For phpfox site, Liquidweb, Gigenet or Storm?

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Posted by SafariWoman, 09-22-2011, 05:33 AM
Hello I have read many posts in your forums and am very impressed with the answers and help Ive seen here. Thanks for all of the great info Ive already gotten. I am building a new site using phpfox and until I came in earlier tonight I had my decision down to either gigenet or liquid web. Tonight I came across Storm a Liquidweb co. and it looks like another possibility but I havent researched it that much and am not that familiar with the differences between that co and Liquidweb proper. At any rate, I am hoping to discover opinions or input related to my needs for hosting this project. At the requirements link given above, I would use all of them including optionals plus there would be some tweaking. As an aside I am offering hosted short videos for viewing or download to members as a feature of the site. I understand they both have good service but that there are other technical issues about their services that I need to consider. I have a moderate understanding of technical jargon. I am an experienced site owner and builder but have not had a need to grow with a program like this before. Due to the target market, unique idea and marketing we have millions of potential users and to make this decision are looking for a company to grow with that offers "managed" servers. We expect at the very least to have 100,000 users within a year if not many more. We could easily have a million or more due to an event within the year that will drive membership. I wont start out as a huge customer because it will take a couple of months to build and a couple of more to begin building membership prior to a real launch into target marketing and would start with a lower service plan but I have the potential of being a substantial presence and hope to find a company that is friendly and easy to deal with on every level as well as one that can give me room to grow up, out and sideways quickly and painlessly. This site may become a real need for members to utilize and excessive down time or moving servers half way there aren't options I want to consider. #Not looking for answer to this but in the event anyone might have a comment related to growth Ill add that currently I also have a pinnacle cart site hosted on pinnacle servers. If I can find a service that makes me happy and is able to meet pci compliance I might be moving that to the same server also at a future date. Ive been researching gig and liquid for a couple of weeks and am ready to make a decision so any input will be greatly appreciated and helpful. Thanks in advance.
Posted by Samuraid, 09-22-2011, 03:04 PM
First off, both providers have a good reputation and are excellent choices. I've used StormOnDemand (same platform as Liquidweb Smartservers) and Gigenetcloud (v2 @ chicago, v3 @ LAX) and had a generally positive experience with both. You would likely have a good experience with either provider, so let me outline some of the key differences between them: Bandwidth Costs At gigenetcloud, you get a bundle of bandwidth included with each server instance if you pay monthly (rather than hourly). If you expect your sites to use a fair bit of bandwidth, then gigenetcloud may prove more cost-effective than Storm. Liquidweb/Storm also offer bandwidth bundles, but they are more costly for what you get. Billing At liquidweb/storm, when you create a new server, they charge you in advance for the remainder of the month. If you cancel before the next billing period, then they refund the remaining balance to your account balance. For many people, this is a not a problem, but for some whose needs fluctuate might find the huge down-payment for a bunch of servers a significant roadblock. Conversely, at gigenetcloud, you pay for credits in advance, then each server consumes credits for each hour it is online. It gives you more flexibility to operate like a true cloud as you can add just enough credits to run the machines you need without having to make huge pre-payments from your credit card. Disk reliability/performance Gigenetcloud uses a SAN with centralized storage. Liquidweb/storm uses local storage in each of their servers. Gigenetcloud: - PRO: Resizing/migrating servers is reasonably fast. - PRO: They can quickly fail-over to a new machine if the current one fails. - CON: Disk performance is middle-of-the-road, even on large server sizes. (not a big deal unless you run a lot of I/O-heavy stuff) - CON: If the SAN goes down (which it has at times in the past), then a very large part of their cloud goes offline and remains "paused" until the SAN is brought online again. Liquidweb/Storm: - PRO: Storage failures only affect a small number of machines. - PRO: Disk performance is quite good, especially with the larger server sizes. - CON: Resizing servers takes a while, because your data generally has to be copied across the network to a completely new machine. - CON: Restoring a server in the event of a hardware failure can take a while. Reliability During my time using both clouds: I've seen zero downtime at Storm. Aside from one bit of scheduled maintenance, I've seen zero downtime at Gigenetcloud LAX. Gigenetcloud Chicago, on the other hand, has had numerious downtimes and stability problems in the past, so I cannot recommend it yet, at least not until they upgrade Chicago to the same V3 system that the LAX cloud uses. Other things If you need lots of storage space, liquidweb/storm will be cheaper. If you need lots of bandwidth, gigenetcloud will be cheaper. If you need really high-end machines (greater than 16GB of RAM, or greater than 8 CPU cores), liquidweb/storm is the only option. If you need windows servers, Gigenetcloud is the only option (as of September 2011). (unless you rent normal dedicated servers from liquidweb with windows) Both platforms are constantly improving, so this comparison may be irrelevant in a few months. Hope this helps.
Posted by zahirw, 09-22-2011, 03:37 PM
Fantastic comparison Samuraid! I've used both CH & LA & I can vouch for Gigenet. LA is really doing well. They system is truly amazing when it comes to scaling as you grow. I haven't used Storm but considered their offering & honestly found their sales a little curt for my liking. I hear good things about their product though. Gige was very helpful & that continues in their support. You know where my vote is but either should keep you happy.
Posted by LiquidWebTravis, 09-22-2011, 03:58 PM
This is very odd to hear. What do you mean by this? Do you have a ticket number that I can look at? Storm support is provided by Liquid Web's Heroic Support team and it is very odd to hear a complaint like this so I would like to investigate it.
Posted by SafariWoman, 09-22-2011, 05:33 PM
Thank you VERY much Samuraid, for your great comments! The best I can tell from researching phpfox forums, it appears that the ability to quickly scale along with bandwidth are probably going to be the most important issues. There could come a time when I might need really high end servers but I am not sure at what member level that would occur as I've seen posts claiming over a million users were handled by what I consider to be medium services ie even on a vps with data bases hosted on separate servers. Although I would guess in fact dedicated servers or more complex cloud would be needed at that level. Currently, it appears that I would be in a whole new ballgame anyway by the time such needs arise. RE Gigenet, I really appreciate you mentioning the difference between Gigenet at LAX vs Chicago. You also said "CON: Disk performance is middle-of-the-road, even on large server sizes. (not a big deal unless you run a lot of I/O-heavy stuff)" In this case is I/O referring to input/output and if so wouldn't that be the kind of "stuff" that a phpfox social network would be running? Would you mind explaining in what way disk performance is middle of the road? I really like the paying for credits option you mentioned here and your comments in general about the billing at both services is extremely helpful to me. One issue that you didn't mention is the managed servers option. Are you familiar with the service at either host and could you have any input about it at either or both locations or even managed services vs hiring someone for the costs? Again thank you very much for your time and help!
Posted by SafariWoman, 09-22-2011, 05:44 PM
Thank you! I appreciate your input and especially your comment about service and scaling at gigenet. I think the ability to scale quickly will be important in a social network that has a target market that is affected in it's reactions to news events.
Posted by SafariWoman, 09-22-2011, 05:50 PM
I am glad you responded here and seeing the liquid web quick response around this forum was one reason your company is on my final decision list. My technical assistant reported that she had a favorable experience in talking to your sales person, Jason, at Liquid Web. I still haven't had time to research Storm vs your regular Liquid Web services - as they appear on the two different web sites. Would you have any brief input for me regarding how they are the same or how they differ and in if you see either or both of them as being superior for my specific needs over gigenet? Thank you if you have any further input.
Posted by Samuraid, 09-22-2011, 06:31 PM
No problem. By "I/O", I was referring to disk performance. During my tests, I compared the gigenetcloud disk performance to another dedicated server I have that uses a RAID-1 array of two SATA disks. In some situations, the Gigenetcloud SAN was a little bit faster than my dedicated machine at disk access. In some cases, my dedicated machine was faster than the gigenetcloud SAN. Since two SATA disks in RAID 1 is an "average speed" disk array, I consider the Gigetnetcloud SAN to also perform at an average speed. I'd also expect Liquidweb Storm 1GB/2GB/4GB/8GB servers to have average disk performance as well, since they also use a similar type of disk array (as far as I know). The larger storm servers 16GB/32GB/48GB/96GB have much faster disk performance because they use larger arrays (4-8 disks) and many of them have faster disks (SAS). Thanks for the reminder. I forgot to mention this since I self-manage nearly all my servers. Liquidweb/Storm does offer managed services at the rate of $20 per server per month (as of September 2011 pricing). I've used their managed services in the past and found them to be very knowledgeable and helpful about most general server configurations and issues. I've heard good things about gigenet managed support but I don't have any personal experience, aside from knowing their general support has been helpful. I'm also not sure about how much they charge for software management services; you'll have to ask them.
Posted by zahirw, 09-23-2011, 12:38 AM
@Liquidweb This was over chat when I was looking for hosting for a social networking client. We had a bunch of questions & most of the responses were one worded. Almost as if the rep was in a hurry to get the session over with. It was very confusing because your reputation is practically immaculate so we were pretty excited when we spoke to sales, the response however was a little bland. Thanks for looking into this. @SafariWoman No problem! Good luck.
Posted by zahirw, 09-23-2011, 12:40 AM
@samuraid Gigenet's support is great, they're always happy to help & very knowledgeable, kinda feels like managed but their clouds are unmanaged on paper.
Posted by SafariWoman, 09-23-2011, 01:11 PM
Thank you for explaining. I believe if I were already an established site that it sounds like Liquid would be a clear choice due to their upper end hardware. Although I still haven't made a decision as to where to start up. Thanks! Re: Liquid Web, With One server that is reasonable, for multi servers - not so sure how that would pan out. Gigenet told my tech assistant that they don't have managed servers but she found a server management service called PlatinumServerManagement.com that looks pretty good so that might put Gigenet back on my possible list. I definitely don't have the skills or time at this point to do service. Your comments have been extremely helpful. Thanks again I really appreciate your time and the information you have shared.
Posted by shinyblue, 10-08-2011, 08:48 AM
Samuraid, you mention that LiquidWeb SmartServers have this con: - CON: Restoring a server in the event of a hardware failure can take a while. Can you (or LiquidWeb) explain why that is, and how long is "a while", and which particular hardware failures you mean? I am thinking of switching from dedicated to SmartServers and want to know what I can expect. I've had some pretty awful experiences with hardware-related downtime on dedicated -- taking over 24 hours to try to diagnose what the problem was that made the server go read-only, replacing both drives, still never found the problem, finally just bought a whole new server so it could just get fixed. So I'm looking for ways to avoid a repeat of that. The LW techs said that "if there are any problems wish a SmartServer hardware, we just move the instance to a new box". He made it sound easy breezy, but it sounds like you are saying it is not...just trying to gather more info. Last edited by shinyblue; 10-08-2011 at 08:51 AM. Reason: clarify
Posted by Samuraid, 10-08-2011, 11:48 PM
From what I understand, if a smartserver fails and you have backups enabled, then liquidweb's system will automatically pick a new smartserver and restore your latest backup there and turn it online. I might be mistaken, though, so LiquidWeb will need to explain for certain.
Posted by shinyblue, 10-09-2011, 09:00 AM
Hmm. But backups are daily, right? So wouldn't that lead to a lot of data loss on a busy site that has a lot of DB changes during a day? Or are you saying they restore the backups and then sync the difference and then bring the new one online?

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