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looking into hosting sites (for a play framework application) i have noticed 2 options VPS & Dedicated JVM Java Hosting. will i be able to achieve same result using both options eventually or is one more limited ?

mikera
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james
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2 Answers2

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Borderline question. In fact, both strategies have advantages and inconvegnients. But for Playframework, you must be thinking about :

  • Playapps
  • Heroku
  • Jelastic

for the JVM Hosting. Just take into account the fact, Play is supposed to be served through it's embedded Jetty for better performance. When deploying to Jelastic, it will be deployed as a WAR. Performance issues might appear when using WARs instead of the out-of-the-box solution.

On the other side, a VPS must be configured can have security issues and all that. As I said, both have good and bad.

i.am.michiel
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  • another main difference for me is price JVM Hosting is much more expensive then VPS. i might be wrong but couldn't find any with reasonable price. as this is just for putting up a small blog like app i dont want to spend a fortune. – james Feb 17 '12 at 12:45
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    Heroku is actually free for small sites. 5MB database and one worker. – i.am.michiel Feb 17 '12 at 13:07
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    openshift is also an option: http://playlatam.wordpress.com/2012/02/09/play-framework-on-the-cloud-made-easy-openshift-module/ – Somatik Feb 17 '12 at 14:07
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    in fact openshift free offering is quite impressive, you get five apps, each with 500MB storage space, and you can choose java, php, ruby and perl. On the db side, you can have mysql, postgresql, mongodb, etc. Here's an openshift module for play: http://www.playframework.org/modules/openshift BTW, you can vote for openshift native support: https://www.redhat.com/openshift/community/content/native-support-for-play-framework-application – opensas Feb 18 '12 at 07:13
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There are a couple of things that should be cleared.

Play framework comes with netty web server (not jetty, which is the server used by heroku), and play developers advice users to deploy on that server for production, mainly in order not to waste resources (a servlet container comes with lots of stuff that is not needed) and to deploy on the same platform that you are developing.

There are no performance issues deploying your application as a war exploded folder on any servlet container, it's just that you might be wasting resources.

The only disadvantage is that you won't be able to take profit of asynchronous requests.

Now there are lots of options to deploy a play application: openshift, heroku, gae, cloudbees, jelastic, dotCloud, playapps... in fact any servlet container will do.

have a look at this question: Experiences on free and low-cost hosting for play framework applications?.

if you are looking for an unexpensive option, I would go with openshift.

Apart from that is like Zenklys said, on a VPS you are your own IT department...

Community
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opensas
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  • hm. Saying Play is wasting ressources when deployed as War is actually similar to saying there are going to be performance issues. When deplying as WAR, the servlet container creates an overhead. Meaning, you can treat less requests/second using the same hardware then when using the native play solution. ie. you have **performance issues when deploying as a war**. – i.am.michiel Feb 19 '12 at 16:42
  • ok Zenklys, I din't mean to argue about it, it's just that 'performance issues' sounded like there where some nasty bugs or something like that with play war deployment ;-) There's nothing wrong with war deployment, but play native solution IS more performant indeed... – opensas Feb 19 '12 at 16:54