Making server(s) for personal app development/testing, need advice

[HunterAP]

Long story short, I want to make the final CS project into a full-fledged app to license and whatnot. It uses machine learning and stores data within a database, and from my CS courses and understanding from working at different companies, it's best to split the DB from the actual application machine.

 

My question though is this: can/should I use Linux / Docker containers on a single machine rather than have two physical servers? I can list the advantages/disadvantages of both, but I'm still unsure.

 

• Two Physical Machines:
  • Advantages
    • Redundancy: if one machine goes down for some reason I don't lose the other.
    • Similar to what most companies use in their infrastructure.
    • No need to make complicated container images/scripts.
    • Each machine can be specialized for their own task (I/O for DB, computation speed for app machine).
  • Disadvantages
    • Limited by Ethernet connection speed (gigabit speeds are good, but internal I/O is obviously much faster).
    • More expensive upfront and over time for electricity costs.
    • Complicates application by needing to give proper networking capabilities.
• One Machine with containers:
  • Advantages
    • Faster: I/O is not limited by network speeds.
    • Easier to redeploy containers: make frequent backups to another machine, and if something goes wrong then just go back to a previous container image.
    • Containers also mean this app can be portable pretty much anywhere.
    • Cheaper to build and maintain.
  • Disadvantages
    • Single point of failure: all data can be lost if a single component breaks.
    • Machine has to be best all-rounder for app and DB services.
    • Time spent creating/maintaining containers.

I'm guess I'm ending up leaning more towards 1 machine 2 containers, but I'd still like to get people's opinions on this.

[Electronics Wizardy]

Id use one machine and setup vms. That way it works exactly like 2 systems, but has the advantages of 1 system. 

 

I run every machine as a hypervisor, running vms make managing this much easier, with vms if you want to add a second system, you can just move some vms over.

[NinJake]

I would also go with the single machine w/ containers. While a major con that you listed is everything can go down if a component breaks, spend some of that money you saved by not getting 2 machines to get a nice backup solution set up.

[Guest]

You could also try VMWare eSX, the free version as an alternative, which gives you the ability to run virtual machines and manage those from remote, with a smaller OS even than Linux as host OS

[HunterAP]

Instead of VM's through VMware or the like, I was thinking of using Docker containers: one for the app and another for the DB.

 

Side-question: what would be a good distro for this setup? I'm used to Ubuntu & Debian, and I have experience with Redhat and CentOS, so I was going to go with the latter becasue it's free and reliable. Thoughts?

[Electronics Wizardy]

30 minutes ago, HunterAP said:

Instead of VM's through VMware or the like, I was thinking of using Docker containers: one for the app and another for the DB.

 

Side-question: what would be a good distro for this setup? I'm used to Ubuntu & Debian, and I have experience with Redhat and CentOS, so I was going to go with the latter becasue it's free and reliable. Thoughts?

Id still run the docker containers in vms, makes it a bit easier to work worth and move. It takes a bit more ram, but it shouldn't need that much.

 

What whatever distro you want, it really doesn't matter, and with vms you can run multiple at once.