MojoPortal on the cloud/VMWare virtualisation

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5/5/2010 2:04:12 PM

andyc

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MojoPortal on the cloud/VMWare virtualisation

I am wanting to upgrade my hosting from shared hosting and was looking at VPS, however, the hosting company I use also offers cloud hosting at not much more which has 100% uptime which is appealing. This sounds great for my simpler websites but I wasn't sure if mojoportal will run on it as I thought I had read a mention of a version being specifically developed for to run on clouds.

Not knowing much about the whole cloud thing it would be very helpful to me if someone could give me a yes or no before I sign up for it, below is the info I have for it - are there any specific questions I need to ask/check for or does it just work like VPS with a redundant system??

Cloud VPS hosting offers many advantages over standard VPS hosting services due to the number of servers that are being used for a single cluster, and if you rely greatly on your website or VPS, then Cloud VPS hosting is a worthy upgrade for you. Not only can Cloud VPS hosting offer you greater reliability and scalability, but you can also be guaranteed of a higher level of security.

VMWare Virtualization -

eUKhost's Cloud VPS environment is powered by VMware Cloud hosting platform, the best hosting platform available for 100% uptime on VPS hosting currently. VMWare allows us to manage and assign the Cloud's resources to our clients, enabling them to dynamically scale their hosting solution as and when their needs arise. Think of VMWare Cloud VPS as a virtual machine with more resources, superior performance, reliability in the form of 100 % uptime and increased scalability.

The hosting of your VPS will be spread across the entire Cloud meaning that even if one of the servers in the Cloud does fail, there is going to be at least one other node available to replace the one which has crashed. With this advanced computing environment you can be rest assured that your server and the hosted websites/applications will be at all times.

Cheers

Andrew

5/5/2010 2:20:03 PM

Joe Audette

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Re: MojoPortal on the cloud/VMWare virtualisation

Hi Andrew,

Cloud is a broad term and different clouds work differently. Like the Windows Azure cloud, we cannot currently run on because you have no file system storage for user uploads and other files written by the system.

The thing you posted sounds like they are giving you a complete virtual machine hosted in the cloud. If they offer Win 2008 server as a cloud hosted virtual machine that would be virtually no different than a real physical server from a management perspective. In that case you could remote desktop into the machine and configure it as you would any Windows server, install Sql Express on it etc. The way they ensure "100%" uptime is that they can move the virtual machine from one physical machine to another while it is running without interrupting it so if they need to take down a physical machine it can be done by moving all the virtual machines to other physical machines. In this case 100% uptime really means their systems won't take your machine down, but really in this kind of scenario since it is really your own virtual windows machine there won't really be 100% uptime because now and then you will have to get windows updates and reboot the vm just like a real machine.

So, mojoPortal can run fine on a virtual machine with windows server os, but it can't currently run in all clouds, like it can't run on Windows Azure (though it can use sql azure for the database).

Hope that helps,

Joe

5/5/2010 2:25:35 PM

andyc

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Re: MojoPortal on the cloud/VMWare virtualisation

Hi Joe,

Thats great and thanks for the info, it sounds pretty encouraging. I have had a chat with them to get some more details which might help clarify it further.....

Thomas: For use, a cloud VPS is just like a VPS, the technology used to create Cloud VPS is different in comparision to Normal VPS. We use VMware Virtualization technique for create Cloud VPS's whereas we use Virtuozzo Virtualization technique for creating Normal VPS's.

Thomas: For the Cloud Hosting environment, we have setup a cluster of five servers; four active servers and one standby server, along with one controller server with failover solution to ensure 100% uptime and redundancy. Out of these 5 servers, 1 server will always remain as a standby server and won't host any data.

Thomas: A replica of all the hosted accounts will be created on each of the remaining four active servers.

Thomas: In the case of a failure with any one of the four active servers in the cluster, all the hosted virtual servers will function from any of the remaining three active servers.

Thomas: The controller server will take care of the switch over and ensure that all virtual servers function from one of the remaining three active servers.

Thomas: All four active servers are also equipped with Redundant Shared Storage with RAID 10, so disk failure on any individual server will not result in that individual server becoming unavailable.

Thomas: We have invested huge amount in the setup of this cloud hosting solution and all this has been done just to guarantee 100% uptime to our customers and thereby ensure complete peace of mind.

It sounds to me like it should work OK - hope it does as the idea is pretty exciting! :-)

5/5/2010 2:29:52 PM

Joe Audette

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Re: MojoPortal on the cloud/VMWare virtualisation

Hi Andrew,

Just make sure it is a Windows VM and that you can remote desktop into it. Make it clear you don't want a linux machine.

Best,

Joe

5/5/2010 2:31:16 PM

Joe Audette

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Re: MojoPortal on the cloud/VMWare virtualisation

Hey Andrew,

Thanks for the beer! Much appreciated.

Cheers,

Joe

5/5/2010 2:32:24 PM

andyc

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Re: MojoPortal on the cloud/VMWare virtualisation

Thanks Joe, will do - you get a choice of operating systems:

Linux CentOS 5.x
Debian 5
Ubuntu 9.x
Fedora Core 10
Windows 2003 Standard
Windows 2003 Enterprise
Windows 2008 Standard

(http://www.eukhost.com/cloud-vps-hosting.php)

lol no problem on the beer Joe the work you do here is amazing! ........ having said that if the time stamps relate to your location then it might be a little early for a beer - will get you a coffee next time ;-)

5/5/2010 2:36:09 PM

Joe Audette

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Re: MojoPortal on the cloud/VMWare virtualisation

I'd go with the Windows 2008 Standard.

Don't worry, I put the beer in the fridge for a few more hours ;-) but I shall raise a glass to you later when it is time for beer.

Cheers,

Joe

5/5/2010 2:47:08 PM

andyc

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Re: MojoPortal on the cloud/VMWare virtualisation

Sorry feel like I am asking too many questions here but are there any issues with 2008 - isn't it 64 bit? Will I hit any problems compiling code on my (32 bit) XP workstation - total newbie question there I know! blush

Another great thing about mojoportal is that it is going to encourage me to get into new technology - have avoided at 64 bit stuff so far for an easy life! lol

5/5/2010 2:57:22 PM

Joe Audette

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Re: MojoPortal on the cloud/VMWare virtualisation

It should be no problem to build on a 32 bit machine and deploy on 64 bit.

The main thing I would consider is how much RAM you get on the VM vs the cost of a dedicated server with the same amount of RAM. On a 64 bit Win 2008 machine I would want at least 2GB of RAM.

Even in cloud hosting it can happen that they put too many VMS on one cluster and performance might be better on a real physical machine.

This site and my demo sites and a few others are running all on a 64 bit Win 2008 physical machine with 2GB of RAM

The only gotcha I had when setting up my machine was that they had pre-installed SQL 2005 and it was difficult to install SQL 2008 after uninstalling SQL 2005.

Best,

Joe

5/5/2010 4:23:41 PM

andyc

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Re: MojoPortal on the cloud/VMWare virtualisation

Thanks for all you help and advice Joe, I might have to start with a slightly lower spec than that but as I add more sites I will upgrade my options to a more powerful VMware-VPS system. The semi dedicated and dedicated servers are quite a bit more so that might also be an option once I am hosting more sites.

I also have another pretty complex site (by my standards!) that runs on SQL 2005 so might have to stick with that for now until I get round to adjusting it and getting it back up and running on SQL 2008.

Thanks once again,

Cheers

Andrew

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