In this tutorial, you will learn about a new type of cloud hosting that is available to host your Umbraco powered CMS, Umbraco Cloud. If you want to launch a new Umbraco website and you are unsure where to host it, this article is for you. Umbraco Cloud is a new hosting service offered by Umbraco. The price is fairly reasonable and it will take a lot of headaches that come with managing your own web hosting away. If this sounds good, then read on to learn more 🤘.
Why Cloud Hosting?
Cloud hosting is gaining more and more momentum. Umbraco Cloud (formally known as Uaas (Umbraco As A Service)) is a managed service provided by Umbraco to host your website in the cloud. This term of 'managed service' seems to confuse a lot of people, so let me quickly explain what it means.
Traditionally, to host a Umbraco website you would require a server to host the website from. Your site might be the only website on that server (dedicated), or, your website might run alongside several other websites (shared). Microsoft based servers can be expensive to run, especially as most dedicated web servers resources sit idly around doing nothing the majority of the time. The servers will not have to work until people use the website. With traditional hosting, you usually end up paying for a server that you never fully utilize. Most production servers usually consume a maximum of 25% of the server resources at peak times! This means a company is paying an extra 75% every month on nothing!
The other side of the coin is when your webserver becomes overwhelmed. Maybe you have a once a year sale that drives lots of traffic. If the burst traffic exceeds your capabilities, your website will stop working. The only way to deal with burst traffic is to have enough bandwidth to deal with busy periods. Adding an additional server into the mix to share the load between multiple servers, takes time! Often the time it takes to set up the server will be much longer than the burst. Without enough capabilities, you lose sales. This is why resourcing planning in traditional hosting is hard. If you need the extra servers always on to deal with this load, you are throwing money down the drain 90% of the time. If you have a Black Friday sale, for instance, you may need 10 servers to cope with the load, but for the rest of the year, they sit there idle, costing money!
Another complication when adding extra servers into a cluster is time. More servers mean more developer and infrastructure time and effort. More servers will consume more admin time. Setting up a server takes time. Installing Windows, managing an HTTPS certificate, deploying code, testing, IP Whitelisting, anti-virus, adding the server into a cluster, applying Windows updates. these are the tasks someone will need to undertake in your team. Creating a new server takes time, keeping it healthy takes more time! Managing on-premises servers is not a good use of time for most companies, so what is the solution?
Microsoft recognized these issues a few years ago and release Azure, a cloud hosting option to help alleviate these issues. For those unfamiliar with Azure, all it really is a cut down 'virtual' version of Windows running somewhere in the world. With Azure you don't have access to the server directly, you simply push your code changes onto it and then Microsoft manages almost everything for you. As Azure is virtual, you pay less for hosting. Instead of paying for a beefy server that sits idle, your website is hosted on a VM whose resources, like memory can be changed dynamically, based on your current load.
Umbraco, like any normal ASP.NET website, can run under Azure and it doesn't need any special Umbraco settings for you to do this yourself. You can go to Microsoft, purchase an Azure plan, install Umbraco yourself locally and push it up onto your Azure account and have the Umbraco website hosted in the cloud. This is a great step, however, what happens if your site goes down at 1am? Even though hosting a site in Azure takes the pain of server management away from you, you still have a lot of website maintenance to deal with. If your SSL certificate expires, you will need to remember to update it. To host a site in Azure, you will also need to learn Azure! If you do not have a tech team then this can be a reason to rule out using Umbraco 😞This website management is where Umbraco cloud comes in.
Umbraco Cloud, is not just simply hosting your website within Azure... Umbraco Cloud takes hosting one step further. Like Episerver DXC, instead of you having to learn Azure, set up Umbraco and manage most of your website yourself in Azure, the Umbraco team will do it. This is where the term 'managed service' comes from. Umbraco Cloud isn't a new product or a new type of cloud hosting. Most things that you can do within Umbraco Cloud, you could do on your own in Azure directly if you wanted. Instead, Umbraco Cloud should be thought of as a hosting package provided directly by Umbraco.
What Do I Get With Umbraco Cloud?
With Umbraco cloud, you get two Azure environments. One server to do all of your development and testing on, and one server that will act as a live website. Umbraco Cloud comes with a custom portal that will allow you to manage your cloud hosting website. From this portal, you can manage your Umbraco environments, transfer content between environments as well as get access to the code. In the cloud portal, you get access to an instant chat feature that connects you directly to Umbraco Cloud support staff to ask any questions that you might have. Minor Umbraco updates will also be automatically applied to your website. If you are wondering how you will push your code into Umbraco Cloud, fear not it is easy. On sign-up, Umbraco Cloud will automatically set up a Git repo and all the files you need to get started when you create a new account. You can then simply clone the repo and build your website. To deploy your code to Azure, simply commit your changes and push your branch to origin. Your files will be pushed to the Azure box.
As Umbraco cloud is a managed service, like all services it comes with a price tag. Luckily, it's actually fairly cheap!
For around $35 euro a month, you get access to all the hardware that you require to fully host your website and all the support that comes with it.
In this tutorial, you will learn about a new type of cloud hosting that is available to host your Umbraco powered CMS, Umbraco Cloud. If you want to launch a new Umbraco website and you are unsure where to host it, this article is for you. Umbraco Cloud is a new hosting service offered by Umbraco. The price is fairly reasonable and it will take a lot of headaches that come with managing your own web hosting away. If this sounds good, then read on to learn more 🤘.
Why Cloud Hosting?
Cloud hosting is gaining more and more momentum. Umbraco Cloud (formally known as Uaas (Umbraco As A Service)) is a managed service provided by Umbraco to host your website in the cloud. This term of 'managed service' seems to confuse a lot of people, so let me quickly explain what it means.
Traditionally, to host a Umbraco website you would require a server to host the website from. Your site might be the only website on that server (dedicated), or, your website might run alongside several other websites (shared). Microsoft based servers can be expensive to run, especially as most dedicated web servers resources sit idly around doing nothing the majority of the time. The servers will not have to work until people use the website. With traditional hosting, you usually end up paying for a server that you never fully utilize. Most production servers usually consume a maximum of 25% of the server resources at peak times! This means a company is paying an extra 75% every month on nothing!
The other side of the coin is when your webserver becomes overwhelmed. Maybe you have a once a year sale that drives lots of traffic. If the burst traffic exceeds your capabilities, your website will stop working. The only way to deal with burst traffic is to have enough bandwidth to deal with busy periods. Adding an additional server into the mix to share the load between multiple servers, takes time! Often the time it takes to set up the server will be much longer than the burst. Without enough capabilities, you lose sales. This is why resourcing planning in traditional hosting is hard. If you need the extra servers always on to deal with this load, you are throwing money down the drain 90% of the time. If you have a Black Friday sale, for instance, you may need 10 servers to cope with the load, but for the rest of the year, they sit there idle, costing money!
Another complication when adding extra servers into a cluster is time. More servers mean more developer and infrastructure time and effort. More servers will consume more admin time. Setting up a server takes time. Installing Windows, managing an HTTPS certificate, deploying code, testing, IP Whitelisting, anti-virus, adding the server into a cluster, applying Windows updates. these are the tasks someone will need to undertake in your team. Creating a new server takes time, keeping it healthy takes more time! Managing on-premises servers is not a good use of time for most companies, so what is the solution?
Microsoft recognized these issues a few years ago and release Azure, a cloud hosting option to help alleviate these issues. For those unfamiliar with Azure, all it really is a cut down 'virtual' version of Windows running somewhere in the world. With Azure you don't have access to the server directly, you simply push your code changes onto it and then Microsoft manages almost everything for you. As Azure is virtual, you pay less for hosting. Instead of paying for a beefy server that sits idle, your website is hosted on a VM whose resources, like memory can be changed dynamically, based on your current load.
Umbraco, like any normal ASP.NET website, can run under Azure and it doesn't need any special Umbraco settings for you to do this yourself. You can go to Microsoft, purchase an Azure plan, install Umbraco yourself locally and push it up onto your Azure account and have the Umbraco website hosted in the cloud. This is a great step, however, what happens if your site goes down at 1am? Even though hosting a site in Azure takes the pain of server management away from you, you still have a lot of website maintenance to deal with. If your SSL certificate expires, you will need to remember to update it. To host a site in Azure, you will also need to learn Azure! If you do not have a tech team then this can be a reason to rule out using Umbraco 😞This website management is where Umbraco cloud comes in.
Umbraco Cloud, is not just simply hosting your website within Azure... Umbraco Cloud takes hosting one step further. Like Episerver DXC, instead of you having to learn Azure, set up Umbraco and manage most of your website yourself in Azure, the Umbraco team will do it. This is where the term 'managed service' comes from. Umbraco Cloud isn't a new product or a new type of cloud hosting. Most things that you can do within Umbraco Cloud, you could do on your own in Azure directly if you wanted. Instead, Umbraco Cloud should be thought of as a hosting package provided directly by Umbraco.
What Do I Get With Umbraco Cloud?
With Umbraco cloud, you get two Azure environments. One server to do all of your development and testing on, and one server that will act as a live website. Umbraco Cloud comes with a custom portal that will allow you to manage your cloud hosting website. From this portal, you can manage your Umbraco environments, transfer content between environments as well as get access to the code. In the cloud portal, you get access to an instant chat feature that connects you directly to Umbraco Cloud support staff to ask any questions that you might have. Minor Umbraco updates will also be automatically applied to your website. If you are wondering how you will push your code into Umbraco Cloud, fear not it is easy. On sign-up, Umbraco Cloud will automatically set up a Git repo and all the files you need to get started when you create a new account. You can then simply clone the repo and build your website. To deploy your code to Azure, simply commit your changes and push your branch to origin. Your files will be pushed to the Azure box.
As Umbraco cloud is a managed service, like all services it comes with a price tag. Luckily, it's actually fairly cheap!
For around $35 euro a month, you get access to all the hardware that you require to fully host your website and all the support that comes with it.
Umbraco Cloud is a great hosting option for certain companies and people. If you want to create a Umbraco website, but don't want to maintain the server yourself, Umbraco Cloud could be a good fit for you. If you want to focus on your business and your site and you don't care about managing hosting, use Umbraco Cloud!
Like all managed services, Umbraco Cloud will not be a good fit for every project. Most of my clients are SMEs (micro, small and medium-sized enterprises) and in a lot of instances, those companies have their own, or rent servers, load balancers, WAFs etc... Some companies will want to manage their own hosting as they have the resources to do it. If a company already has servers, Umbraco Cloud could be less attractive. I'm currently working with a client that's in this position, and they have still decided to go with cloud hosting. Cloud hosting will free their IT staff up, people will no longer have to perform server maintenance over the weekend, and their disaster recovery needs are also met, so it's still preferable over traditional hosting. As I am hoping I have demonstrated, Umbraco cloud is a good option for a lot of companies and one I recommend. Happy Coding 🤘
Umbraco Cloud is a great hosting option for certain companies and people. If you want to create a Umbraco website, but don't want to maintain the server yourself, Umbraco Cloud could be a good fit for you. If you want to focus on your business and your site and you don't care about managing hosting, use Umbraco Cloud!
Like all managed services, Umbraco Cloud will not be a good fit for every project. Most of my clients are SMEs (micro, small and medium-sized enterprises) and in a lot of instances, those companies have their own, or rent servers, load balancers, WAFs etc... Some companies will want to manage their own hosting as they have the resources to do it. If a company already has servers, Umbraco Cloud could be less attractive. I'm currently working with a client that's in this position, and they have still decided to go with cloud hosting. Cloud hosting will free their IT staff up, people will no longer have to perform server maintenance over the weekend, and their disaster recovery needs are also met, so it's still preferable over traditional hosting. As I am hoping I have demonstrated, Umbraco cloud is a good option for a lot of companies and one I recommend. Happy Coding 🤘
