iOS Cloud Server Options

[RagingGoat]

I'm going to be building some simple web services using PHP for my app to use and I curious about what web server solutions others are using. I know Google, Amazon, and Microsoft all offer cloud solutions. I'm wanting to get opinions from others who have used some of these to help me figure out what will be the best option for what I need.

The services I'm going to be creating will basically be getting data, such as name, membership number, address, etc., from a form in the app and using that info to query my database and return the results in JSON which will then be parsed by the app. Basically I'm just needing a web server for the PHP scripts. The database already exists but I'm not sure if the web server will be able to access it where it currently is or if a copy of the database is going to need to be made on the web server.

Thanks for advice and opinions in advance!

 

[AppSwage]

I have used Google App Engine extensively. The great thing is that it's free until you generate enough traffic to go beyond free levels. Even then you can set a daily budget to avoid surprises. On the GAE side I've used Python but it does support other language and I believe PHP is available (I know GO and Java are). As GAE is a "platform as a service" you don't have to spend time getting down into the nuts and bolts of server admin. I know I would rather spend time developing and not playing admin/DBA! I certainly recommend it.

 

[D.T.]

I really dig on the PaaS options. I’ve currently got several systems running on Heroku, some full on web apps as well as some APIs for native mobile solutions. Rails, Nodejs, also supports Python, PHP.

Just like RagingGoat said above, PaaS offerings remove most of the management overhead from the server, and expose various services as “plugins” handled through a CLI a/o web UI. (Postgres, Mongo, various analytics, monitoring, caching, text indexers, etc.)

Some like Heroku use Git to handle deployments, basically the could service is a remote repo, so deployment is as simple as ‘git push api_prod master’.

Since the filesystem isn’t exposed, I use S3 for storage (when applicable).

Free tier available for the app and DB services.