are very expensive but OVH is quoting very low. Is this correct £2.00 a month? I will read some more.

Is this like other VPS totally empty and we have to install our own software, or do they help us setup?

I am very grateful for your help. Thank you.

[fromVB]

Just read their terms and it's very good. From just £2.00 a month 1 core, 1GB ram, 10GB storage and 10TB transfer and also LAMP installed. (10TB/month at 100Mbps then 1Mbps - speed drops but no extra charge for overuse?)

They accept monthly payment but can we stop anytime? Or is there contract period? Cannot find the terms on the website.

Thanks!

[Julian]

Ah yes ok, if you have a PHP/MYSQL backend then you wont need a full dedicated machine to run your own software on.

In that case the VPS solution that you have spotted should work out fine for you. They have taken a server and split into into smaller chunks and hand those out for sale separately which splits the cost among all those on the box.

This is the key thing you're looking for:
Management - New Web Control Panel, RESTful API , KVM, root access

This means you'll have full access to do anything you want (within reason) to your virtual machine, but they also have nice tools/control panels to make things a lot easier.

Payment with OVH are very flexible. You can pay as much (eg. 12 months) or as little (down to 1 month at a time) as you want.

They might even have a discount on place for that service that kicks in when you've been using it for over a year where the price goes down (not 100% sure on that with the VPS service).

They send you a reminder email when you are at certain intervals from your expiry with a link to continue payment, click and follow the details, nice and easy.

Check here for more information:

http://www.ovh.co.uk/support/termsofser ... t_proc.xml

And have fun

PS. I'm not sponsored by OVH, just a happy user.

[tj1010]

Unless you want to pay a fortune on hosting so you can do push and long poll or websockets then you want something like parse.com

I'm personally doing a project that I have to use a HTTP asynchronous multi-threaded POST back-end with PHP and MySQL with cheap hosting because I can't afford the time to learn Parse API or how to run code on it's "cloud". I think you might not even need code to run on their servers you just configure push triggers for data stored, and have a validation handler somewhere before the data hits them.

[TI-994A]

I prefer to set up my own and learn instead of using BaaS services.

Very wise choice. It's fairly simple to set up your own VPS, and apparently, OVH makes it even easier, and scalably affordable. (Great recommendation, Julian. Thanks.)

However, if you'd really wish to learn, you might look into setting the server up yourself, instead of using the automatic provisioners offered by OVH; something that most VPS hosts don't offer. That way, you could easily migrate to other hosts without worrying about having these provisioning services bundled. Look up Bitnami.

Unless your app's dependency on its backend services are nominal, best advice would be to steer clear of BaaS providers for production usage.

Take Parse, for example. While their entry-level package is free, their scalability costs are exorbitant. An app serving just fifty to sixty users could easily exceed thirty requests a minute/user. When that happens, you'd either have to pay an extra hundred bucks a month or allow your app to fail for those excess requests.

And that's not taking into account their various other limitations, restrictions, discrepancies, and reliability issues.

[greyhoundcode]

For flexibility and economy I can't recommend Digital Ocean highly enough - and as with most VPS offerings you have a tremendous amount of freedom (as compared to a standard 'shared hosting' package of the old stamp).

[tj1010]

For flexibility and economy I can't recommend Digital Ocean highly enough - and as with most VPS offerings you have a tremendous amount of freedom (as compared to a standard 'shared hosting' package of the old stamp).

That $60/year package is pretty good comparatively speaking. I don't know what they allow though. For game back-ends you need sockets or long-polling and the ability to, for example, put packages like GTK on Ubuntu so you can build and run servers with panels, or maybe SSL updates.

[fromVB]

PS. I'm not sponsored by OVH, just a happy user.

Don't worry. I know that you are not. OVH is great and really easy. I have managed to set up the whole server with MySQL and PHP just like my web host. Thank you Julian.

@TI994A: thank you for the tips about the server setups. KIV for future use.

@tj1010: parse.com is a bit complicated for my needs. Thanks for the tip.

@greyhoundcode: already signed with OVH. KIV for future use. Thanks.

[Julian]

Great job

[tj1010]

PS. I'm not sponsored by OVH, just a happy user.

Don't worry. I know that you are not. OVH is great and really easy. I have managed to set up the whole server with MySQL and PHP just like my web host. Thank you Julian.

@TI994A: thank you for the tips about the server setups. KIV for future use.

@tj1010: parse.com is a bit complicated for my needs. Thanks for the tip.

@greyhoundcode: already signed with OVH. KIV for future use. Thanks.

Agreed on Parse.com. I've spent hours in their documentation and still don't know how to run 'cloud code'. I only mention it because it's free and infinitly scalable which means no capital for your startup. If I were to use it I'd probably just their JS lib.

[TI-994A]

Agreed on Parse.com ... I only mention it because it's free and infinitly scalable which means no capital for your startup.

It's free only for the entry-level package, but exponentially expensive when upscaled.

[tj1010]

Agreed on Parse.com ... I only mention it because it's free and infinitly scalable which means no capital for your startup.

It's free only for the entry-level package, but exponentially expensive when upscaled.

VPNs are only good if they allow sockets or lock-polling though. Without those they are no better than a cheap webhost and HTTP POST with blocking. This VPN mentioned is the only good VPN deal I've seen in a while but I don't know their socket or polling policy.

[TI-994A]

VPNs are only good if they allow sockets or lock-polling though. Without those they are no better than a cheap webhost and HTTP POST with blocking.

Firstly, I'm sure you meant VPS, and not VPN.

Secondly, that second statement is not true. In regard to transfer speeds, bandwidth, request quotas, permissible scripts, etc., web hosts are highly limited. Virtual Private Servers offer much more in these terms, as well as in overall flexibility.