servicestack app host vs iis for high performance REST service - servicestack

as servicestack leave it open to host service in web server or in stand alone app.
What is the best in term of performance both raw and for a high number of clients ?
Hosting on apache or nginx or XSP or IIS is just for added functionality or for perf ?

servicestack.net itself runs on Ubuntu / Nginx + MonoFastCGI, although we've been notified others have been able to get better performance with self-hosting which you can still serve behind a Nginx/Apache reverse proxy if you still wanted access to a full-featured web server.
You can also wrap a self-hosted ServiceStack in a Linux Daemon.

We've ran into same question while were choosing hosting schema for our ServiceStack services. Ran some benchmarks with same service hosted on self-host and under IIS. SelfHost windows service has shown near 1.5x better performance than IIS-hosted app.
Surely this is not and absolute number and it may vary by service's load type (cpu/io), but it is clear, that IIS routine adds tonns of overhead.
If you need speed and don't worry about all those features IIS can give you (monitoring / advanced routing / admin / etc)- self host is the way to go. Our set-up hides ServiceStack hosts behind nginx nodes that serve all the routing/proxy/balancing stuff so we don`t need monstrous IIS-routine.

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What is the best architecture for a web-app communicating with a gRPC service?

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.

How to build a Node.js application with web hosting service?

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.

Deploy a MEAN stack application to an existing server

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!

Redis deployment configuration - master slave replication

Currently I have two servers which I have deployed node.js/Express.JS based web services API. I am using Redis for caching the JSON strings.
What will be the best option deploying this setup in to production? I see here it advices to go with a dedicated server redis. OK. I take it and use a dedicated server for running redis master. Can I use existing app servers as slave nodes? Note : these app servers are running an Node/Express application.
What other other options do I have?
You can.
It all depends on the load that those other servers have, it's a problem of resource sharing. To be honest my main issue with your architecture is not the dedicated vs the non-dedicated servers, it's the fact that you are placing a Redis server (master or not) on a host that most likely will be facing the internet (expressJS app), meaning, it's quite exposed.
If you can simulate HTTP load into your Node/Express JS servers, see the difference between running some benchmark tests on your dedicated server vs the non dedicated ones:
On a running redis server type in:
redis-benchmark -q -n 100000
If the app servers are being hammered and using all cores frequently you should see a substantial difference in the benchmarks.
My suggestion is, go ahead with your first setup and add monitoring for the redis response times, and only act when you have to, which might be now if the benchmarks show very poor results.
As a side note, consider the option of not sharing hosts for services that you expose to the internet with services that perform internal functions to your application.

Why node.js can't run on shared hosting? [closed]

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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/

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