Cloud Providers

[Chad Stinner]

Hey all,

Does anyone have cloud providers they've had good experience with? We're in the process of selection and would be interested to hear your experience.

Thanks!

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Chad Stinner
(919) 530-0054

[Jaana Gilbert]

Databank (ex Edge Web Hosting)

Expensive, but love their support team. I've been with them for 14+ years and most of my clients have their dedicated, managed solutions there.

Jaana

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[charli...@carehart.org]

+1 on Jaana’s praise of Databank (formerly Edge). I too am hosted with them, as are many of my clients. But there are of course other hosts one could recommend.

As for “cloud providers”, can you be perhaps a bit more specific, Chad? Do you mean folks who can help you move to cloud solutions like AWS, Azure, Google Cloud, and the like? Hosts can do that, but so can consultants. Or do you mean hosts who can provide even their own “cloud” solution? And do you mean specifically implementation of CF in “the cloud”? I will say that I have a list of CF hosting providers, who (among them) do both of the above. See https://www.cf411.com/cfhosts.

 

/charlie

 

[Dave Watts]

Does anyone have cloud providers they've had good experience with? We're in the process of selection and would be interested to hear your experience.

A bunch of people have mentioned Databank (Edgeweb). They're good, but as they've grown larger I think they've lost their ... edge a bit (ba dum tsh!). But they do provide managed services both with their own on-premise environments - which are quite reliable - as well as with AWS.

I'm a big fan of AWS, because it's the most mature of the three big cloud providers, and in my experience has been the "best fit" for CF shops. But if you're going to use AWS, you have to know a decent amount about it to use it correctly, or you have to hire a managed service provider who knows this stuff for you (Databank for example could do this).

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Dave Watts

[Dan Wilson]

I've used Viviotech for 12 years. They have great support and prices. Further, they understand CF.

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[Jim Priest]

+1 for Viviotech - they have always supported CF community (they are still hosting ancient CFEclipse site for free)

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[Chad Stinner]

Thanks everyone! Charlie I'll definitely check out your link and appreciate all your help in the past. Apologies for just throwing out the "cloud provider" term without any specifics.

We're looking to move from renting server space at a data center to a virtualized deployment of Windows VPS with their own network, firewall... etc. However, I've found in the past that the larger providers don't provide the nice touches and over the top support smaller providers do. We would definitely want to work with that provider to design the right solution for us.

So far it looks like Databank, VivioTech, Flexential should be on our list to look at. I'll also make sure to check out Charlie's links as well.

Thanks all!

Chad.

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[Dave Watts]

We're looking to move from renting server space at a data center to a virtualized deployment of Windows VPS with their own network, firewall... etc. However, I've found in the past that the larger providers don't provide the nice touches and over the top support smaller providers do. We would definitely want to work with that provider to design the right solution for us.

So just to clarify a bit, cloud providers like AWS, Azure, Google Cloud don't really provide any touches at all. They're kind of like wholesale stores. They sell stuff. It's up to you to buy the stuff you want, and it's easy to buy the wrong thing, or too much or too little of the right thing.

If you do go with AWS or another big cloud provider, it sounds like what you want is a managed services company that will not only provide you with the "hardware", but also with the recommendations about what you need, and the support to deal with problems that come up. My prior company, Fig Leaf Software (now Collective FLS) does some of that, but to be honest you're probably not large enough for them to take on. They'd prepare a proposal for what you need, and handle all the requisitioning and configuration for you, as well as support you over the period of your cloud license - typically a one- to three-year period for most customers who want to use reserved instances for production to reduce prices.

Alternatively, you could hire an individual consultant who could do the recommendations and maybe the support part, then make the purchases yourselves. This would prevent you from getting a reseller discount, but would give you more control over the process - and maybe help you learn about it so you're not so dependent on managed services from somewhere else. I could do this, as I'm AWS certified, if you're interested, but there are plenty of other people who can do it also.

Of course, you don't need to go with a cloud provider at all. There are still companies providing on-premise "ISP" services for hosting. Sometimes they're cheaper than cloud providers, some times they're more expensive. One of the attractive things about Databank for me was that they have good bandwidth at their locations (which really means lots of failover options when there are upstream bandwidth problems) and they have people who know CF. Viviotech also has CF knowledge. I'm sure they're not the only ones, either.

But you'll need to decide what your overall goals are. Don't let the vendor (including me!) tell you what you need if you can figure that out for yourselves. You'll have to think carefully about what you need, because there are practically an infinite number of possible options, and all of those options cost money. What are the problems you're trying to solve now, and how will moving elsewhere solve those problems? Once you've got a really good idea of what that is, it's easier to figure out what to do.

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Dave Watts