Moving From Self Hosted To Cloud: Amazon Storage?

[FZ]

I am considering moving my community from self-hosted environment to the Invision Cloud, so I have a couple of questions about this process. 

1. If you opt for the Amazon storage configuration, does this apply to all data stored in your community, or can you set it up to only store archived data and then use your Invision storage for the most recent files stored? 

2. When it comes to the software upgrades, are these automatically done or does one still have to manually do the upgrades? I'm just concerned that if it's an automatic process and there are some plugins / themes that have not kept pace this may result in a broken site. 

Lastly, what sort of access speeds are cloud hosted communities getting compared to self-hosted? This would be the primary reason for me switching - performance improvement. 

TIA

[FZ]

Also, if I go to Cloud and then decide after a while that it doesn't work for me, do I have to repurchase all my licenses or will they still be valid on self-hosted environment (once renewed obviously)? 

[GlenP]

6 hours ago, FZ said:

1. If you opt for the Amazon storage configuration, does this apply to all data stored in your community, or can you set it up to only store archived data and then use your Invision storage for the most recent files stored? 

You can use the storage settings to store files between the IPS storage or Amazon's S3 storage. We put all our attachments and gallery images on S3 bot other files cam be moved across if you get close to the storage limits of your plan.

The core files are all on AWS anyway so there is no real delay in where your files are stored.

6 hours ago, FZ said:

Lastly, what sort of access speeds are cloud hosted communities getting compared to self-hosted? This would be the primary reason for me switching - performance improvement. 

I haven't used self storage but a lot of that performance would depend on the hardware.All I can say is that our site (admittedly not very customised) performs as well as all the other sites I visit regularly.
 

6 hours ago, FZ said:

 

2. When it comes to the software upgrades, are these automatically done or does one still have to manually do the upgrades?

They're normally done manually at your time of choosing. The last upgrade to 4.4.7 was done automatically without us being aware of it which caused a lot of confusion for us but. hopefully, that was a glitch in the system and not a new process.

We really like not having to worry about the hardware and have the backups worked etc. and there is no buck passing between providers. If there is a problem with the cloud system, the support is absolutely superb.

Try the free 5 day demo. It is limited in what you can do (e.g. you can't upload themes) and is slower than our live site but it gives you a chance to see what is different between Cloud and self hosted.

 

 

[FZ]

Thanks, I appreciate the input. 

[Joel R]

To provide more information for the Amazon S3 storage, you can evaluate the current file storage configurations in the Files settings.  To clarify, there's no storage option for archived vs unarchived, but you can choose the file storage configurations of every content type (attachments, emojis, theme, gallery images, etc).  It'll probably give you the granularity that you need.  

[Rhett]

1 hour ago, FZ said:

Thanks, I appreciate the input. 

Submit a ticket if you would like, I would be happy to walk you through the process and also review your site and options for a potential transfer to our cloud. 

[FZ]

I will do that, thanks Rhett.