Nobody has responded to my thread "unix host offering java", I'm not sure if it's because I didn't have a question mark so people thought it was an ad, or because nobody knows of anyone who offers the ability to run java programs on their web hosting services. I need to be able to run a small java-based server, and have shell access to same to turn it on and off when neccessary, doesn't anyone know of a reliable host offering this? I thought java was very popular, yet I can't find a single host offering it, short of paying close to US$1000 for a "virtual server", which I did with www.superb.net for a couple of years, but I simply can't afford that kind of money for this simple requirement any longer.
Doesn't anyone know of a host that offers this?

Java by nature is client-side scripting and you do not need any special server to support it. Java Servlets on the other hand are server-side processing and thus would require the necessary server add-ons to support it.

Thus if your purpose is just to run Java per se, there are no other special settings or configuration needed.

Incidentally, I just saw your posting and it was at 3am. The people here do sleep at night and usually do not stay on this board 24 hours. So do allow for about 24 hours for a response.

eddy .. sorry to be off topic here .. but looking at the board some of the regulars reply so often that it seems like they only take breaks from the forums to open the door for the pizza guy...

applets are client side, but everything else is server side... the main problem is that

a) most virtual hosting companies will not let you run your own server / daemons for various (pretty good i'd say) reasons
b) java (tomcat most likely) tends to be a bit resource intensive, especially on a shared server.

if you have to have java, you'd probably be best off with a VPS or dedicated server, but no, i wouldn't think you would find a lot of virtual hosting environments that cater to that. and if they did, the quality may not be as high (just thinking of tomcat, restarting it takes a bit of time, and if it's setup strange, and needs a restart whenever a new servlet zone is added or a new user added that could add up to a lot of downtime... and if it's reloadable, then you get that additional resource hit)

Dear jwanner,

I'd like to pm you but you doesn't accept pm. So I post here.

Tigahost support JAVA application server. Please see:

http://www.tigahost.com/unityhosting.htm

http://www.tigahost.com/webhosting.htm

Hi.

We offer TomCat for an additional $5 per month on any of our accounts.

Is that all you need?

www.totalhosting.com (http://www.totalhosting.com)

Guys, you aren't allowed to make offers to members in this forum, you can only promote your company in the advertising forums.

Jwanner, if you clarify what you need (i.e. to be able to run java servlets or client side javascript) we'd be able to help give you a few suggestions.

My bad!

Okay, now I'm the one slow to respond, having got some sleep in my timezone!
I'm not sure what Tomcat is - what I need to be able to run is VNet, an open source java based server that facilitates multiuser ability in VRML worlds.
I would need to be able to access it via SSH to turn it on and off when neccessary. It's a small program that doesn't use much power. For more details, look at:
http://www.csclub.uwaterloo.ca/u/sfwhite/vnet/
It's a well known and respected program within the VRML community.
As I say, I used to have a virtual server at Superb.net, and that was okay but it was nearly US$1000 per year, which is just way too much for that one bit of utility (all my other hosting needs are easily covered by a standard deal).

This script requires you to run server side java, so most likely you will need Tomcat (which allows java servlets to run under Linux), as others have mentioned this can be CPU intensive which is why dedicated boxes or semi-dedicated boxes are recommended. If you do want to go for the virtual hosting option try posting in the Web Hosting Requests and specify you'll need 'tomcat' and SSH access to your account.

Sorry, an addendum: I realise that it's not proper for Tigahost to have posted his ad-like message, but I checked out the service, and it offers "Java Runtime Environment", and that's exactly what I need.
Why is it so rare for hosting services to offer this? I appreciate that it takes up runtime cycles, but so does anything right? Is it really only businesses with heaps of cash to spend that want to use Java?

Dear Jwanner,

you can find a java application server supported host here : http://moock.org/unity/

No, basically most hosts are on rented servers with a monthly outgoing of $99-175 on the server alone. To maximise their income they will want to shove as many resellers/shared hosting onto that server as possible. The server thus is using a lot of resources as it is.

To install Tomcat and run sites that are going to be using an incredible amount of resources on top of hammering the servers with normal accounts just wouldn't work. Most websites running java servlets run of semi-dedicated servers for this reason.

Hope that helps.

oops fazel3 beat me too it... :)

hey jwanner, basically, shared hosting relies on pretty slim margins... as java can be resource intensive, say if you had 500 accounts on a machine (pre java) and things are running well, and you add tomcat say.. suddenly to get that same level of cpu usage, memory usage, etc.. maybe you can only put 400 accounts.

as you can see, pretending the average account is $10 per month, suddenly tomcat (which is free) has now cost you $1000 per server.

i believe that's the main reason, perhaps you'll find a few hosts that have prepared for that sort of thing, but generally speaking, i think that's the main issue. a secondary issue is the company will now have to support that as well, if they're small, java / tomcat may not be on their priority list of things to support, tomcat in particular doesn't really lend itself to ease of use, (having to setup specific directories for each servlet zone can be a bit daunting for newbies getting into java, and hosting companies who rely on users with a " do it yourself" attitude may find they're handling a lot of support requests for this sort of thing...)

But you explained it much better :D

*takes hat of to you*

Okay, now I begin to understand.
I'm still not sure about Tomcat and servlets, and how they relate to the JRE.
I will probably be doing a bit of changing around the code for the vnet server, but I can probably do that on my home machine, then upload it to the server, which in that case would only need to be running the JRE, not the JDK.
Is Tomcat the Linux version of the JRE? I know on the virtual server I had with Superb.net I installed the JDK - that was a RedHat system, but I never had to use anything called Tomcat, just the JDK (Java Development Kit), the linux version of which I had to get from blackdown systems.
(ps. If you're wondering "how can this guy hack java code, but still not know what Tomcat and servlets are?!?!" it's because I'm an... wait for it.... artist!! Therefore, I have a specific need which I have learnt to accommodate totally empirically without doing the proper training - I've got pretty good at hacking the VNet source, but as far as any other kind of java programming, forget about it!)

Tomcat allows you to run server side java processes. Tomcat is exclusively for Linux. In addition to everything else, you'll need Tomcat so you can run the script. That's to the best of my knowledge.

We haven't noticed that much of a difference in server load since recently adding Tomcat.

Our machines run it as a bolt-on to Ensim.

It helps if you have a lot of RAM (1GB+) on the machines.

Then again, we don't have too many clients running it yet.

As far as support goes, we treat it like CGI-BIN. You can use it, but we won't help you with anything you put in there. The same as PHP, Python, MySQL, etc. It's up to the client to make sure they know what they are doing.

Does anyone treat these other technologies differently? Meaning, do you answer questions about client-installed scripts or databases?

If things change, I'll post our experiences here.

Regards,

Pete Stoermer

Hey Pete,

i think the extras i was getting at (don't know if it's applicable to you guys?) was the extra setup usually involved in getting a servlet running for example, ie, creating the WEB-INF and related diretories, creating your web.xml file, compiling code, etc... may be a bit more intimidating than just plopping a php script somewhere in the file system

but definitely cool, if you have that figured out, or don't mind the potential questions, to allow java. when done right the more features the better definitely! :)

We run TomCat and haven't noticed any major load for the couple clients that use it. I wouldn't want to have a whole box of people running it though. :)

Those extras are exactly what the user needs to know on their own. Sometimes I'll help a client set permissions on a PERL script, or point them in the direction to learn how to set up a MySQL database.

But basically our position is, if you don't know how to do these things yourself, you either shouldn't be messing with them or you need to hire professionals to implement them.

Where do others draw the line at "support" for things like this?

Regards,

Pete Stoermer

Originally posted by Fazel3
Tomcat allows you to run server side java processes. Tomcat is exclusively for Linux. In addition to everything else, you'll need Tomcat so you can run the script. That's to the best of my knowledge.

No, sorry, Tomcat run in Windows too, but is it exclusive for Apache.

There are other JSP/Servlets engines for IIe, but I can't remember which are those.

Thanks for clearing that up Jorge, I was under the impression it was for Linux only.

Originally posted by WII-Aaron
We run TomCat and haven't noticed any major load for the couple clients that use it. I wouldn't want to have a whole box of people running it though. :)

We host about 40 Java / JSP / Servlet clients on our various servers using Tomcat. Plus, our site is written in JSP and uses Tomcat itself.

Yes, a couple of clients won't affect things, but more than a half-dozen will.

Just 1 Tomcat Virtual Server spawns about 5 - 10 java Tomcat processes, based on your settings. Then, more are spawned to handle additional traffic. We have 1 server with 7 clients using Tomcat and on average there are 150 Java processes running. When the Java sites are busy it has a pretty significant effect on memory usage.

We don't add more JSP / Java clients to that server because we don't want it to affect performance adversely. But as you can see, Java clients are far more resource intensitve than a standard web hosting client.

Web hosts have to make up the difference between the standard web hosting clients usage and the JSP/Tomcat clients usage. Thus, you can expect to pay more for the JSP/Java Tomcat support.

Thanks - Brian