Explore alternative hosting options

[ferrisoxide]

Describe the task

We currently rely on a single PAAS vendor for hosting (Heroku). Simply from a "single point of failure" perspective, this represents an element of risk - though Heroku obviously have their own internal processes for managing failure within their infrastructure.

Having the freedom to host the application on alternative infrastructure will allow to search out cheaper / better hosting as required. By having more options, we will also be in a better position to service customer requirements (e.g. when hosting MUST be in a particular country).

By trialling some of these hosting providers, we will also prove our own resilience in terms of being able to survive an outage from any particular provider by migrating to a different provider. It will also exercise our ability to stand up a new application environment from scratch.

Success Criteria

How will we know if we've completed the task successfully? Use MUST, MUST NOT, SHOULD, MAY qualifiers for each criteria.

• MUST list hosting providers with good reputations for hosting Rails / Postres apps
• MUST list hosting providers that have physical servers inside Australia
• MUST detail approximate pricing differences (may be difficult, as many PAAS vendors use alternative models for pricing - not strictly hourly charges per server)
• SHOULD detail pros and cons of using particular vendors
• SHOULD test deploy a basic instance of the application on at least one alternative hosting vendor's platform
• MAY automate deployment to an alternative hosting vendor's platform