HOSTING IS DEAD How to break free from servers, slash costs, and grow your Drupal website. 2014 Pantheon getpantheon.com 1
HOSTING IS DEAD How to break free from servers, slash costs, and grow your Drupal website. Table of Contents 1. Introduction 3 2. When Bad Things Happen To Good Websites 4-5 3. Traditional Hosting Solutions 6 7 4. The Pantheon Difference 8 10 5. Evaluating DIY Hosting 11 6. Budgeting for DIY Hosting vs. Pantheon 12 7. Pantheon in Action 13 14 2014 Pantheon getpantheon.com 2
Introduction Drupal Website Seeks ROI Hero. Most executives see their websites as marketing investments rather than administrative expenses. After investing tens of thousands of dollars on a Drupal website from the best developers they can find, and then purchasing a premium hosting package, site owners expect to begin generating a return on investment. They re shocked when the site slows to a crawl or crashes altogether. Even after a lengthy build process, it turns out they re missing the infrastructure to handle load spikes, fix bugs, and add features. That s because they bought hosting, a legacy service based on a static publishing model that s missing many mission critical capabilities needed to power a modern website. You chose Drupal to remain lean and agile. Shouldn t evolving your Drupal website feel the same way? This white paper details the infrastructure and management challenges unique to Drupal websites, and presents a new solution that allows you to build, launch, and run websites that scale with the click of a button without DIY servers or sysadmins. 2014 Pantheon getpantheon.com 3
The bad and the good When bad things happen to good websites You can spend thousands on traditional hosting and system administrators to head off common problems that take many new site owners by surprise. But then you ll never be the ROI hero for your Drupal website. Here s what to look out for: Top 5 Drupal Emergencies 1. The site crashes when social sharing brings a flood of traffic. Social sharing sites like Facebook, Twitter, and Reddit make it difficult to predict a viral traffic spike. Even a small website can find itself flooded with millions of visitors without any advertising. No one wants an error message to take up all their time in the spotlight. 2. Response times slow to a crawl. The live site is significantly slower live than it was when you developed and tested it. Now testing and debugging must take place in front of a live audience. 3. A robot breaches security The person tasked with updating security patches had other priorities, and couldn t stay on top of it. Or, the new developers you just brought in for a site refresh are constantly requesting SSH keys and passwords. You ve lost track of who had access to what in the past. Now a robot has hijacked or defaced the site. 4. The site never, ever changes. Updates are so time-consuming that no one makes them anymore. Version control is difficult. Everyone is afraid of crashing the site because there s no safe, reliable way to test and deploy changes. When updates go live, problems surface. Developers must do emergency surgery on the live site. You built this site to be a living, breathing face of your organization, changing over time as your service evolves. But people are so afraid of updates that it now remains static. 5. Data gets lost. Backups were maintained on site, and there s no easy way to recover data in a disaster. Historically, only companies with large budgets could deploy high-performance Drupal websites that could be quickly scaled and easily updated. That s because traditional hosting alone doesn t begin to address these emergencies. Additional services, servers and practices are needed. 2014 Pantheon getpantheon.com 4
The bad and the good Why do these problems occur to drupal sites? Challenge #1 Challenge #2 Challenge #3 Challenge #4 Four key challenges can keep a Drupal website from meeting traffic demands when it s powered by traditional hosting: Site updates are cumbersome and high-risk. Managing Drupal over the lifecycle of a website requires workflow tools not just production servers. Professional Drupal developers need to follow best practices like version control, staging servers, deployment workflows, and automated backups. Without the proper tooling in place, the development process takes more time and introduces significant risk. Even simple bug fixes and updates are cumbersome and can take down the live site. Production environments require Drupal-specific configuration. Running a speedy and scalable Drupal site requires a highly tuned production environment. This means setting up more than a traditional LAMP stack. Next generation tools like Redis and Varnish are essential, and every layer requires its own specific configuration. Hosting doesn t provide this kind of expertise and management, and high-performance Drupal consultants come at a premium. Server configurations in production environments don t always mirror those in development or test. When people develop on their local machines, they don t typically have every layer of the stack. New problems emerge when the site goes live. The site was well designed, but configurations weren t correct in the production environment. The site crashes. Scaling is manual and complex. If you need to drive a lot of unique pages, you re bound to outgrow your server. What next? You might upsize a VPS, but that s risky, messy, and guaranteed to introduce downtime. You could move from a VPS to a cluster, but now you ve introduced a major architectural change: a remote database and a networked file system. You could manually add nodes within your cluster, but each addition is another opportunity for something to go wrong. Migrating a site from one architecture to the other requires taking down the site, porting over the data, flipping DNS switches, and hoping for the best. What happens the next time you need to scale? It s a risky, manual, complex process. 2014 Pantheon getpantheon.com 5
Pantheon in Action What developers are saying: Evaluating DIY Hosting The right questions can help you and your team cut through the noise. Here are the 7 questions to my project management life was in shambles before I found Pantheon. Their entire setup puts 1. How will we manage Version: control gives you a safe and reliable your team in a position to succeed during development. From Git version control, to staging for client testing and sign off, to going live for your site s large audience. Spinning up smaller websites is also a snap. I ve been the e-genius to groups who needed a quick, inexpensive solution for their online goals. In fact, if you re using anything besides Pantheon, you re wasting time. - Andrew Ward CCO and Co-Founder, Kalamuna 2014 Pantheon getpantheon.com 6
Traditional TRADITIONAL HOSTING SOLUTIONS There s no shortage of hosting options for Drupal. But when site owners evaluate their options, uncertainty prevails. Drupal is complex. An organization must evaluate not only the hosting solution itself, but also its fit with their own Drupal website. How do you make an informed decision when you don t know what you don t know? Here s what many site owners wish they had known about traditional hosting solutions before launching their site. In-House, Self-Hosting Someone on your IT team must carry the pager and respond to incidents 24/7. This person needs to learn not only Drupal, but also the technologies necessary to support Drupal, including git, Varnish, Redis, and deployment best practices. Not to mention managing hardware, operating system and even power to the servers. Every time a security breach is found, an update must be installed immediately. In addition, high availability is expensive. Redundant servers often sit unused. Clusters cost thousands of dollars monthly. This is beyond the budget for most Drupal sites. Rackspace, Softlayer, Dedicated Hosting Large hosting providers can provide dedicated physical servers with a few levels of management support. Site owners who opt for the high service level can receive operating system maintenance. But what if your problem isn t related to the server itself? You re on your own. Development tools, deployment workflows, performance optimization, help with scaling these aren t available. 2014 Pantheon getpantheon.com 7
Traditional Virtual Private Servers /Amazon EC2 Virtual private servers and cloud instances are affordable and increasingly reliable, but not really scalable. Moving to a bigger instance requires manual migration or upsizing and can be risky and/or require hours of downtime. While they afford some flexibility and cost savings for less resource-heavy uses like dev environments, they carry all the maintenance responsibilities of dedicated servers, and in many cases are less reliable due to cloud outages and noisy neighbors. Managed Cloud Hosting Dedicated managed cloud hosting is available from some specialized vendors. This provides redundancy and often includes some workflow tools for deployment, but you still scale by adding machines to a cluster, and frequently the configuration for development is not precisely the same as live. Because these services require on building bespoke clusters for every client, they are cost-intensive, and the full architecture can t affordably be mirrored in dev and test. Many projects spend 6 to 12 months in development. The costs add up. In addition, developers lose time because these managed-cloud hosting solutions don t have the latest best-practice developer tools. Scaling remains manual and expensive. Enterprise support is available, but at an additional, premium cost. Shared Hosting Shared hosting is cheap and limits your responsibility, but it s too unreliable and underpowered for professional use cases. These servers also lack developer tools, and aren t configured for performance. Hire a Drupal DevOps Professional to Manage Hosting For You A qualified sysadmin with Drupal expertise is one of the most difficult roles to find and fill in the tech industry. Moreover, the cost is prohibitive for most companies. 2014 Pantheon getpantheon.com 8
Evaluating DIY Hosting The right questions can help you and your team cut through the noise. Here are the 7 questions to 1. How will we manage Version: control gives you a safe and reliable as a site owner, you face a choice. Sink more time and budget into putting band-aids on the hosting problem? Or, break free of servers and move to a modern way of building, launching, and running Drupal sites? 2014 Pantheon getpantheon.com 9
The Difference THE PANTHEON DIFFERENCE Pantheon is the Professional Website Platform Your website itself is unique, but the infrastructure behind it probably isn t. Pantheon eases the burden for managing a high-performance website, without incurring additional costs in system administration. Your Focus Resolved Amazing Website Amazing Website Amazing Website Scaling Scaling Scaling Dev Tools and Workflow Dev Tools and Workflow Dev Tools and Workflow Operating System Operating System Operating System Hardware Hardware Hardware DIY Hosting Managed Hosting 2014 Pantheon getpantheon.com 10
Get More Get more from your developers with less using Drupal power tools and built-in workflows Start new projects on the fly, without waiting for IT or procurement. Eliminate sysadmin bottlenecks so you can take your site from the kickoff meeting to up and running, faster than ever before. Eliminate costly mistakes or it works on my machine bugs by following the best-practice Drupal workflow for site development. Keep your team on the same page, avoiding lost work and wasted effort, thanks to modern version control. Use best-in-class tools to develop your site and maximize its performance: Drush, Varnish. and Redis. Use the built-in workflow to invite colleagues, themers, managers, stakeholders. It takes just seconds to give a developer site access through the Dashboard. Get real-time updates on active work through the Dashboard, and keep track of the entire project history. Remove team members and control access to the project. Cut new developer ramp-up by standardizing your toolset on Pantheon. Go live with one-click deployment Push new code with one click in the dashboard. No architectural changes or surprises. Save 10x time and effort by deploying your site with the same platform you used to build it. Scale in seconds through the Pantheon grid, without making risky architectural changes Leave your VPSs, traditional managed servers, cloud instances, and Rube-Goldberg clusters behind. 2014 Pantheon getpantheon.com 11
Get More Stay safe with hands-free security and control. Let Pantheon handle your system administration. No need to secure or harden your Linux systems, control SSH access, maintain firewalls, or deal with kernel versions. Pantheon makes millions of daily monitoring checks at sub-minute resolution. Get automated backups done for you. You determine your backup schedule and the retention periods. Call on Pantheon s ops team 24/7/365. With decades of collective experience building some of the largest and highest-traffic sites in the world, the Pantheon team carries the pager for the infrastructure, so site owners can focus on what s important. 24/7 emergency uptime support and site monitoring SLA guaranteed uptime Unlimited support tickets, with two hour response time during business hours 2h Managed scaling and traffic planning Enterprise site launch service Single point of contact until go - live Importing site onto Pantheon Detailed site audit Platform training Load testing Performance tuning Freshen up with one- click Drupal core updates. New release of Drupal? No problem. One click and you re current. Developers can claim their free Pantheon account at www.getpantheon.com Invite your development team in seconds. Pantheon s power tools and best-practice workflows are free to use for as long as your site is in development. After you launch, monthly pricing starts at $25. 2014 Pantheon getpantheon.com 12
Pantheon in Action Evaluating DIY Hosting The right questions can help you and your team cut through the noise. Here are the 7 questions to What developers are saying: Our development shop used to spend a lot of resources on operational things, but the big one was monitoring the performance of the site. It wasn t our core skillset. It was hard to stay on schedule, because a server emergency could interrupt us at any time. You can t tell your client to wait. You drop what you re doing and you deal with it right there. 1. How will we manage Version: control gives you a safe and reliable - Matt Johnson Managing Partner and Co-Founder, Alley Interactive 2014 Pantheon getpantheon.com 13
Questions to Answer EVALUATING DIY HOSTING The right questions can help you and your team cut through the noise. Here are 7 questions to ask as you evaluate DIY hosting options: 1. How will we manage version control? Why it matters: Version control gives you a safe and reliable way to make and reverse changes to your website while it s in development. Alternatively, you could edit your site directly via SFTP, but you risk overwriting and losing valuable work. If several developers are collaborating on one site, version control is a necessity. 2. How will we manage development and test environments, as well as live site deployments? Why it matters: Separate development and testing environments provide a safe place to develop and try new site features without interfering with your live site. The alternative is to make changes directly to your live site, which usually leads to bugs and downtime. A safe deployment workflow is also key, ensuring painless site launches and feature releases. 3. Who will do the initial server configuration setting up the OS, web server, in memory catching, edge caching, and Apache Solr? Why it matters: People get upset when pages load slowly or your site goes down under load. Hosting environments need to be set up properly, and caching systems configured to withstand traffic spikes. 4. Who will mange the server software, including security updates? Why it matters: The systems running your Drupal site need to be maintained to keep up with security releases and the latest software versions. Failure to do this leads to hacked websites and exposed customer data. Some time should also be budgeted for ongoing server tuning, as your site s features and traffic levels will vary over time. 5. Who is the on-call escalation point for the server software? Why it matters: What happens when your site goes down at 3am? If rebooting the server doesn t fix it, who does? Someone on your IT team needs to carry the pager and respond to incidents 24/7. This person needs to learn not only Drupal, but also the technologies necessary to support Drupal, including git, Varnish, Redis, and deployment best practices. Every time a security breach is found, an update must be installed immediately. 6. What s our plan to scale resources if we need to, and do we have high availability in place to ensure uptime? Why it matters: You never know when a viral traffic spike will occur, flooding your site with millions of visitors. When that happens, one server won t be enough. Having a plan to scale up when you need to keeps your time in the spotlight from being wasted on an error message. 7. How can backups be automated and stored offiste? Why it matters: Hard drives on servers can fail, causing catastrophic data loss. Your data must be automatically backed up offsite every day. Play the odds and run the risk of permanent data loss. 2014 Pantheon getpantheon.com 14
Pantheon in Action What developers are saying: Evaluating DIY Hosting The right questions can help you and your team cut through the noise. Here are the 7 questions to I switched all my clients over to Pantheon immediately. Pantheon lets us scale as a firm. I don t have to spend all my time being a sysadmin. I can support clients and provide infinitely better customer service. We re much more responsive in terms of building new things and addressing bugs. We re allowed to be pure developers. I don t get many 4am fire drills anymore. 1. How will we manage Version: control gives you a safe and reliable - Kelly Bell Founder, Gotham City Drupal 2014 Pantheon getpantheon.com 15
Budgeting BUDGETING FOR DIY HOSTING Vs. PANTHEON Web infrastructure presents a number of hidden costs. Some costs are triggered by your hosting provider, while others come from vendors or your own internal management. Below is a sample budgeting guide for a complete Drupal infrastructure set-up, versus the costs of a site running on the Pantheon Platform. Item Hours (Minimum estimates for a typical website. Complex sites require additional hours.) Cost with Traditional Hosting (Based on $125 hourly rate for Drupal system administrator) Cost with Pantheon Dev server setup 5 hours $625 Cost Included Version Control 5 hours $625 Cost Included Production server setup 10 hours $1,250 Cost Included Safe Deployment Workflow Testing server setup and continuous integration 20 hours $2,500 Cost Included 20 hours $2,500 Cost Included Performance tuning 20 hours $2,500 Cost Included Cache servers 20 hours $2,500 Cost Included High Availability 100 hours $12,500 Cost Included Total 200 hours $25,500 FREE One-Time Savings: $25,000 or more Ongoing Monthly Cost to Manage DIY Hosting for a Typical Website Item Hours (Minimum estimates for a typical website. Complex sites require additional hours.) Cost with Traditional Hosting (Based on $125 hourly rate for Drupal system administrator) Cost with Pantheon Ongoing Server and Software maintenance Development Infrastructure Total Monthly not including monthly production hosting cost 5-10 $625 - $1,250 Cost Included $500 - $2,000 Cost Included $1,125 - $3,250 FREE 2014 Pantheon getpantheon.com 16
Conclusion PANTHEON IN ACTION Pantheon s professional website platform runs tens of thousands of sites serving over 100 million requests daily for customers like Kendall Jackson Wines, NBC Universal, and UC Berkeley. They re always ready to scale even in a surge. Request a cost savings analysis and see how Pantheon can turn you into an ROI hero for your Drupal website. Ready to scale to large audiences in a single bound. Right from day one. Claim your free account and invite your developers to speed their development workflow at www.getpantheon.com. 2014 Pantheon getpantheon.com 17