Comments on: Java hosting is kicking my ass!

By: Paul Baclace

Paul Baclace — Sat, 01 Mar 2008 04:09:58 +0000

FilG, Thanks for the notes.

Regarding: http://www.coreservlets.com/Apache-Tomcat-Tutorial/

That tutorial is wonderfully in-depth and comprehensive. You must be feeling word-count shock.

I have set up Tomcat 4, 5, and 6 many times in hosted environments and at a site that gets millions of hits a day, so I will add my 2 cents…

Large sections of the tutorial can be ignored if you:

1. Skip apache web server in front of Tomcat and just run Tomcat standalone. The performance gain of the apache webserver is over-rated and over the years has become slim to non-existent. The extra configuration and separate logs of the apache web server are not worth the hassle.

I run two sites hosted at kattare.com with a standalone Tomcat without any problems. The unnamed site with millions of hits per day also uses a standalone Tomcat and it has not been proven to have any performance problems with static content (the bottleneck is always overuse of the database).

2. use one of the preconfigured Tomcats instead from coreservlets.com:

http://www.coreservlets.com/Apache-Tomcat-Tutorial/Preconfigured-Tomcat-Version.html

3. test on your local system and only deploy on the server, so use of Invoker and other debugging/reloading details can be ignored.

By: Kattare

Kattare — Thu, 01 Nov 2007 00:16:33 +0000

If you’re not wanting to have to deal with the setup/management of an unmanaged dedicated server, Kattare recently dropped the account level requirement to get a Private JVM from the Level 3 account to the Level 2 account. So you can now get a private JVM in a shared account for $19/mo. Should be more in line now with Oxxus and 4Java.

By: Stefan Mischook

Stefan Mischook — Wed, 19 Sep 2007 21:14:26 +0000

Robert,

I had that setup myself (Resin on windows) and it ran great for about 4-5 years.

Funny, Java (at the time) ran best on Windows. The irony.

Stefan

By: Robert Grimes

Robert Grimes — Wed, 19 Sep 2007 06:37:53 +0000

I have a dedicated server which is running Resin on Windows. I set it all up myself and for 2 years all is ok. But it is pricey: USD $100 month.

My usage is minimal and I am considering other options. However maybe someone wishes to share the server with me - and the cost.

cello9@gmail.com

By: Buggy

Buggy — Fri, 24 Aug 2007 22:54:23 +0000

Thank you gays. I do have the same experience with many java hosting. I always goes for private JVM. But the hosting managed to break everything with incompetence. Very terrible.

Prokmu, SuppleHost, PC HighWay LLC, are all the same.

I will go with my own server, as advised. I have no problem configuring and keeping it up well.

By: FilG

FilG — Mon, 30 Jul 2007 07:49:56 +0000

Many of the above are shared JVM so they can be discounted. The options really fall down to $40/month or rolling my own server and then setting it up. Either way it sucks. Sorry about the fragmented posts - fighting a blog form (this one) that’s eating my posts.

I’m all ears for good news.

By: FilG

FilG — Mon, 30 Jul 2007 07:47:15 +0000

Let’s try it again…
www.tektonic.net/unmanaged.html $15/month
10GB HD, 300GB BW, 1 Domain, 256MB RAM
www.slicehost.com/ $20/month
10GB HD, 100GB BW, 1 Domain, 256MB RAM
rimuhosting.com/ $19.95/month
4GB HD, 30GB BW, 1 Domain, 96MB RAM
serveraxis.com/ $30/month
20GB HD, 400GB BW, 1 Domain, 512MB RAM
www.4tvirtual.com/ $15/month
1.5GB HD, 50 GB BW, 1 Domain, 300MB RAM, 160MAX pids
www.linode.com/ $19.95/mo + $10 setup
8GB HD, 100GB BW, 1 Domain, 256MB RAM
www.vpsland.com/ $15.99/mo ($15/mo if prepay 3mo)
6GB HD, 150GB BW, 1 Domain, 192MB RAM, 256MB SWAP
No cpanel
www.getnet.net/ $9.95/mo
1.5GB HD, 10GB BW, 1 Domain, ??MB RAM
www.godaddy.com/ $25.49/mo if prepay 1 year
10 GB HD, 500GB BW, FC6/CentOS 4, 256MB RAM/1GB BURST
www.easyawebhost.com/ $29.99/mo
20GB HD, 250GB BW, 1 Domain, 256MB RAM/768MB BURST

By: FilG

FilG — Mon, 30 Jul 2007 07:43:13 +0000

BTW, for those who still doubt the “PITA to setup Tomcat vs PHP”… have a read here http://www.coreservlets.com/Apache-Tomcat-Tutorial/

That should make you either very scared or very depressed, I can’t decide yet which I am… scared to go with a hosting company or depressed to roll my own & set it up. Either way, this sucks.

Cheers,
Fil

(Hmm, I guess this blog is moderated… would be nice if some mention was made of that fact - I thought my post was eaten)

By: Arooj

Arooj — Fri, 27 Jul 2007 14:26:11 +0000

I was going through this post as I had the same bad experience of hosting java app and i read someone said dailyrazor provides good support - WRONG - they are just good in restarting the server - not technical enough to help you on anything. I got the VPS from dailyrazor for java hosting. They promised 5GB of diskspace and they gave me 5GB but out of this more than 70% is already used by the default apps installed on the server and they are not willing to clean it up for me. I don’t need those shitty apps and I never asked for those! Secondly, out of 512 MB of RAM 476MB is already consumed by these apps. The server is dead slow. I can’t even run simple java from the terminal cause there is not enough free memory on my VPS. Now cause I have already paid to them, so I’m going through processes and directories to find out which one I could remove without having a major impact. My suggestion to all of you who are looking for a Java Host: always ask for the complete configuration that you’d be offered for the price. Just knowing the OS and the webserver name version are not enough.

By: Mark

Mark — Thu, 14 Jun 2007 14:23:55 +0000

Kudos to you for spending the time to get it right. …and for telling your users what they should be looking for!

I have no doubt that it can be complicated and I won’t pretend to be an expert. I know enough about it to protect myself from the obvious vulnerabilities.
With my current host they’ve disallowed ssh access to the box (unless you make a valid business case for it) to limit the number of people with command line access. It’s a CPanel host so I can do pretty darn near everything I need to except command line backups. I’ll be working on a cron script for that (anyone?). They don’t do ASP or Java but I’m ok with that as the only Java web app that I still use would never run on shared box hosting anyways due to it’s high memory requirements.

Perhaps actively monitoring bash history files would quickly identify snoopers. I’m sure someone more experienced than I could write an elegant grep command to highlight a few key identifiers.

-M