Find new hosting ideas

clindell · 2016-03-01T21:44:16.000Z

We have an ASP.net application with SQL server that runs on a shared hosting platform. Recently the host was hit with an internal DDoS attack that took down all their customers for 14+ hours. This is intolerable and we need to make changes. We sell our product globally and mostly 2 times a year during those two 15 day windows generating significant revenues.

I’d like to find a new hosting solution that provides redundancies and DDoS protection although we could just set that up with Cloudflair or something similar for the DDoS protection.

I didn’t set this up… I inherited this.

We won’t do shared hosting again! So what does that leave me VSP’s, hosted server’s or other cloud base server solutions like Google or Amazon cloud solutions? We are not going to host it internally and since I’m a one man shop we’ll pay for the best business solution we can find.

I’m sure I’m not the first one to seek out a new option, what ideas do you have for me?

@Rackspace_Technology @Google

adamknight · 2016-03-01T21:53:35.000Z

It’s a bit on the spendy side, but you might take a look at Rackspace Cloud Sites. https://www.rackspace.com/en-us/cloud/sites/

Or maybe just spin up your own VPS at Rackspace using Cloud Servers. https://www.rackspace.com/en-us/cloud/servers

*Just a happy Rackspace customer.

clindell · 2016-03-01T22:04:49.000Z

ITcrackerjack:

It’s a bit on the spendy side, but you might take a look at Rackspace Cloud Sites. https://www.rackspace.com/en-us/cloud/sites/

Or maybe just spin up your own VPS at Rackspace using Cloud Servers. https://www.rackspace.com/en-us/cloud/servers

*Just a happy Rackspace customer.

Rackspace I believe is very similar to Google and AWS cloud offerings but I have no idea how stable they are including RS and what costs may be involved. I am waiting for info back from those I mentioned.

So this wasn’t really clear, what would you do and how?

adamknight · 2016-03-01T22:21:05.000Z

CLINDELL:

ITcrackerjack:

It’s a bit on the spendy side, but you might take a look at Rackspace Cloud Sites. https://www.rackspace.com/en-us/cloud/sites/

Or maybe just spin up your own VPS at Rackspace using Cloud Servers. https://www.rackspace.com/en-us/cloud/servers

*Just a happy Rackspace customer.

Rackspace I believe is very similar to Google and AWS cloud offerings but I have no idea how stable they are including RS and what costs may be involved. I am waiting for info back from those I mentioned.

So this wasn’t really clear, what would you do and how?

Yes, Rackspace is a cloud hosting provider. Did my suggestion not fit what you were asking for? If it were me, I would either do Cloud Sites or spin up my own VPS. Or a pair of VPS and use their load balancing if the load warrants it.

clindell · 2016-03-01T22:29:25.000Z

ITcrackerjack:

Yes, Rackspace is a cloud hosting provider. Did my suggestion not fit what you were asking for? If it were me, I would either do Cloud Sites or spin up my own VPS. Or a pair of VPS and use their load balancing if the load warrants it.

I’ve considered doing just what you are saying, but I’m looking for more in depth suggestions and why. It’s kind of like asking how should I get to work and someone replies take the bus.

adamknight · 2016-03-01T22:40:35.000Z

CLINDELL:

ITcrackerjack:

Yes, Rackspace is a cloud hosting provider. Did my suggestion not fit what you were asking for? If it were me, I would either do Cloud Sites or spin up my own VPS. Or a pair of VPS and use their load balancing if the load warrants it.

I’ve considered doing just what you are saying, but I’m looking for more in depth suggestions and why. It’s kind of like asking how should I get to work and someone replies take the bus.

How can we provide you want anything more in-depth if we don’t know anything besides ASP.NET and SQL. I can’t tell you how to get to work if I don’t know where you work and where you live.

How many connections per day/week/month does your app get?
Are you asking how to set up your own host?
How to install ASP.NET and SQL Server?
How to use FTP?

Without asking a better question, we have no way of knowing what kind of answer you want. So maybe start there. What specific information/advice are you looking for?

EDIT: Maybe this will give you some ideas. Asking Better Questions

johnmctaggart5616 · 2016-03-01T23:02:03.000Z

It really depends on your budget. But if your revenue is dependent upon a solid 99.999% up-time, you need to look into something with either fail-over capabilities or a much, much reduced RTO (recovery time objective).

If you incur resistance from the bean counters, you might want to do a business impact analysis (BIA) and stuff it in a pretty Power Point for the management muckety mucks…

clindell · 2016-03-01T23:07:10.000Z

I think some of what I had stated indicates we need to get our ASP.net application running in a new environment, which is unknown. We won’t do shared so that means some windows server hosted somewhere to run ASP.net and SQL that I’ll install and configure unless it’s a server container where I don’t believe we are installing the O/S but then this also sounds like something shared.

There are lots of options but I’ve not had the need to operate in this area until now so I’ll have to up my game. What I’m concerned about is stability, uptime, redundancy, security and hardening and DDoS mitigation.

How are cloud solutions like Rackspace or AMS redundant, secured and handle DDoS mitigation? I’m also concerned about server hardening and security since I can’t place security hardware in front one of these servers

It’s easy to say run a server on a hosted Rackspace environment but we know there is much more to it than that. With running the ASP.net ecommerce application on a shared host they took care of most security and tried to mitigate the DDoS’s but failed. I now have to think through all the processes and steps to build out a new system and have it ready by mid May. Some ready may be in order but I’m not sure what to read and the needs may be different depending on who’s hosting.

clindell · 2016-03-01T23:10:44.000Z

jonemac:

It really depends on your budget. But if your revenue is dependent upon a solid 99.999% up-time, you need to look into something with either fail-over capabilities or a much, much reduced RTO (recovery time objective).

If you incur resistance from the bean counters, you might want to do a business impact analysis (BIA) and stuff it in a pretty Power Point for the management muckety mucks…

Not at all concerned about budget, they saw losses and know a major change is needed as a result of inadequate DDoS capabilities on a shared hosting platform. The cost to implement a new system are miniscule as compared to the losses we encountered.

adamknight · 2016-03-01T23:25:12.000Z

That helps!

Cloud Sites does offer redundancy as they utilize their load balancer. However, I don’t think their SQL instances do. If I were in your shoes, I think the path I’d head down is as follows (all through Rackspace):

2x Managed Cloud Servers (VPS) https://www.rackspace.com/en-us/cloud/compare-service-levels
Rackspace Managed Databases https://www.rackspace.com/en-us/dedicated-servers/database-services
Load Balancing https://www.rackspace.com/en-us/cloud/load-balancing

So essentially, you have 2 load balanced Windows VPS servers (running IIS and .NET) that are managed by Rackspace connecting to SQL Databases (which you can also get load balanced) also managed by Rackspace.

I’ve also got to say, Rackspace support is truly amazing. They are VERY knowledgeable and are pioneers in the industry. If I were you, I’d get on the horn with their support and talk shop. They would be able to come up with a fantastic plan for you.

Hope this helps!!

clindell · 2016-03-01T23:35:53.000Z

ITcrackerjack:

That helps!

Cloud Sites does offer redundancy as they utilize their load balancer. However, I don’t think their SQL instances do. If I were in your shoes, I think the path I’d head down is as follows (all through Rackspace):

2x Managed Cloud Servers (VPS) https://www.rackspace.com/en-us/cloud/compare-service-levels

Rackspace Managed Databases https://www.rackspace.com/en-us/dedicated-servers/database-services

Load Balancing https://www.rackspace.com/en-us/cloud/load-balancing

So essentially, you have 2 load balanced Windows VPS servers (running IIS and .NET) that are managed by Rackspace connecting to SQL Databases (which you can also get load balanced) also managed by Rackspace.

I’ve also got to say, Rackspace support is truly amazing. They are VERY knowledgeable and are pioneers in the industry. If I were you, I’d get on the horn with their support and talk shop. They would be able to come up with a fantastic plan for you.

Hope this helps!!

Adam, yes perfect! This does help and is the idea I was looking for and having resisted anything with the word cloud in it I may be behind the 8 ball a bit but know I can adapt.

With your idea I’d setup Cloudflare as the DNS proxy to mitigate any possible DDoS’s that could be a problem. what do you think of that?

Red Bluff??? Dude it gets hot there! I miss the boat drags in the river!

adamknight · 2016-03-02T16:42:38.000Z

Yes, Cloudflare could be used as the nameserver to provide DNS for your domain (and thus provide the DDoS protection). The IP address for your website would then be the Rackspace Load Balancer IP. Alternatively, Rackspace also offers DDoS protection, but I’ve never used it before. https://www.rackspace.com/en-us/custom-networking/ddos-mitigation They also do DNS for free with every account.

You’ll need a way to keep the 2 servers in sync so they are serving the exact same content for redundancy. Also, the beauty of the load balancer…if you get a huge spike in traffic and need to spin up a 3rd server, you just image 1 of the existing ones and use that image to spin up a new one. Then you just add the new one to the load balancer and wam, you have 3 balancing the load in about 20 minutes.

Depending on your traffic during normal times, you may be able to get away with one server and spin up a 2nd for the extra load. I’m not as familiar with Windows hosting and not sure of the resource requirements for Windows or you.

Red Bluff gets very hot! Last summer we hit 118F for a couple days. Unfortunately, the boat drags had to leave town because the environmentalists won and they don’t put the dam down any more, so no more Lake Red Bluff.

clindell · 2016-03-02T17:49:46.000Z

Adam,

I really appreciate your thoughts on this and I have opened a dialog with Rackspace. Your suggestions may just work out and it seems their user console may be very easy to deploy and add servers on the fly as needed.

It would be great to vet them and understand why we should choose Rackspace such as stability, uptime and tech support or other unknowns as to why they are the best choice?

I was considering AWS or Google cloud but I need this to work fast and have no hiccups and I don’t have a lot of time to learn while doing which is what AWS and Google would require I believe though I’d love to. I have about 75 days to implement and test before we need it for production.

Does anyone else have good suggestions like ITcrackerjack?

johnmctaggart5616 · 2016-03-02T20:00:30.000Z

I’ve moved several clients to Rackspace over the last couple of years and I’ve had nothing but fantastic service…

clindell · 2016-03-03T00:02:31.000Z

jonemac:

I’ve moved several clients to Rackspace over the last couple of years and I’ve had nothing but fantastic service…

Great to know, thanks!

georgeshawn · 2016-03-08T08:50:36.000Z

Hi

Both AWS and Azure will be useful for your hosting. Both offers on demand flexibility, scale-out scale-in depends on your business trend, security, and availability @99.999X and so on.

You asked about your SQL redundancy, and can be achieved through Azure SQL Database service and AWS Relational database service. Yes, I agree hosting solution on cloud may hamper your wallet, but you can live peacefully.

brittanyformicrosoft · 2016-03-08T20:52:35.000Z

Sorry I just got to this thread! Looks like you’re going to go with Rackspace, but I just wanted to throw a quick recommendation in here for the Azure Web App service: https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/services/app-service/web/

In addition, we do have two different options for hosting SQL up in Azure including the Azure SQL Server or just hosting SQL in an Azure VM.

If you have any other questions about the specifics, feel free to reach out!