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what are the scenarios where it makes sense to go with a single beefy server vs. VPS + managed db?
Talking with a potential client that has a WordPress WooCommerce site. About 6000 products, reasonably busy site with good order volumes (don't have exact figures, but I'm guessing low/mid 5-figures/month). Currently they're on a CPU optimized Digital Ocean droplet (I think with 16gb ram), DO managed DB as well as Digital Ocean "spaces" for all the site media (images, etc). It looks like they are in the $250/month range for what they're paying Digital Ocean. Site appears to work well, they aren't experiencing any issues that I'm aware of, site performance feels pretty good.
Coming away from that conversation, I can't help but wonder whether they might be served just as well with a single either beefy VPS or with a mid-level dedicated server. Even a dedicated vCPU VPS from Hetzner with 2x their current RAM would come in at about $62/month. My sense is that that would be enough disk space and enough power to combine all 3 of their current Digital Ocean services into 1 monolith. Shoot, even jump up to the next Hetzner vCPU option and we're still under $125/month. Or, I'm seeing plenty of dedicated servers under $200/month from a variety of providers.
For me it's not necessarily about the cost (and I don't get the sense this client really cares about the hosting cost), as it is more about the complexity of managing 3 separate services vs a single server (whether virtual or bare metal). I know there are risks at both ends of the spectrum, but how do you judge when it's worth breaking up services into separate products (like a wordpress site -- everything on one box vs splitting out web server, database and media storage) or not.
I welcome any advice.
Comments
Here's how I would judge it: It's working, at a reasonable price for them and a reasonable speed, and anything you do and break you'd get blamed for (or at the very least, it'd be a senseless change). I wouldn't touch it until it breaks/needs change.
Is it that complex? Both the DB and the Object Storage are managed, you only have the droplet to worry about. If you needed to scale out more on the web server side, it wouldn't be too hard to scale out that way, maybe throw a managed load balancer in front. The Database could scale with a few clicks. Databases and storage can be tricky to get right/optimize, right now you have someone to blame. I think for businesses the extra cost of a managed service like that is well worth it/peace of mind. I wouldn't want to get a call at 2 AM in the morning that the DB is down. If the droplet running wordpress got hacked, you've at least got some isolation as well.
I would only go with a single beefer server/vps if it's a personal project or something I wanted to save every dime on/really needed the performance.
Of course if your goal is to convince them to go with your and redo their architecture then maybe you've already got the answer in mind and are more looking to convince them. Amazon says every 100ms of latency cost them 1% in sales. There is other ways to chase performance though, like with a CDN in front and smart caching.