About Server requirements

#1

We are working on a survey targeting 1,000 to 1100 firms. The data collection process will begin in Feb-23 mid and We plan to collect 1,000 to 1100 completed interviews in around 2-3 months. We will have around 8 to 10 enumerators on the field synchronizing the interviews with tablets. We expect (at most) 3 interview per enumerator per day.
we want to use Survey Solutions to design the survey and collect the data. As we do not have access to an existing server to store the data, we have been looking into cloud service providers such as AWS for storage.
We would like some guidance/recommendations on which type of server and which instance would be most suitable for our type of project. For example, we have been looking into Amazon EC2 as an option, but we do not know which instance would be best. We would like the server to be accessible both by Mac and Windows laptops. We will not collect any multimedia data, we only plan to collect quantitative data and (NO GPS coordinates of the respondents).

If we are planning to collect data on 1,000 to 1100 firms which vCPU and Memory (GIB) would we need?
We are also open to suggestions on other cloud server providers as well.

Best,
Sharad

#2

Hello @Sharad_s ,

  1. in terms of the survey - this appears to be a fairly small operation. So, perhaps, start with a server with configuration in line with the minimal requirements outlined in our documentation.

  2. In terms of placement - it really depends on the kind of data you collect, data ownership, ruling laws, and promises you make to the respondents regarding transmission and storage of the data, as well as the costs of various vendors.

Some 3 years ago I’ve asked a similar question regarding the cloud providers, and from about a dozen of responses, only one from @edwinstcather was informative, indicating you can get a simpler process with a niche vendor, rather than going with the mainstream. Best cloud servers providers .The rest of the users didn’t want to reveal their hosting strategies.

You may want to inquire at the specialized third-party hosting forums:

Once you make a choice, please share your experience with the rest of us!

Best, Sergiy