>I'm thinking the ability to install a test image is technically a big ask, so I agree scripting looks like the way to go.

No - you can bring your own image, but I'm not quite sure if you can just run a local VM and backup the VHD and then use that or not. But there's to be some sort of standard in order to be reusable. I know you can backup and download your images from Vultr, but whether you can use that somewhere else I don't know.

+++ Rick ---

>Thanks again. MSRP for a Standard server license is about US$900, so $16/month is pretty reasonable (I imagine Vultr is leveraging unlimited guest VM licensing in the Datacenter edition).
>
>I'm thinking the ability to install a test image is technically a big ask, so I agree scripting looks like the way to go.
>
>>I'm running on the $40/month plan and the Windows license is $16 for a total of $56. The Win license fee is fixed so if you go to the next plan up it's still $16. It's pretty much the same for all providers - some just price that in. That's the Windows Premium. Even so it's still a great deal compared to Azure or AWS IMHO.
>>
>>If you bring your own image I think you can run your own pre-licensed instance of Windows so if you have a server license you can probably use that instead. But frankly even over a 5 year lifetime of the server it's probably cheaper to just pay to $16/mth than buy a license.
>>
>>I think Vultr lets you bring your own image, but it's a little more complicated to set that up. Personally I have a setup script that uses Powershell and Chocolatey to set up 90% of my machine in a half an hour or so.There are few things like SQL Server and MongoDb I install manually but everything else is a script.
>>
>>The problem with an image is that most providers throw hardware specific stuff and management software on there and so you'll waste some space.
>>
>>+++ Rick ---
>>
>>>Wow - thanks for the real-world experiences!
>>>
>>>Vultr definitely looks like a contender. On their site they're currently offering 160 GB SSD storage (up from 100 GB) / 4 vCPU / 8 GB RAM / 4 TB bandwidth for US$40 / month. It looks like getting a Windows server license/template costs extra (couldn't find out how much more). Also I imagine a static IPv4 address is extra. Do you have either of those?
>>>
>>>RDS is our main use case, so thanks for your comments about latency.
>>>
>>>Re testing: If I'm going to test multiple providers it would be nice to be able to set up on one, take some kind of image backup, then deploy on others. Do you know of any way to do something like that? Maybe uploading a .VHDX or some such?
>>>
>>>>I went through this about a half a year ago and I checked out a bunch of cloud services. I was in the same boat as you with a server 2008 R2 machine. The machine's perf was fine for what I needed but at 6 years old there started to be a few hardware issues (one of the backup drives failed and occasionally the box just wouldn't come back from a restart).
>>>>
>>>>I started checking around for hosting a VM. I looked at Azure and AWS and while you can certainly get the performance you want, I found to match the 'real' performance even of my 6 year old machine was going to cost me hundreds of dollars a month. The specs that what I thought matched my original machine specs when I set them up were insanely slow to the point if I remoted in that I often ended up waiting 1 second between the screen updating. I got much better performance with more expensive plans. Basically I had to go with 8 processors and premium disks to get anywhere near my old performance. AWS was better than Azure but both were going to cost me well over $200 a month (more than double what I was paying for my co-located box) to match my old performance.
>>>>
>>>>I looked at a number of other providers but at the end I landed on Vultr based on recommendations. For Windows hosting it's by far the best performing platform I could find. I matched the specs of my old machine for about $50/month (4 core, 8gb RAM, 100gb SSD). I was planning on using the $100 plan but started with the lower plan with the intent to update to a higher plan. You can upgrade to a higher/bigger plan, but not back down so I started with the lower one for installation and set up. I expected to do some experimentation but as soon as the box came up I knew that I found my hosting service.
>>>> I never ended up needing the higher end plan. The $50 plan is fine and perf on this box is barely hitting 50% during peaks. I run 20+ application Web Sites (a few busy ones) on this box plus some internal services that are always on and the box is barely stressed most of the time. I may still need to switch to the $100 plan because of disk space because 100gb is a bit tight as I do local backups that I push up to Azure Storage at night. I've been extremely happy. No outages, no noisy neighbor problems, it's been good for 8 months now. I know a number of Web Connection users who are also on Vultr who have the same experience - no hassles, just you get the basics but exactly what you'd expect. There are no crazy upsells, it's a flat monthly bill (unless you go over the bandwidth, but I don't even get close even with my blog that has a lot of traffic including a lot of media content).
>>>>
>>>>If you want to check them out here's a $50 credit link you can use:
>>>>
>>>>$50 Vultr Credit
>>>>
>>>>Takes about 10-15 minutes for the VM be ready (similar to Azure/AWS).
>>>>
>>>>The difference in bang for the buck between Azure/AWS and Vultr is crazy. I believe the reason the big services are slower is that they go through so many additional management layers that it takes a lot more hardware to get the same perf as the raw VMs that Vultr uses. Also Vultr is relatively new company and their hardware is current. I found that on Azure the lower plans especially tend to be on old hardware. All this testing I did was about a year ago so things might have changed - I know Microsoft has been lambasted about perf of their lower end skus for all services and especially for VMs so things might have changed.
>>>>
>>>>There are advantages for using Azure and AWS as you get a whole host of support services that you can hook into. You can host database services next to your VM and get high perf data access from the cloud, and take advantage of other services. Add disks, add authentication services, Azure AD etc. All this is nice but in my experience it's expensive. For a corporate site that's probably fine, but for a smaller operation the costs of Azure and AWS are quite unpredictable too. It's hard to know what you're going to be paying because you get charged ontop of the base VM (bandwidth mainly).
>>>>
>>>>Vultr is just a VM service - so you get your box and you're on your own. There's nothing much in the way of extra services - the only thing you can do is spin up other VMs or a data drive box, but that's about it.
>>>>
>>>>In the end you probably need to try out the various services no matter what as the set ups change. It doesn't take long to set up VMs and most services have free trials so it's not a huge time investment. But my recommendation would be start at Vultr to see if that fits your needs - it'll be a better deal for sure unless you need additional services of the big boys.
>>>>
>>>>Whatever you do have a plan for checking performance - I tested my VMs by running local stress tests against one of my Web sites and then ran WebSurge against it to see how perf is. That means installing some stuff on the box which takes some time, but it's well worth it to have some sort of benchmark that you can compare on various machines. Also check RDP access closely and make sure that's smooth.
>>>>
>>>>Hope that helps,
>>>>
>>>>+++ Rick ---
>>>>
>>>>>Can anyone share their experiences running virtual servers on Azure or AWS (with VFP apps or otherwise)?
>>>>>
>>>>>We have a physical 2008 R2 server which will "expire" January 14, 2020. This supports up to 5 simultaneous users via Remote Desktop/Remote Desktop Gateway. Most users already access it remotely through the public Internet.
>>>>>
>>>>>Everyone uses a VFP app with a SQL Server backend. Office 365 ProPlus is also installed, as the app requires Office automation. Usage is very "bursty", overall utilization is very low.
>>>>>
>>>>>The existing server is strong enough to give a good experience for the users. Its specs:
>>>>>
>>>>>- Intel Xeon E3-1240 (4C8T)
>>>>>- 8 GB RAM
>>>>>- 256 GB hard disk (2x magnetic drives in RAID1)
>>>>>
>>>>>We know we can replace the existing physical server with a new equivalent and get basically the same performance. However, there appear to be some technical advantages to using a virtual server on Azure or AWS instead. Not having done this before on those clouds I'm looking for feedback:
>>>>>
>>>>>- Are people generally seeing better results with Azure or with AWS?
>>>>>
>>>>>- Suggested virtual machine types. From some basic research I understand Azure, for one, offers a "bursty" instance
>>>>>
>>>>>- How to estimate the cost of running the VM - or real-world examples, if you're willing to share details
>>>>>
>>>>>- Is it recommended to use a virtual firewall appliance/VPN server? At this time we have a physical SonicWall but really it's just blocking everything incoming except port 443 for HTTPS/RDG
>>>>>
>>>>>- Strategies for backing up data from the cloud VM to local physical storage
>>>>>
>>>>>- Any "gotchas" or other things to know which might not be obvious?
>>>>>
>>>>>Any feedback or experiences appreciated.