Ok, Here after a while. I want to use this thread as a log + bounce ideas.
Brief Intro
Am a freelance web dev. Overall been at this for over a decade. Have built maybe over a hundred client sites (haven't kept count!
). We are three co-founders. Each has a different area of expertise which complements for this new venture. I am the developer, Partner 2 (Let's call him P2) is a marketer plus product designer. P3 is a Finance guy with experience in buying and selling businesses. We are all in our mid 30s.
This first post is to essentially think out my SaaS infra plans. I am building a SaaS for the first time. Maybe you could call a few of my client sites as SaaS but this will my first own SaaS venture. I am hoping someone with more know how than me will add some interesting posts to this thread.
My experience is as a PHP web developer. So I am going with my strength and starting with a LAMP stack.
Task 1 is to select where I will host. The goal is that the host I select and infrastructure I design should work till around 10,000 users of the system. Yeah haven't written a single line of code and not a single user but one has to plan right!
A word on the SaaS is that this won't be a real time service kind of thing but more of a "back-end service" for a specific business type. So I don't really need high end real time processing. What I am looking to get out of the host is
1> Web Application server - Will probably be running NGINX, again due to existing expertise, though I may use OpenLitespeed. Not fully decided yet. Language is PHP.
2> Load Balancer - I have never implemented one but I will check them out. May just go with using separate subdomains for different things and not bother. Any recommendations?
3> Database server - MariaDB of course. Going to keep the Web server and DB server instances separate. Also am going to do a Master - Slave replication with writes on master and reads from Slave. Again this is the end goal and I might start just with a master server and implement slave replication after launch and when we reach a certain number of users.
4> CDN - Cloudflare's free CDN should work for now.
5> Backups and failsafe.
6> Long term data storage - The service I am building has payments data for our users which will need to be stored forever.
Places I have in mind are
AWS - I have used it for multiple clients but have never liked it. It's always a pain to get anything done in AWS. Everyone though mentions them as a solution which scales. I get it but I don't like them. Will probably not choose them
Google Cloud - I like them a little more than AWS or maybe I should say I dislike them less... Maybe there is a better option.
Digital Ocean - I used to manage a huge client social network on DO before the owner sold the business. They are easier to work with. Leaning towards them at the moment.
Linode - Maybe...
Anything that should be in my radar?
Since we are starting, we don't have a lot of money. And goal is to start to code as fast as possible with a infra design which will scale till at least 10K users without very high costs. Ideally less than $100 / month.
Brief Intro
Am a freelance web dev. Overall been at this for over a decade. Have built maybe over a hundred client sites (haven't kept count!
). We are three co-founders. Each has a different area of expertise which complements for this new venture. I am the developer, Partner 2 (Let's call him P2) is a marketer plus product designer. P3 is a Finance guy with experience in buying and selling businesses. We are all in our mid 30s.This first post is to essentially think out my SaaS infra plans. I am building a SaaS for the first time. Maybe you could call a few of my client sites as SaaS but this will my first own SaaS venture. I am hoping someone with more know how than me will add some interesting posts to this thread.
My experience is as a PHP web developer. So I am going with my strength and starting with a LAMP stack.
Task 1 is to select where I will host. The goal is that the host I select and infrastructure I design should work till around 10,000 users of the system. Yeah haven't written a single line of code and not a single user but one has to plan right!
A word on the SaaS is that this won't be a real time service kind of thing but more of a "back-end service" for a specific business type. So I don't really need high end real time processing. What I am looking to get out of the host is
1> Web Application server - Will probably be running NGINX, again due to existing expertise, though I may use OpenLitespeed. Not fully decided yet. Language is PHP.
2> Load Balancer - I have never implemented one but I will check them out. May just go with using separate subdomains for different things and not bother. Any recommendations?
3> Database server - MariaDB of course. Going to keep the Web server and DB server instances separate. Also am going to do a Master - Slave replication with writes on master and reads from Slave. Again this is the end goal and I might start just with a master server and implement slave replication after launch and when we reach a certain number of users.
4> CDN - Cloudflare's free CDN should work for now.
5> Backups and failsafe.
6> Long term data storage - The service I am building has payments data for our users which will need to be stored forever.
Places I have in mind are
AWS - I have used it for multiple clients but have never liked it. It's always a pain to get anything done in AWS. Everyone though mentions them as a solution which scales. I get it but I don't like them. Will probably not choose them
Google Cloud - I like them a little more than AWS or maybe I should say I dislike them less...
Maybe there is a better option.Digital Ocean - I used to manage a huge client social network on DO before the owner sold the business. They are easier to work with. Leaning towards them at the moment.
Linode - Maybe...
Anything that should be in my radar?
Since we are starting, we don't have a lot of money. And goal is to start to code as fast as possible with a infra design which will scale till at least 10K users without very high costs. Ideally less than $100 / month.
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