Windows Server hosting

Cheetah Designs · 20 Mar 2014 at 22:12

Currently I have a VPS which I used to host my website. I currently pay £5/month and it runs CentOS...

I have no idea on the specs, but I guess for the price, it can't be great.

I am looking to run Windows Server 2012 so I can build .NET applications and guess I will need to upgrade my provider/package.

Anyone got any suggestions on what I should be looking for?

(I already have a licence for Windows Server)

xbenjiiman · 21 Mar 2014 at 09:44

Be weary about hosters that provide Windows packages, since most (almost all) won't let you use your own key and charge ridiculous prices for a Windows license. For a decent Windows VPS, don't expect to pay less than £30 a month.

What kind of applications will it be running? If it's I/O or CPU intensive, then a VPS may not be your best bet.

A single core and about 1GB RAM with Windows Server 2012 will probably be around £20-30 a month.

Cheetah Designs · 21 Mar 2014 at 13:27

Essentially its to run teamcity as a build server for .NET applications. The building/testing would max out pretty much any CPU I'd expect, so its CPU bound tasks that I am doing.

xbenjiiman · 21 Mar 2014 at 13:55

I've never worked with anything .NET so I'm not too sure on the requirements. Do you have a budget?

Shad · 21 Mar 2014 at 18:01

Have you looked at Azure? Pricing is pretty good if you use the extra-small VMs, since you pay for CPU as it's used rather than up-front (and reserved).

On Holiday · 21 Mar 2014 at 18:04

xbenjiiman · 21 Mar 2014 at 21:01

YarwoodUK said:
A decentVPS costs £20-30 ? That's a bit off the mark..

You can get a dedi for £39 p/month.

That's with a Windows license.

lokkers · 23 Mar 2014 at 10:44

Shad said:
Have you looked at Azure? Pricing is pretty good if you use the extra-small VMs, since you pay for CPU as it's used rather than up-front (and reserved).

You also don't pay if the machine is off, and get charged by the minute. Might be a good solution for a build server that you only use during business hours, as you can script the on/off remotely using Powershell.

davetherave2 · 24 Mar 2014 at 08:09

Cheetah Designs said:
Essentially its to run teamcity as a build server for .NET applications. The building/testing would max out pretty much any CPU I'd expect, so its CPU bound tasks that I am doing.

I personally think Azure is a great platform I use it for all my website and database needs (I have an MSDN and Bizspark account).

In addition to this have you also looked into using http://www.visualstudio.com/ this has credits for automated building and testing built in. It is free to use with up to 5 developers on unlimited projects and my company is looking at potentially moving all of our onsite TFS projects over to this and remove our on-site TFS implementation as a few automated builds cripples access to the server.