> It's very easy after a somewhat involved gearing up phase > (deciding what goes in the image and so forth).
I don't see how that's any more complicated than setting up a single dedicated server without virtualization. > After that you've definitely got more costs with the VPS - > licensing issues (which you've already mentioned) for OSs > and support software and configuration issues. I agree that software costs may be higher, but in general, software costs are a small amount of the total cost of a deployed application. In the web hosting world, of course, this may be less true than elsewhere, I suppose. > A simple example is that with multiple isolated instances > of CFMX running I can apply an updater once, OS service > packs once and so forth - with a VPS you'd have to do this > for each VM. > > An isolated instance of CFMX is much less likely to cross- > over and cause problems in other accounts than a shared > instance and a VPS is even less likely. But the maintenance > cost for the VPS is higher simply because, in effect, you're > managing multiple "machines". There are plenty of tools in both the Windows and Unix world for maintaining multiple machines. With those tools, it's not significantly more difficult to maintain 100 machines than it is to maintain 10. In addition, from a security standpoint, it's got to be significantly easier to deploy virtual machines; you don't have to worry about untrusted users, and everyone can have administrative rights in their own VM. On the flip side, if a "machine" breaks down, you can redeploy it in a few minutes from your source image, without causing downtime to anyone else; the individual pieces of software within the image can often be simpler (in the case of CF, you could use the "regular" versions of CFMX instead of CFMX for J2EE), and if an update would break your code, you can more easily forego it. Dave Watts, CTO, Fig Leaf Software http://www.figleaf.com/ voice: (202) 797-5496 fax: (202) 797-5444 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~| Archives: http://www.houseoffusion.com/cf_lists/index.cfm?forumid=4 Subscription: http://www.houseoffusion.com/cf_lists/index.cfm?method=subscribe&forumid=4 FAQ: http://www.thenetprofits.co.uk/coldfusion/faq Signup for the Fusion Authority news alert and keep up with the latest news in ColdFusion and related topics. http://www.fusionauthority.com/signup.cfm Unsubscribe: http://www.houseoffusion.com/cf_lists/unsubscribe.cfm?user=89.70.4
