Hi,

I would appreciate some advice on choosing a Windows setup. Pardon the long email. Hope it provides the proper background info, as I don't know which facts are most important.

I have a small translation business. I use this project management and customer database software, which runs on Windows:

(Can't link to Projetex, so you'll have to Google it.)

The software works great and they just upgraded to a new version that can run online without a VPN, so I want to try to put it online.

It has separate Server and Workstation software, but the Server software can actually run on a PC running a regular (non-server) version of Windows, i.e., Windows 7, Vista, XP, etc. Right now, I have both the Server and Workstation software and the Firebird SQL Relational Database Server on my home laptop, working fine. I just hired a secretary and want her to be able to access the server from a second location. I'm going to install a second Workstation instance on her computer. I'm hoping to move the Server and Database software off my laptop and just leave the Workstation. Both of us are in Los Angeles.

Now, to the point, I have been trying to determine what kind of space to get. I was first looking at cloud spaces. For example, I talked to Liquid Web. Their $100/month space was overkill, but that's the smallest they have. Rackspace has a deal with pricing based on usage. I expect between the two of us, we will access the software about 50 hours a month for now.

However, I asked my software company to estimate what my bandwidth usage will be so I can budget. They told me "about 1 Mbit/s", which comes to 60 sec x 60 min x 50 hours = 180,000MB = about 175 GB per month. I don't know if this is related to the specs for the pricing, or if I just multiply the given price per minute of, for example, $0.08/hour x 50 hours = $4 per month.

I tried to ask the chat support person from Rackspace about this, but they didn't want to get involved in the details. I don't blame them, if they're only going to make $4 per month. They were trying to send me to a managed service, which is over $100 per month, probably because I clearly didn't know what I was doing. They suggested that if I don't know how to set up the server myself, this is what I need. So, I asked the Rackspace person, once it's set up, how many hours a month of labor does it take to manage the space, just so I can budget if I want to hire someone myself to manage it. They said, not really any. So, I asked if I could just pay Rackspace up front for set up and then have an unmanaged space. I can't afford over $100/month for my small business, and I do have friends I can ask for free or paid help when needed. They said they don't offer a one-time set-up fee, only the monthly managed fee. (I can understand why they want to avoid hand-holding small clients like me, so maybe someone can suggest a smaller company that would like my business. I respect professional expertise and I am willing to pay a fair set-up fee.)

Before I keep comparison shopping, I'm trying to figure out if I'm even looking at the right kind of space. I want my client data to be fairly secure, but I don't ever expect spikes in traffic that require flexibility, which is what I understand cloud spaces are good for, and I just want to run this one program plus store the docs (mostly MS Word and PDF files) that are associated with the database, so most VPS's look too expensive.

There are lots of great tutorials online about setting up a Linux space, but I don't know of the equivalent for MS, so I haven't been able to educate myself further on this.

Soooooooooo, questions:

1) Am I even headed in the right direction? Do I need a VPS, a cloudspace, or will managed hosting do? Or should I just forget this and set up an old computer at home to run as my server? (Not excited about the last option.)

2) Do I need Windows server because it's online, or is there a way to run "regular" Windows (to make it either cheaper or easier) since my software doesn't need the server version? Possible to run some kind of "virtual Windows" in a Linux space?

3) Is the Windows license and lack of demand for small setups keeping the price high, or are there smaller setups out there (irrelevant if Rackspace is approx $4/month)?

4) Is is really possible that the Rackspace will only cost approx. $4 per month unmanaged, or am I missing something? (If so, I can afford to just pay someone to set that up, and I'm done.)

5) Are there any more specific questions I need to ask my software company? They are a small company and good with tech support, but I can't ask if I don't know what to ask.

6) Websites that have good tutorials on Windows setup? Even if I pay someone to set up initially, I want to learn something about how this works. (To give a sense of my level, I have some introductory programming ability in a few languages and HTML, manage a couple of websites installing WordPress etc. myself (always on a LAMP system, never Windows), have once installed Linux on an old windows desktop, and many Windows desktop intalls/reinstalls.)

Thanks again for your help.

I should add that Rackspace did contact me for follow-up. Not sure if based on this post or not. I don't want anyone to get a bad impression of their customer service based on my posting. I haven't dealt with them extensively, so I don't have a strong feeling yet one way or another.

1. Should avoid home server as your internet is not reliable for public website access.
2. Windows VPS already have windows license included so it's a good choice IMO (license covered on host server).
6. Usually Windows VPS is set up to be ready for production environment. You don't really need to do much unless your software require special configuration.
It costs only $50-$100/month to get a windows vps for testing your software in 1 month.
If you're happy, keep the vps. If not, cancel it.

There are several option the way you mentioned in your post either its home based pc which is not reliable , you should go for the shared hosing with any hosting provider like eukhost or others but make sure that it should be managed hosting once you will give the responsibility to hosting company they will for sure do it better way

However, I asked my software company to estimate what my bandwidth usage will be so I can budget. They told me "about 1 Mbit/s", which comes to 60 sec x 60 min x 50 hours = 180,000MB = about 175 GB per month. I don't know if this is related to the specs for the pricing, or if I just multiply the given price per minute of, for example, $0.08/hour x 50 hours = $4 per month.

You have your bits and bytes mixed up. 1Mbit is about 0.125 Mbyte (8 bits to the byte) so your calculation should come out to about 22.5GB per month. Like most other cloud providers Rackspace charges separately for time and data transfer so you'd be paying the $4 plus whatever they charge for data. There's a calculator (http://www.rackspacecloud.com/cloud_hosting_products/servers/pricing/) on the site - I plugged in your 1024MB Windows for 50 hours per month with 22GB in and out (not sure if that's true for your app but it's on the safe side). Total $10.60! Seems like you have an ideal application for cloud hosting. ;) I'd suggest you give it a try, monitor the usage closely and see how you go.

Edit: You'll probably need to allow for data storage in your calculations too.

This is an old thread, but I think I can shed some light on the Rackspace Cloud's pricing structure.

A cloud server is yours and yours alone. It has dedicated memory, dedicated disk space, and a dedicated minimum share of the processing power (varies by server size).

The pricing model is for hours the server is live, not hours of use. This is because the server is yours and yours alone. The resources are reserved for your use.

So, for 30 days, you would have 720 hours of use which is about $11 per month for a base linux server. It's 57.60 per month for a base Windows server. (The base Windows is also 4x larger in terms of storage and RAM).

Then there is bandwidth use at 8 cents per gigabyte into the server and 18 cents per gigabyte out. I suspect that thee company has told you the minimum bandwidth in terms of speed you need, not the bandwidth (transfer) used per hour. But assuming they're correct and assuming it's 50/50 up/down, then that means 22GB total or 11 GB up and 11 GB down.

So the bandwidth charge would be $2.86 per month. $0.88 for inbound bandwidth and $1.98 for outbound bandwidth.

Given that, the total cost of the basic Windows box would be about $60 per month, and the total cost for a basic Linux box would be about $14 per month.

The pricing model is for hours the server is live, not hours of use. This is because the server is yours and yours alone. The resources are reserved for your use.

So, for 30 days, you would have 720 hours of use

Are you saying they won't sell you 50 hours per month of usage on a single instance? If so their marketing of this product would have to be pretty deceptive - I just tested the calculator on their site again and got the same result as before: Windows 1GB, 50 hours, $4 plus bandwidth.

@foobic

If an instance exists, then it is accruing time. So, you could have a server for only 50 hours, but you would have to delete the server instance when it is not in use. I assume that for most people constantly deleting and re-creating an instance is not practical.

The "Monthly Hours of Service" refers to the amount of time the server exists and is available. It doesn't refer to the amount of time a client application is actually connected to the server.

The hourly rate is designed around app developers in mind. It allows the creation of short-term instances for testing, etc.

This issue is addressed in the Cloud Servers FAQ.
rackspace.com/cloud/cloud_hosting_products/servers/faq/

"If I am not using my server or do not have traffic to it, do I still have to pay for it?

Yes. Currently the server would either be running or you would have to delete it altogether. There is no "suspension" mode where you are not charged while not receiving traffic to the server.

If you want to stop paying for the server, another option is to take a snapshot of the Cloud Server, store the snapshot in Cloud Files, and then delete the Cloud Server. If you want to use the server again, you would restore the Cloud Server by creating a new cloud server from the stored Cloud Files snapshot."

If you want to stop paying for the server, another option is to take a snapshot of the Cloud Server, store the snapshot in Cloud Files, and then delete the Cloud Server. If you want to use the server again, you would restore the Cloud Server by creating a new cloud server from the stored Cloud Files snapshot.
Thanks for the clarification. So for someone wishing to take advantage of cloud's much vaunted hourly billing rate, that's the process they'd need to automate. :)