Ingress that handles SSL. nginx, or caddy. Then stand up your app server behind that on the same VM. Database can be on the same or different VM.
I try to not use anything else if I can avoid it on a new project.
Ingress gives you the ability to load balance and is threaded and will scale with network transfer and cpu. Database should scale with a bump in VM specs as well, CPU and disk IOPS.
If you keep your app server stateless you can simply multiply it for the number of copies you need for your load.
Systemd can keep your app server running, it you docker it up and use that
No that's all fine, I mean physically, where would I put a server and stuff if we didn't have cloud providers? I'd need to pay an isp for an IP address and maybe port forward and stuff like that right? I don't get why I wouldn't just do what you mentioned on a five dollar digital ocean droplet or an ec2 instance or whatever, the cloud still seems orders of magnitude easier to get off the ground.
If you rent a cloud vps as an ingress you can run an overlay network and your actual hosted services can literally be anywhere. See nebula, netbird, etc. You can also ssh forward, but that doesn't scale well past a handful of services and is a bit fragile.
For new small systems I suggest you start with a cloud VPS. If traffic is low, cost of downtime is low, and system requirements are high then a cheap mini PC ($150) at the home or office can keep your bill microscopic. If your app server and database are small then you can just throw them on the VPS too.
I run light traffic stuff at home in a closet so it doesn't occupy more costly cloud RAM. Production ready saas offerings I'm trying to sell right now are all in the cloud. Hosting all my stuff in the cloud would cost me hundreds per month. My home SLA is fine for the extras. I don't need colocation at this time, but I have spoken with data centers to understand my upgrade path.
You can run a live backup server at a second location and have pretty good redundancy should the primary lose power or connectivity.
When system requirements elevate (SLA, security, etc) you probably want to move into a data center for better physical security, reliable power and network. Bigger VPS is fine if it is big enough. Can also do a colocation if you don't want to rent, and you contract directly with a data center. I wouldn't look at colocation until your actual hosting needs exceed at least $100/mo and you're ready for a year long commitment.
But to the point of the original question that started this thread - the takeaway is still that cloud services made development massively easier right? The answer to the original question seems to still be "Yes cloud providers did lead to big wins for customers" since none of these other suggestions are able to get away from needing a cloud service provider without making starting something intensely difficult. And you wouldn't be able to get a vps for 5 bucks for ingress without all the other cloud competition in the market.
> Cloud infra may be a comparable market, since computation is a big share of AI costs. Did consumers win big from competition between AWS, Azure, and GCP? Not sure. I see an uptick in write ups saying “We switched off cloud and reduced costs by 2/3rds.” Not a scientific sample but may leave the question open.
