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Moved to Vultr HF + RunCloud - is this a mistake?
rockinaway
Member
So my website, www.examinedental.com, was previously hosted by SiteGround Shared Hosting. As the website has grown, and to improve performance, after much research on various WordPress speed groups, I made the decision to move to Vultr HF + RunCloud (with OLS).
I have a relatively good tech background but I have never fully managed a server before. I made the move this weekend and everything generally seems to be working well. Though tentative, I think this transition is a good one. However, on a recent conversation on Facebook, someone started raising doubts in my mind with comments such as:
"I don't think your configuration is optimal. So your best solution is to move to a managed server or spend hours fixing this until it breaks again. The problem with this setup is that something will always break sooner or later, and you have to spend hours fixing things, which is not worth it in my opinion."
"Well, that's why this solution sucks. And 4s is obviously pretty bad. The problem is that you need to spend hours upon hours figuring out the problem. Then in 2 days, something else breaks. There are just too many Linux packages and other things that can mess up your website. Don't get me started with all the things that can happen when vulnerabilities are discovered or Linux packages are updated so your website breaks."
I am now concerned that I have bitten off more than I can chew. My understanding was that vulnerabilities are often patched up by Vultr +/- RunCloud (looking at history) etc.
Am I missing something here? Is just me focussing on one bad comment?
Thanks for your help!
Comments
Found your problem right there
Joking aside, there is always some level of trade-off between a fully managed solution and taking some management on yourself (likely you're getting more guaranteed performance for less dollars).
I'm not familiar with RunCloud, but I do know people who have used managed wordpress solutions like flywheel, kinsta, etc and from what I could tell they managed all things like security updates, optimizations, notifications, etc. Those are WordPress specific deployment platforms, though. I can't really tell if RunCloud is a cPanel/CloudPanel type of thing that makes it easy to install some apps or if it is fully managed.
If your site directly earns money through ecommerce or represents a business then I'd generally recommend opting for good quality shared hosting or a managed VPS if the budget allows.
When you run your own VPS, you're on the hook 24/7 for uptime, updates, security, backups etc.
Sadly all the panels like RunCloud, GridPane, Cloudways et al make it far too easy to dig a deep hole under the guise of high performance and "money saving" when weighed up against actual managed solutions.
Thanks for your input guys! Wish I had come here before the move :')
crunchbits - it's a CloudPanel so self managed. My budget is a bit restricted at the moment and so it seemed a reasonable solution for current levels.
AllHost_Rep - as mentioned above, budget is a bit restricted. Managed VPS is out of range and I just felt like SiteGround wasn't the best performing shared hosting. I guess this is probably me rationalising but regarding uptime, updates, security and backups - I have auto backups set with with Amazon S3 daily; I have seen that RunCloud run their own Ubuntu updates etc so that should patch any vulnerabilities? I am running through CloudFlare with select firewall rules, SSL, 7G firewall for added security. I'm hoping things like that will help manage in the grand scheme.
Are there any managed solutions you would recommend?
knownhost> @rockinaway said:
Site loads quickly, RunCloud isn't bad, and it does mostly automate the sysadmin side of things, so all in all not a bad way to go.
People in those groups are justifiably tired of "I moved my site to an unmanaged VPS to save money and it broke so that host sucks. Can anyone recommend me a better VPS host that it won't break on?" Because people recommend unmanaged VPS to literally everyone and then they come back later and expect the "group" to defend this seemingly universal recommendation that ended up putting them in a bind because they didn't know how to handle it. It's a sign of growth that people are starting to recommend managed hosts, because system administrators don't need a hosting recommendation anyway.
It's just so much explaining about where they went wrong, why the recommendations they received were poor, and why it's not an easy fix. Then someone else posts the same thing an hour later. Honestly, the best move for anyone who wants to set it and forget it is a static HTML website on shared hosting, and the next best option is a managed hosting provider.
Because yes it will break, and yes you might feel helpless at that time. Take backups. It might be 10 years before it breaks but yeah, it will break, and if you have no real desire to manage servers you may well miss things like EOL notices, etc. Maybe Runcloud is that good, maybe it won't go down like that. But take backups and keep them somewhere else. Because this is your server now, no one else is going to take responsibility for what happens to it.
If that doesn't scare you off, good. Enjoy! But there are absolutely people that should be scared off by that.
It's all good, no need to be paranoid. You'll learn along the way.
That is a solid combination @rockinaway , that person either doesn't have a clue about RunCloud or he has something to sell or both.
Some recommendations (most applicable in any where you host your site):
1. Lock everything down. Make SSH open only to your own IPs using public key auth. Same for wp-admin, lock it down to your own IPs only. Allow only Cloudflare IPs to connect to your server (80 and 443 open only to Cloudflare IPs), otherwise drop.
2. Enable server provider backup (this is full server backup).
3. Enable RunCloud backup to their own storage.
4. Enable RunCloud backup to S3 or SFTP. You did that already.
5. Setup Wordfence.
6. Setup unattended upgrades or login every couple of weeks to run updates.
If the server for some reason goes bananas, you simply spin a fresh one from backup.
If you can do the above, you don't need managed WordPress hosting. Good managed WordPress hosting are Pantheon or WPVIP (this is luxury WordPress hosting, you can't go wrong with this if you can afford it) but these are over budget.
Vultr HF + RunCloud or GridPane is a very solid setup
I would say i agree it is good config. It is like how to.find a MB2 or Which BC sealer is better in a RCT i mean diverse strategies or opinions about the same. Welcome to Lowendtalk! Another dentist here
Surely the pricing is not for everyone, especially LET users. The Free "Core" plan is okay though.
Yes, it's honestly a good price if it can replace many hours of managing fees for sure, so for agencies with many sites, well worth it, but not for others
I personally have only used the Core free plan, but I now pay for RunCloud, not really because I consider it better, they're similar, but mostly because I don't use Vultr and GridPane Core only allows for certain providers, I don't like the lock-in of that
If time wasn't problem you can learn some essenstial about sysadmin.
My first journey was jumping to VPS, and do quick wordpress LAMP and keep going by adding additional security / optimization one-by-one. From my first time LAMP not pretty hard even on that time I have 0 knowledge about linux/sysadmin (I have background scripting macro on excel, is that count?) and wordpress it pretty solid even without configuration/optimization by default.
I keep going, and its been ~1 year, my stack was aleardy good enough and I only keep eye every week my server + status page to make sure everything good.
I use Alpine Linux + OLS (manual compile) and some stole script from slickstack.
Nothing change until now, its been 3 months running on production
Anybody else remembers the DigitalOcean guides? Followed them command for command😆
My trauma starts with people in Wordpress facebook groups recommending the DO Wordpress one-click droplet to everyone regardless of knowledge level, and then them all complaining in mass when their lack of managing the server eventually resulted in inevitable outages of their websites. I remember so many meetings talking about where the line should be drawn with responsibility when not charging for managed support, all that jazz.
Damn
I have not opened a ticket with any mainstream provider for anything other than billing issues for many years, will they actually do some troubleshooting if I just ”My website xyz.xyz has been working for 3 years and just now I get error time out”?
Anything coming out of FB, especially advice is asking for trouble.
Runcloud isn't so bad, but you'll still need to learn a few things as they don't do everything for you. Why not go with normal webhosting, and in the mean time try to learn some simple sysadmin skills by getting a cheap VPS and do it yourself when you feel more ready OP?
Funny enough, I’ve managed to destory GridPane only from the UI (everything broke)
Also, both times where I’ve installed RunCloud, thing’s were fucked from the actual start (weird redirects, SSL not working etc.)
So yes, it can make your life easier, but 100 % have basic knowledge too
It's good enough.
I'm using the combine on hundreds of websites.
It's not unheard of that someone at a company like DO or Linode might offer some advice or information about common fixes, but not really any deeper than that.
What jar said is correct, unfortunately.
Decent hosting providers will try to find a way to help you, even with website issues, to some extent, unless it is something purely web development task.
They might have done a lot of 'marketing' to have some folks recommend them in a whim in those facebook groups.
Guys, I can't tell you how helpful and reassuring your comments have been!
@jar that was my thinking - I have daily backups to S3 so if something happens, I am hoping that will cover me if required. Any hosting provider can crash at any time (hell, there have been full breaches of hosting providers in the past) - yes there is slightly more risk here.
@r0xz thank you!
@Kassem - thank you for such helpful advice. I need to work a bit more on your first suggestion and lockdown the IPs - learning how to do this. I've only kept a few ports open for RunCloud to communicate with Vultr at this point. Is there any reason you suggest having RunCloud backup to it's own storage AND have S3? I already have WordFence setup and also run updates every week from WP admin
@Chievo - that comparison to MB2 is ridiculous haha!
@Arkas - that's a reasonable question and something I kept going back and forth on. I have used normal hosting for a long time on various projects and do have a relatively solid web/tech background (just not with servers). However, this project is growing and the demands are big. Financially this seemed a sound move based on the fact I'm not a complete newbie (I can set up my own crons, SSL, Cloudflare etc etc) and provide excellent performance. I might look back and want to kill myself but heyho...
@emgh - interesting. I'm surprised as my transfer has been flawless - probably jinxing it there. SSL all fine and IPs all aligned.
@rockinaway Asking for web hosting opinions on a web hosting forum is sort of like asking a plastic surgeon if you really need rhinoplasty or not.
Most everyone is going to have a bit of truth, and a lot of bias, in their response.
This is all true, most cloud server deployment SaaS platforms are not managed, and don't even have control over the hardware. If you're smart enough to understand that cloud servers can provide better performance, better security, and cheaper pricing than most web hosting solutions, than using an open source script to setup/manage your cloud servers makes more sense IMO.
But that's also because I maintain SlickStack: https://slickstack.io
https://lowendtalk.com/discussion/183972/update-on-slickstack-project-and-thanks-to-let
Many of the SaaS platforms provide a sense of control, and comfort, but when things go wrong you don't have access to configuration or hardware, and their employees don't either.
Thanks for the mention! You are so close to salvation...
Delete OLS, and use pure SlickStack on Ubuntu LTS (or Debian if you want) and enjoy many years of maintenance-free hosting. I will keep you in my prayers in the meanwhile
P.S. Vultr HF is fantastic, but so is the High Performance... for better stability, choose 2GB+ RAM especially when running WooCommmerce etc. Vultr enables a swapfile by default, but most other providers will not... SlickStack will check if swap exists and will enable a swapfile regardless of your provider. All of these SaaS platforms are locked into a small handful of settings and cloud providers and datacenters, so there's not much portability.