What is currently the best hosting solution for an app that is targeted at european customers? I mean app and db hosting.
I would go for a Europe-based dedicated server, but I don’t have the human resources to set it up and maintain.
Does anyone from Europe host on galaxy and us-located db server? Is the speed ok for clients from europe?
If speed and latency is important I’d advise using a cloud provider with geographically close datacenters. Amazon for example has locations in Ireland and Germany. For database hosting, most go with compose or mlab, both are running on cloud providers. They have availability in Ireland for example, so you could run you app and db in the same datacenter in that case. (A dedicated server is overkill for most meteor apps, but it depends of course)
Generally the speed difference isn’t that important for meteor apps and end-users won’t experience a big delay when your app runs in the US, but if you need low-latency and extremely fast load speed the only option is close geographical proximity.
I’ve done experiments with latency on various geolocations and the largest latency between two servers I found was between the US and China, which was around 300-400ms on average (with some peaks now and then). The latency between the US and Europe should not pass 250ms, so that’s hardly noticeable for normal use-cases.
If you want a hands off solution then give Azure a try. I’ve been very happy with them. They have EU servers and you can choose to go with VMs (scale vertically with a slider) or “elastic apps” (scale any way with sliders). Either way you can use MLab with EU servers too.
Here’s a link to make Azure apps with Meteor https://github.com/christopheranderson/azure-demeteorizer/blob/master/readme.md
If I put app on galaxy (us-east being the only current option) - it is better to put db in us-east as well - am I correct?
That would be ideal yes. Servers within the same datacenter communicate extremely fast with each other, so having the db and app server together is the best situation.
Digital Ocean has European servers.
How much do you spend on Azure?
They have so many features - I don’t even know what I need… I guess a DocumentDB and a Cloud Services instance. Is that correct?
It totals to $40/month for the most basic setup.
OVH.
By far the cheapest and the fastest. I’ve deployed 6 Meteor apps on their 8€/mo VPS and one on there 3€/mo. They are Docker compliant. Each time I deploy there, I create at least 3 Docker containers: one NGinx, one Meteor and one Mongo. A walk in the park. The have DDOS protection, 24/7 support, off-the shelf backup solutions, monitoring, …
They own the first place in Europe for hosting. And frankly, they deserve it.
I have no direct experience with them but according to a MeteorNL Meetup presentation I attended, Scalingo is European and well suited for Meteor.
I’ve used Scalingo for a french social network. Nice support for Meteor and Mongo. The only weak point was the lack of public IP which forces you to be extra careful on the DNS capabilities.
My 2 cents, if it wasn’t a customer requirement to use Scalingo, I would have chosen OVH. You get much much more for 10% of the price.
I’m planning on testing this setup as well.
It doubles the latency, but since the amount of data is pretty lightweight, I think it’s ok.
Galaxy has one very nice upside that the others doesn’t - they state how much CPU you’ll get access to.
I like that, and that you’re supporting Meteor by using Galaxy.
What do you mean? …
I don’t have too much traffic so I pay $15 for a VM and host Mongo on the same machine. My upgrade plan is to get another VM, put Meteor there, and leave Mongo where it is and scale that one up. I can easily add as many VMs as I want for Meteor and upgrade the Mongo VM a lot. I don’t see myself outgrowing that, but if I do… in the words of DHH: When people are paying for your service SCALING PROBLEMS RULE!!!
Galaxy states both CPU (in ECU, but still) and RAM when selecting container type.
Heroku doesn’t state how much processing power your dyno (as they are called) will get. The same goes for Modulus.
NodeChef now provides meteor app and mongodb hosting in European datacenter. Some details in this blog post: https://www.nodechef.com/blog/post/12/introducing-meteor-and-parse-server-hosting-in-europe