[Catalyst] Web hosting?

[Richard Jones]

Matt Rosin wrote:
> I started this same thread a few months ago and many people were kind
> enough to reply.
>
> It seemed a decision between linode.com and slicehost.com.
>
>   

I've been running static and mod_perl enabled sites on both of those for 
a while. I rate both host providers highly. I haven't run Catalyst 
applications on either yet, but have done development work on Catalyst 
applications (using the Catalyst http engine) on both. Obviously if you 
have root access you can install whatever you need.

One thing I have noticed with both is that there are periods of degraded 
performance on mod_perl applications. I set a process running which uses 
HTTP::Request to generate a simple search using my application every 15 
minutes over 24 hours, running under both mod_cgi and mod_perl, and the 
script execution time was measured using Time::HiRes. I found mod_cgi 
response time was relatively constant throughout the day - around 180ms, 
but the mod_perl timings varied between 16ms and over 3000ms. 

This also reflected my experience using the site for real - at times it 
felt very unresponsive under mod_perl, and noticeably slower than when 
run under cgi. I ran the same apps at home on my own (very modest spec) 
server and they were way faster under mod_perl, but then nothing else 
was running there. There is probably a latency issue as well, as I 
access from the UK, but the poor mod_perl performance was put down to 
variations in disk I/O with other shared processes running on the VPS.

But overall I have been happy with both Linode and Slicehost, both have 
good tech support and helpful communities, and the favourable 
pound/dollar exchange rate also helps. But I can't (yet) say how 
successful hosting a Catalyst app. would be, given my experience with 
mod_perl apps I suspect there will be some issues. I've recently 
upgraded the RAM allocation from 256 to 450MB on the Linode, and reduced 
the contention ratio, so that might make a difference. Time will tell.