How to move from dedicated server to cloud?

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Posted by melwong, 03-09-2011, 10:38 AM
I'm still lost in the cloud. My Questions on cloud hosting server are, -My current dedicated servers configuration is 1 web server (one IP) and 1 db server (one IP). If I move to cloud, is server setup going to be the same web server in one IP and db server in another IP? Or both into one same IP or instance? -Can I purposely want my db server to have IP 192.168.5.16? Can I set my private IP? -Do they offer cPanel? -If I exceed the usage for my account, say I consumed more RAM or diskspace, will my website goes down or will you charge me accordingly? -Is there such thing as RAID for cloud? Will their HD broke and I will lost my data? Do I still need to backup my data? I need help
Posted by JasonD10, 03-09-2011, 10:47 AM
Hello. These are some excellent questions and should be asked by consumers more often. 1) You can keep it the same way. You do not need to combine your dedi's to one "Cloud Server". You can if you want, but you can keep them separate in a Cluster, on the Cloud. This will cost more though if you are wanting a true Cloud cluster and not just some separate Cloud Servers that are not integrated, IP sharing, and on their own private LAN. IPs can work in different ways depending on how it's hosted. 2) Yes, you can hide your DB server from the public network and make it only accessible from your web server with the proper host. 3) Sure, but cPanel may not be offered by all hosts so if you are looking at a Cloud host that does not offer it, you would need to provide the license yourself. 4) In your case you're going to be looking for Cloud Servers, or Cloud Clusters so it is a private environment not a shared environment. So with this, you should expect dedicated and guaranteed resources just like with your dedi's. You shouldn't get suspended for overusage. 5) Make sure the Cloud host you are using is TRULY redundant. There are some who are basically just serving VPS and cannot do integrated clusters, and who also are not fully redundant. Your hosting environment needs to be location independent across multiple servers and a single server failure, or storage failure will not cause you an outage and data loss. Let me know if you have any additional questions.
Posted by melwong, 03-09-2011, 11:07 AM
Great answers! So do you recommend putting my 2 servers (web and db) into one IP in the cloud? I'm trying to keep cost low. Also, people say cloud is only good if my site is not db intensive. My site is. Any better I/O option for clouds?
Posted by JasonD10, 03-09-2011, 11:19 AM
Well, I wouldn't focus so much on one IP or two.. but focus on one environment or two. Ie: one server/instance for web, and one for db, the way it is now. They're separate OS's and independent from each other. They could have one public IP or two depending on how you want it setup. What level of IOPS do you have in your application? In general, the public Cloud's can be limited by IO but there are specialty providers and of course private Cloud options that are not constrained. Are you talking 50 IOPS, or 500?
Posted by melwong, 03-09-2011, 11:25 AM
errr,. how do you measure IOPS? What's the command in linux?
Posted by melwong, 03-09-2011, 11:28 AM
This is from my dedi db server avg-cpu: %user %nice %system %iowait %steal %idle 1.88 4.01 2.35 2.53 0.00 89.24 Device: tps Blk_read/s Blk_wrtn/s Blk_read Blk_wrtn sda 14.71 290.21 247.37 34397227 29318984 sda1 0.00 0.02 0.00 2234 56 sda2 0.24 0.09 46.63 10429 5526800 sda3 11.93 271.68 150.53 32200069 17841912 sda4 0.00 0.00 0.00 8 0 sda5 1.40 14.55 30.72 1724202 3640728 sda6 0.00 0.01 0.00 1243 272 sda7 0.98 3.02 18.71 357786 2217064 sda8 0.00 0.01 0.00 816 0 sda9 0.15 0.84 0.78 99832 92152
Posted by JasonD10, 03-09-2011, 12:15 PM
Yeah that's not much IO so I would not be concerned putting that on the cloud at all. Do it all and reap the rewards.
Posted by FastServ, 03-09-2011, 12:45 PM
Don't be surprised if you lose a little DB performance in your 'cloud'... even with decent IOPS latency is still a real issue with some providers. I still feel strongly that a busy DB server belongs on bare metal... but I'm sure cloud vendors would love to say otherwise.
Posted by JasonD10, 03-09-2011, 12:59 PM
And as a fair statement, don't be surprised if you gain a lot of performance as well. Depending on the specs of the dedi's they're on now, and how they are connected (if it's a cluster, or just two random dedi's in a large provider's Data center), it could significantly improve performance, increase reliability, and save some money.
Posted by Latic, 03-09-2011, 02:41 PM
Fastserv, Have you done any testing with this? We've run some very high intensity DB sites and never had anyone "go back" to bare metal due to DB performance.
Posted by FastServ, 03-09-2011, 03:07 PM
Don't you use local storage (as I read in some of your other posts)? If that's the case, you won't have as many issues since your VM's will be 100% running on bare metal to begin with. It's distributed SAN storage that has a tendency to cause issues with busy DBs. At least everything I've experienced thus far.
Posted by Latic, 03-09-2011, 05:50 PM
Exactly. I think also its very important to understand how the grid runs etc. and setup mysql to suit. A standard my.cnf will always make MySQL run like a dog.
Posted by melwong, 03-09-2011, 07:27 PM
what's bare metal?
Posted by melwong, 03-09-2011, 07:52 PM
Can anyone recommend any cloud server hoster? I'm shortlisting softlayer, rackspace and vexxhost.com but read some bad comments on softlayer, http://softlayerreview.com Which one should i choose?
Posted by brentpresley, 03-09-2011, 10:02 PM
We actually use a distributed local IP SAN (confusing enough? LOL). The major bottleneck here is the backend network's speed to keep the SAN fully redundant in 2 locations. Reads are not as big an issue. To remove this problem, we have started installing 10 Gigabit ethernet on our backend. Performance this way is superb.
Posted by vordermann, 03-10-2011, 03:19 AM
My site has a 40GB SQL server database which is running in the cloud without problems. I think some of the older versions had issues with performance but Microsoft software these days is pretty optimised for the cloud.
Posted by boskone, 03-10-2011, 01:25 PM
Even to the point that WIndows 2008 kernel supports the hot add of ram and CPU in the cloud - so you can scale and server up and down without even needing to reboot - yes - even on Windows!
Posted by brentpresley, 03-10-2011, 01:29 PM
Just keep in mind that the "servers" that allow this hot swapping of RAM are few and far betweeen and pretty darn expensive.
Posted by boskone, 03-10-2011, 01:35 PM
Exactly - making cloud versions all the more flexible and useful!

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