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Server and storage requirements
EDITORS: Group
Virtual Machines
For Colouring Britain, we use Microsoft Azure and find that the “burstable” instances are cost-efficient because the site sees uneven usage and goes through relatively quiet periods.
B series: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/virtual-machines/sizes-b-series-burstable
For development, we use local desktops or laptops.
The current setup runs everything in a single virtual machine:
NodeJS application
PostgreSQL database
Nginx reverse proxy server
For internal demonstrations and testing, we have a “dev” virtual machine (B2s) which we only run for perhaps a few days in a month.
For deployment, we have a “staging” virtual machine (also B2s) which runs the latest version of the code, and can be used for testing before making an update live.
2 cores
4GB RAM
30GB disk
For live, we have a “production” virtual machine (B4ms).
4 cores
16GB RAM
32GB disk
additional 256GB disk attached for local storage of backups and data extracts, before moving these to long-term blob storage
Blob storage (Azure blob storage, Amazon S3 Simple Storage Service) is used for long-term storage of database backups and data extracts. This is a pay-what-you-use service with no need to specify storage space or bandwidth up front, and no practical limits on storage capacity (up to 5PiB).
The pricing calculator is useful for estimates: https://azure.microsoft.com/en-gb/pricing/calculator/
A similar setup to the one described above on Azure would budget at around GBP 150-200 per month. The virtual machines are the largest component of that cost – the smaller B2S instances should be sufficient to start with, and 40-60% discounts are available if you can commit to a contract for a year or three years.
Other cloud providers have very similar services for similar prices.