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First thing: I searched all of the known web hosting companies for shared hosting of nodejs but I didn't find anyone. Then I came to know that nodejs cannot run on a shared host system. I want to know why?
Second thing: I am a normal guy with a normal budget. Choosing a vps or deicated server or cloud hosting makes the node run, but its out of my pocket money range as compared to the PHP shared hosting services, so should I learn node.js?
Theoretically it can, but practically it depends on hosting provider to have such infrastructure in place.
Node comparing to classic web platforms is self-sustainable platform. In case with PHP (for example), it runs on with of apache or nginx (or any other), and PHP it self is just script language with some libraries that does not do much apart of logic implementation, and requires web server solution. Web server creates socket to listen specific ports for traffic, will do its own magic and will execute PHP to process requests.
In meantime node.js creates own socket, and binds it to own port. That gives it much more low-level access, so it is web server it self. You can't bind to one port two applications, so it already unsharable.
There are services (web servers) that allow you to create proxy to route traffic to your node.js process but that is not as efficient in some cases, and shared hosting does not provide such functionality.
As node.js is still fairly young as well as is well, different, it still did not hit majority of shared hosting services. There are some available services online to host your node.js applications in a 'shared' manner.
Additionally you can rent EC2 Micro instance on AWS for free (Free Tier) for one year, which gives you plenty possibilities and time to try and test different stuff. You'll get semi-dedicated system, where you can do pretty much anything (install software, modify OS configurations, and much more), where shared hosting would not allow you to do so.
Look into Heroku. For simple low traffic apps, they are free and can easily be scaled for more traffic (for an added cost). Additionally, you use Git to deploy, so is really simple to get stuff updated...
There are other ways to deploy node.js apps.
You can use PaaS services, like Openshift, Heroku, AppFog, Paastor, dotCloud etc.
Other great node app hosting options include Joyent's SmartOS and Microsoft Azure. Both have a free trial period.
Azure can be a great learning platform for node.js as you can host your node app in Windows Server, Ubuntu Linux, or Azure's special "web site" shared deployment scheme.
http://www.windowsazure.com/en-us/develop/nodejs/tutorials/create-a-website-(mac)/
Another cost efective solution for node app hosting is Azure's "Web Site" approach - about $10 per month. The down side is that you have to use their shared environment that hosts your node app via IIS. In practice, this worked for well for me, but you are limited in that you can't use certain Linux functions from Node when it's running on Windows, and you won't learn how to configure the node service yourself, which may or may not be important to you. (Note: Azure's GIT deployment process works great if you want to deploy your app from a local GIT repository. Also note that NodeIIS will stop your node app when it's not in use for a certain period of time - and it auto-starts again when a request for your app comes in.)
Joyent's SmartOS platform is a Linux OS optimized for hosting your node.js app. They have impressive reliability and performance as well as great diagnostic tools.
http://wiki.joyent.com/wiki/display/jpc2/Developing+a+Node.js+Application
The most cost effective solution I have found so far is DigitalOcean, a great new hosting solution where you can host a full Linux VM for only $5/month! I have had great luck hosting Node apps there so far: https://www.digitalocean.com/pricing
a2hosting allows Node.js in shared hosting.But don't have experience there.Found from a web search
Update : Use DigitalOcean. Private VPS
Node doesn't work like most servers. With IIS and Apache, there is one server running multiple sites, which lends itself to shared environments. With Node, you're running your own server so instead you tend to share resources on a machine.
I can't tell you whether it's worth learning node because I don't know your motivation, but it can expand your career opportunities if you choose to go there, and to expand your skillset.
Here are a couple of hosting options in the low price range.
http://nodester.com/
https://www.nodejitsu.com/
Related
I have built a website with chess.js and java chess libraries that communicates with a custom c++ chess engine via gRPC with python. I am new to web dev and especially gRPC, so I am not sure on the architecture I should be going for when it comes to hosting.
My questions are below:
Do the website and gRPC service need to be hosted on separate server instances and connected via API?
Everything right now is hosted locally and I use two ports as it is right now (5000 for the website and 8080 for the server). If the site and server aren't separate, is this how they will communicate to each other on a single server (one local port)?
I am using this website just for a showcase of my portfolio for job searching, so I am looking for free/cheap hosting that also provides a decent RAM availability since the c++ chess engine is fairly computationally intense. Does anyone have any suggestions for what hosting service I should use for this?
I was considering a free hosting for the website and then a cheap dedicated server for the service (if the two should be separate). Is this a bad idea?
Taking all tips and tricks that anyone has to offer. Again, totally novice to web dev, hosting, servers, etc.
NOTE This is an architecture rather than a programming question and discouraged on stack overflow.
The website and gRPC service may be hosted on the same server (as you're doing locally). You have the flexibility in running both processes (website and gRPC service) on a single more powerful host or separately on two hosts.
NOTE Although most often gRPC communicates over TCP sockets, it is possible to use UNIX sockets and even buffered memory too.
If you run both processes on a single host, you will want to consider connecting the website to the gRPC service via localhost (127.0.0.1 or the loopback device). Using localhost, network traffic doesn't leave the host.
If you run both processes on different hosts, traffic must travel across a network. This is slower and will likely incur charges when hosted.
You will want to decide whether the gRPC service should be exposed to any network traffic other than your website. In many cases, a gRPC service is used to provide an API to facilitate integration by 3rd-parties. If you definitely don't want the gRPC service accessed by other things, then you'll want to ensure either that it's bound to localhost (see above; and thereby inaccessible to anything other than other processes e.g. your website on the host) or firewalled such that only the website is permitted to send traffic to it.
You can find cheap hosting of virtual machines (VMs) and you'll likely want to consider hosting both processes on a single VM, ensure that you constrain the resources that you pay for and that you secure traffic (as above).
You may wish to consider containerizing the application. In this case, while it's possible to run both processes in a single container, this is considered not good practice. You should thus consider 2 containers (website and gRPC server). Many hosting|cloud platforms provide container hosting and this is generally easier than managing VMs (since you don't need to patch|update the OS and any dependencies). If you can find a platform that accepts a Docker Compose describing or a Kubernetes Deployment in which you describe both your services and how they interact such that the gRPC service is only accessible to the website, that could be ideal.
Is it possible to build a node application with a web hosting service, such as blue host, godaddy or media temple? Or does it need to be on a hosting site such as Heroku or Back4App? If so where do I start to learn how to do this?
"Web hosting" is a pretty broad term, but typically you're going to see static HTML, and some hosted PHP, and a few other technologies. It's atypical to see Node.js application hosting as part of a general web hosting package. The reason is that you're going to want more control over the environment in which it runs.
That gives you a couple general classes of options:
Virtual or Dedicated Hosting
Having a VPS instance, or even a full machine if you can afford it, gives you full access to the OS and what you install on it. This means you can run whatever you want, including Node.js. You can get very cheap VPS hosting.
Node.js Application Hosting
This is the sort of service you get with Heroku or on AWS Elastic Beanstalk. Your application more directly integrates with the hosting provider, allowing you to take advantage of some of their automation and deployment tooling. If you need to do any automatic scaling, this is your best option.
You can try one of this five:
RedHat OpenShift
Nodejitsu
Microsoft Azure (don't!, well... try if you want to)
Modulus
Heroku (my fauvorite)
You can see details of each one here! But I would start with heroku app, but it's your choice
To get started with heroku
Godaddy does allow nodejs as part of its "web hosting" offering:
https://www.godaddy.com/pro/one-click-installation/node-js
That said, I really recommend Heroku and similar services for having less upsell and letting you work closer to cruft-free.
I have a Ubuntu Server on DigitalOcean which hosts a website, and a Windows Server on AWS which hosts another website.
I just built a mean.js stack app on my MAC, and I plan to deploy it to production.
It seems that most of the existing threads discuss about using a new dedicated server. For example, this thread is about deploying on a new AWS EC2 instance; this video is about deploying on a new Windows Azure server; this is to create a new droplet in DigitalOcean.
My question is, is it possible to use an existing server (which hosts other websites), rather than creating a new server? If yes, will there be any difference in terms of performance?
My question is, is it possible to use an existing server (which hosts other websites), rather than creating a new server?
Yes. Both Windows and Ubuntu allows you to deploy multiple applications on same instance.
For Ubuntu you can read this post which will help you server multiple apps.
In this example used Nginx, but you can follow to this example and use it without any server like Apache or Nginx. If you need subdomains I would suggest to use Apache virtual hosts with reverse proxy module and pm2
For Windows and its IIS I would suggest to use iisnode, in google you can find a lot of articles how to configure it.
will there be any difference in terms of performance?
It is depended on your applications, if you are already serving applications which handles huge traffic and need CPU and memory, I would not suggest you to use multiple apps on same instance, but if you are going to use simple web apps, you can easily use same instance.
Hope this answer will help you!
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There are a bunch of managed cloud based hosting services for nodejs out there which seem relatively new and some still in Beta.
Yet another path to host a nodejs app is setting up a stack on a VPS like Linode.
I'm wondering what's the basic difference here between these two kinds of deployment.
Which factors should one consider in choosing one over another?
Which one is more suitable for production considering how young these services are.
To be clear I'm not asking on choosing a provider but to decide whether to host on a managed nodejs specific hosting or on an old fashioned self setup VPS.
Using one of the services is for the most part hands off - you write your code and let them worry about managing the box, keep your process up, creating the publishing channel, patching the OS, etc...
In contrast having your own VM gives you more control but with more up front and ongoing time investment.
Another consideration is some hosters and cloud providers offer proprietary or distinct variations on technologies. They have reasons for them and they offer value but it does mean that if you want to switch cloud providers, it might mean you have to rewrite code, deployment scripts etc... On the other hand using VMs with standard OS as the baseline is pretty generic. If you automate/script/document the configuration of your VMs and your code stays generic, then your options stay open. If you do take a dependency on a proprietary cloud technology then it would be good to abstract it away behind an interface so it's a decoupled component and not sprinkled throughout your code.
I've done both. I did the VM path recently mostly because I wanted the learning experience. I had to:
get the VM from the cloud provider
I had to update and patch the OS
I had to install and configure git as a publishing channel
I had to write some scripts and use things like forever to keep it running
I had to configure the reverse http-proxy to get it to run multiple sites.
I had to configure DNS with the cloud provider, open ports for git etc...
The list goes on. In the end, it cost me more up front time not coding but I learned about a lot more things. If those are important to you, then give it a shot. If you want to focus on writing your code, then a node hosting provider may be for you.
At the end of it, I had also had more options - I wanted to add a second site. I added an entry to my reverse proxy, append my script to start up another app with forever, voila, another site. More control. After that, I wanted to try out MongoDB - simple - installed it.
Cost wise they're about the same but if you start hosting multiple sites with many other packages like databases etc..., then the VM can start getting cheaper.
Nodejitsu open sourced their tools which also makes it easier if you do your own.
If you do it yourself, here's some links that may help you:
Keeping the server up:
https://github.com/nodejitsu/forever/
http://blog.nodejitsu.com/keep-a-nodejs-server-up-with-forever
https://github.com/bryanmacfarlane/svchost
Upstart and Monit
generic auto start and restart through monitoring
http://howtonode.org/deploying-node-upstart-monit
Cluster Node
Runs one process per core
http://nodejs.org/docs/latest/api/cluster.html
Reverse Proxy
https://github.com/nodejitsu/node-http-proxy
https://github.com/nodejitsu/node-http-proxy/issues/232
http://blog.nodejitsu.com/http-proxy-middlewares
https://github.com/nodejitsu/node-http-proxy/issues/168#issuecomment-3289492
http://blog.argteam.com/coding/hardening-node-js-for-production-part-2-using-nginx-to-avoid-node-js-load/
Script the install
https://github.com/bryanmacfarlane/svcinstall
Exit Shell Script Based on Process Exit Code
Publish Site
Using git to publish to a website
IMHO the biggest drawback of setting up your own stack is that you need to manage things like making Node.js run forever, start it as a daemon, bring it behind a reverse-proxy such as Nginx, and so on ... the great thing about Node.js - making firing up a web server a one-liner - is one of its biggest drawbacks when it comes to production-ready systems.
Plus, you've got all the issues of managing and updating and securing your server yourself.
This is so much easier with the hosters: Usually it's a git push and that's it. Scaling? Easy. Replication? Easy. ...? Easy. All within a few clicks.
The drawback with the hosters is that you can not adjust the environment. Okay, you can probably choose which version of Node.js and / or npm to run, but that's it. You have no control over what 3rd party software is installed. You've got no control over the OS. You've got no control over where the servers are located. And so on ...
Of course, some hosters allow you access to some of these things, but there is rarely a hoster that supports all.
So, basically the question regarding Node.js is the same as with each other technology: It's a pro vs con of individualism, pricing, scalabilty, reliability, knowledge, ...
I personally chose to go with a hoster: The time and effort I save easily outperform the disadvantages. Mind you: For me, personally.
This question needs to be answered individually.
Using Docker is another way to simplify the setup on single Linux VPS. With Docker both development and production setups are faster, more robust, and more secure.
The setup is faster and more robust because you will be deploying ready Node.js image at once, without running any installation scripts. And it would be more secure because internal dependencies, such as database, can be hidden from outside world completely and accessible only from Docker internal network. On top of it, Docker significantly simplifies the upgrade process for underlying OS and Node.js runtime.
There are two ways to setup Node.js Docker environment. The first one – follow the instruction published here how to dockerize your application and deploy it with Docker, alongside with databases when needed. The guide gives the instructions for the development setup, the production setup will be similar.
Another way would be deploying official Node.js docker image and mounting application code as a volume or a folder to Node.js image. That would allow to update Node.js image going forward without re-building and re-deploying the application. Such approach solves long-standing problem with security patching of Docker images.
To help out with the setup of Docker on single machine - you can use Abberit Admin Panel. It will set up Node.js environment for you with a click of a button, including databases if you need them. The tool is free, and you can turn it off after you have completed initial setup. On the other hand, if later you decide to reduce maintenance tax of the production - you can migrate into managed service without any changes in the app.
Disclaimer: I am one of the founders of Abberit.
I have a Windows application that does some calculations and is called from command line. On my Windows machine, I have a PHP script running under Apache that executes the application and shows the output.
Is there any hosting solution that I can use to do the same? I can't figure out if EC2 or Azure are the right solutions. Basically, I need a web server + ability to execute my application.
Suggestions? Thanks.
You can host your application on AppHarbor, the .NET Platform-as-a-Service. You can either port your web frontend to .NET or try to get your PHP stuff working with Phalanger. AppHarbor is working on Background Tasks, which might be a good match for your workload.
I would just run the PHP script you already have under IIS in a Windows Azure web role.
If it is a Windows Application and you have the source code I would go with an Azure Worker Role. The advantage of using a PaaS (as Azure) instead of an IaaS (as Amazon) is that you wont have to bother of keeping the server up to date.
The real investment in time will be when you rewrite your application to make it work as a Worker Role. The time needed to do this work depends on how your application works right now. If is uses a lot of disc access it might be difficult and perhaps an Amazon server would be better. But if it only crunches numbers in memory an Azure Worker Role is a very good candidate.
The real advantage of using an Amazon server is that you probably wont need to do any work at all. Except maintaining the server.
As described in the question both Azure and EC2 will do the job very well. This is the kind of task both systems are designed for.
So the question becomes really: which is best? That depends on two things: what the application needs to do and your own experience and preference.
As it's a Windows application there should probably be a leaning towards Azure. While EC2 supports Windows, the tooling and support resources for Azure are probably deeper at this point.
If cost is a factor then a (somewhat outdated) resource is here: http://blog.mccrory.me/2010/10/30/public-cloud-hourly-cost-comparison/ -- the conclusion is that, by and large, Azure and Amazon are roughly similar for compute charges.
Steve Marx has a blog post that describes how to run another web server (i.e not IIS) on Azure
This potentially has everything you need - you can deploy Apache and your executable and run it in exactly the same way.
Alternatively - you can deploy your executable along side a bit of code in a worker role that would run that application periodically, all depending on your exact requirements