Specific hosting options - things to consider

Question

I find many hosting options whether they be cheap cloud options even up to dedicated servers are aimed (or at least that's how I perceive it) at 1-store setups. We currently host 20+ Magento stores with ranging traffic ranges but all with a similar product base, in fact they're 99.9% similar as they're all resellers for us.

This leads me onto the optimal hosting platform for doing this both now and in the future. We currently have a dedicated server and we're looking to switch to another. However, the new hosting provider (although they haven't pitched this idea to us) offer cloud hosting where you can manage all the sites from one custom control panel. Don't get me wrong, the idea of cloud hosting scares me off, it makes me think of squeezed resources and poor performance, however at the same time it made me think of how a dedicated server is a single point of failure, and for those managing multiple stores, what is the best option?

We have approached several people in the past, but again most of them aim at 1-store setups, not multiple installs. The reason I got thinking about this is that I saw on twitter of another web host I follow having problems on their cloud setup affecting sites beginning with K-P. The more I thought about it, I wondered that although it's a pain for these sites, at least you still have some up. With a dedicated, whilst it's resources are private and you can do as you wish with it, if something goes wrong and the box goes down, so does everything on it.

I'm a bit torn as I kinda like the separation that cloud hosting brings, but it scares me to even approach something like that with Magento.

Thoughts are appreciated.

Answer 1

Considering the top sites on the internet (including Magento) use cloud and that it bring along associative benefits, that is a misnomer. Magento sites ranking first page next to Amazon, eBay, full instant cluster scalability on the cloud.

The problem is the setup, you need to go to enterprise consultants who know how to do this (Nexcess MCE clusters although these are also fixed hardware or another company we have access to who have the same but cloud based single or multi-store), you are talking about the top 1% and it is very difficult, hence why it is the top 1%. Fixed hardware is fine if you have a stable environment and clusters with high volume ($millions) as you can cycle, otherwise it often turns out to be a hinderance within 3-6mths.

On top of that each server/instance should be didicated, sql, web server, memcache, solr, admin server, if not you cause contention. Fixed hardware, unless you have budgets in $1,000s/mth makes this very difficult. It can work, but it is more hit-and-miss, cloud will normally be more expensive but you have scalability, it is all about the tradoffs.

Answer 2

It's sort of unclear what the question here is but

1. Yes, Magento can run in a cloud environment

2. Yes, there are a different set of trade-offs with cloud hosting that may better suit your business

3. Yes, some cloud hosts won't be able to host Magento, look for those with a proven track record and ask for references

You question seems to be asking for a silver bullet w/r/t to recovery from a catastrophe. That doesn't exist. Whether you decide to host on dedicated hardware and have a recovery plan to build out new servers if things go wrong, host in a cloud based environment and have a deployment plan that looks a lot like your recovery plan for the dedicated environment, or get out of the hosting business and buy each of your customers a VPS on a Magento optimized host is going to depend on your own talent, and the talent you have access to. There's no best here.