It is a pleasure to be here with you. I will be outsourcing the development of my SuiteCRM but will be using my own hardware and software in my office. If you were starting out from the beginning which OS and version would you start out with? 5 users to start will access remotely.
I know Windows but I am alarmed at the potential for Windows updates breaking my instance.
I don’t know linux at all but know SSH and I am aware of security issues. I will outsource much of this work.
Would you start with Windows or Linux and why do you prefer it?
Want to start off right. I have a managed services IT practice and will rely on CRM VERY heavily for all communication from marketing, sales, operations, and delivery.
SuiteCRM is far better tested on Linux than on Windows. The entire development team and 97% of the Community is on Linux (Ubuntu, more specifically). For SuiteCRM, Linux is definitely a better option.
I would recommend any *nix based OS but Linux and Ubuntu have been doing really well in terms of security and the ease of management that we need to the CRM to run. The security is pretty much tight and its not that some will breach the system right away as soon as you put it on the internet, its better than Windows at least.
Try checking out Forums for previous recommendations about Hosting and Server OS and you will find some good options.
I have a couple of posts about hosting Linux from Windows, and about issues like Disaster recovery etc
You mention Bitnami in another post. While I respect Bitnami and have positive memories of their support, I tend to dislike it for SuiteCRM since it makes PHP and DB upgrades really hard to do. I find Administration on plain Ubuntu to be much more hassle-free.
Thank you for your kind direction so I can begin the right way. Especially I appreciate the benefit of using Hyper V replication over hosting. Now to find out how to host an Apache server on Ubuntu VM as well to mirror your setup. It’ll be worth the effort I’m sure later.
Wanted to follow up on how the install went. First of all I would like to give a warm thank you to pgr and cherub-chum for your sage guidance and wanted to share a few findings.
As a intermediate step to pgr’s fantastic idea of standing up 2 Hyper V servers with replication using seperate VM’s for webserver and the database I created Hyper 4 VM’s, on my laptop, 2 for development and 2 for production to get it working before I move it to a standalone server.
It is critical to update your Windows host file to match the domain name in /etc/apache2/sites-available/suitecrm.conf and to update /etc/hosts to match it as well or you will receive a 404 file not found error. That made me scratch my head for quite a bit. Actually scream, its been more than a decade since I had to touch a windows host file.
Out of thanks I would like to provide my script to create the VM’s quickly here.
Now if the worst happens I can recreate the SuiteCRM server in 30 minutes. It was a steep learning curve but the rewards are great in linux.
Thank you again pgr and cherub-chum for helping me get this thing up and running as this is my first foray into Linux. After I learn how to add a certificate and manage ssh keys then I can open it up on the internet for use. I also plan to run mautic and freepbx on the same Hyper V. Compared with the salesforce, mailchimp, hosting fees, and Ring Central bundled together open source is saving me $5000 + a year! With AT&T fiber just installed in my area now is the time.