Cloud Hosting

[SirSeim]

We really, REALLY, need to figure out what hosting we're going to use.

Hosting is essential to releasing BETA

Important things to consider:

• Ease of deployment both for development purposes and production
• SSL certificate management and deployment
• Node.js & PostgreSQL support
• Agreeable pricing

[SirSeim]

Heroku

Hobby Server

• Free SSL for custom domains
• Always running
• $7/month

Hobby PostgreSQL

• Basic Tier
• 10M rows limit
• $9/month

Total: $16/month*

*Domain registration may need to be purchased separately, possibly from another company like Hover

[SirSeim]

AWS

Pricing is highly variable dependent on usage. AWS pushes for a business model where you will only pay for what you use, and as such experimentation is recommended for seeing what real world use will be like.

• All required features can be provided by AWS
  • Node.js support via linux instance in EC2
  • PostgreSQL support via RDS
  • SSL support via AWS Certificate Manager

Total: ~$27/month*

*Estimate made from a single EC2 t2.micro instance and a RDS db.t2.small instance

[SirSeim]

Domain Name

Consider hooking up to current DNS, safeplaceforyouth.org.

A possible implementation that would not affect the current site is to use a sub-domain, for example manage.safeplaceforyouth.org. Both sites would be able to operate independent of each other, regardless of hosting system or final implementation.

[SirSeim]

DigitalOcean

Combined Server and Database

• No out of the box PostgreSQL app option
  • Instances are just Ubuntu instances, so adding postgresql to the same server shouldn't be difficult
• Node.js fully supported
  • Auto-deploy not supported first party, though custom scripting can be done to create effect
  • Will not be easy to set up automation
• Certificates must be figured out on your own
  • Certificates must be gotten from an outside Certificate Authority
• $10/month
  • 1 GB RAM
  • 1 Core Processor
  • 30 GB Storage
  • 2 TB Transfer limit
• $20/month
  • 2 GB RAM
  • 2 Core Processor
  • 40 GB Storage
  • 3 TB Transfer limit

Total: $10 or $20/month*

*May be able to stretch usability with just the $10 tier, but it may prove necessary to upgrade to the $20 tier.

[SirSeim]

Heroku it is!

(* CELEBRATE! *)