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Ask HN: Best free compute and other resources for startups?

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Re: Ask HN: Best free compute and other resources for startups?

#11

Post by jedberg »

gameswithgo wrote: post #6
segmondy wrote: post #4

your own computer.

I understand why some are downvoting this but, with consumer internet connections being 1000up/down and a threadripper giving you like 100 cores for a few bucks, this can be a very handy solution, with quicker deploys and easier management. security might be too much of a concern for some applications

It's ok if you're ok with your service being down for days at a time. On vacation and the server breaks? Gotta wait till you get home. Internet down? Mine gigabit was just down for five days, a squirrel ate through the fiber and they had to a pull a new one.

Running a server at home is fraught with peril but if those downtimes are ok, then go for it.

Re: Ask HN: Best free compute and other resources for startups?

#12

Post by samcday »

gameswithgo wrote: post #6
segmondy wrote: post #4

your own computer.

I understand why some are downvoting this but, with consumer internet connections being 1000up/down and a threadripper giving you like 100 cores for a few bucks, this can be a very handy solution, with quicker deploys and easier management. security might be too much of a concern for some applications

I think it’s hard to justify running your own setup in 2019 when you can get Linode/DO for 5$ a month.

Sure, CPUs are cheap and (if you’re lucky enough to live somewhere that’s offers it) consumer internet can be absurdly fast. But if youra app goes down at a critical moment because your consumer-grade ISP has an outage, or someone tripped over the Ethernet cable, or you had a brown out because you live in the UK and everyone put the kettle on at the same time, you’re going to look like a bit of an idiot.

Re: Ask HN: Best free compute and other resources for startups?

#13

Post by deforciant »

I think a combination of hardware and cloud services could give you a cheap way to run pretty much anything you want. I will try to share what I am using :)

Tooling

For CI I bought a cheap Intel NUC that just sits on my table and runs Drone, Node-RED, my testing environment server.

1. Here from Drone I get all the test pipelines and most of my executable/docker image builds at a much better speed than I would get with Travis, CircleCI and so on. My desktop runs a Drone agent too, so never waiting too long for new builds. 2. Node-RED is used for various automation tasks such as healthchecks for all my services with rate-limits, a bit more complex checks (rather than just simple /health or /status endpoint ping), mailgun webhook handling, github brew formula updates and so on. It does control my TV too :D 3. I also run some tasks on Google Cloud builder which is free and fast. 4. Uptimerobot is also used (http://uptimerobot.com/) as it provides free, second opinion whether my services are down or not.

Compute

For compute I opted for GKE (at the time it was the best managed k8s you can get (and it's still probably is)) on Google Cloud with 3 1vCPU 3.75GB RAM VMs. That gives me plenty of resources to run my stack and any additional side-side-project on it. I tend to code in Go so I don't need much resources. I use managed postgres as a database so I can sleep peacefully.

For additional services I ended up choosing Vultr (https://www.vultr.com/) as they have many regions available and their pricing is really good. There is a nice, non-official CLI and so far their uptime was quite good (few issues but nothing major).

It really depends how much time you want to spend on ops. If you are fine with doing quite a bit of ops, go with Vultr or any other cheaper cloud provider. If you want to spend more time on features, go with GKE and fully automate deployment. Git push -> Google Cloud Builder -> Keel (https://keel.sh) -> new version deployed :)

Re: Ask HN: Best free compute and other resources for startups?

#14

Post by jchook »

Linode has a $5 “nanode” VPS and scales very cheaply compared to AWS.

Namecheap does free ID protect for domains.

PayPal offers a good micro transaction fee rate if you plan to do small ($10 or smaller) transactions.

You can use services like Algo or Streisand to set up a relatively secure auto configured Wireguard VPN.

Nextcloud gives you a HIPPA compliant personal cloud for email, calendar, chat, etc.

GitLab offers unlimited free private repositories and some basic CI.

Re: Ask HN: Best free compute and other resources for startups?

#15

Post by znpy »

You can run a decent amount of stuff off OVH/Hetzner/Online.net dedicated server with monthly rental price under $100/mo.

At OVH you can have a Intel Xeon D-1540 (8 c / 16 t - 2 GHz / 2.6 GHz) with 64GB ram for like 90 Euros/month + VAT (US link: https://us.ovhcloud.com/products/servers/infrastructure-serv...)

Re: Ask HN: Best free compute and other resources for startups?

#16

Post by phmagic »

imafish wrote: post #7

My entire app is “serverless” and I host it on AWS and netlify using the free tier. So far I have been able to keep resource use below the free tier thresholds.

I'd like to second this. The amount of free compute available to serverless infrastructure is insane! Serverless does have a learning curve but it's worth it to learn.

The next best is Heroku's free tier.

Re: Ask HN: Best free compute and other resources for startups?

#17

Post by theandrewbailey »

jedberg wrote: post #11
gameswithgo wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I understand why some are downvoting this but, with consumer internet connections being 1000up/down and a threadripper giving you like 100 cores for a few bucks, this can be a very handy solution, with quicker deploys and easier management. security might be too much of a concern for some applications

It's ok if you're ok with your service being down for days at a time. On vacation and the server breaks? Gotta wait till you get home. Internet down? Mine gigabit was just down for five days, a squirrel ate through the fiber and they had to a pull a new one. Running a server at home is fraught with peril but if those downtimes are ok, then go for it.

I've had a server made of old desktop parts running in my basement for years. Its rarely gone down, and never during vacations. I've added a UPS two years ago, so unless I have an hours long power outage, everything still hums along.

Re: Ask HN: Best free compute and other resources for startups?

#19

Post by jedberg »

theandrewbailey wrote: post #17
jedberg wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's ok if you're ok with your service being down for days at a time. On vacation and the server breaks? Gotta wait till you get home. Internet down? Mine gigabit was just down for five days, a squirrel ate through the fiber and they had to a pull a new one. Running a server at home is fraught with peril but if those downtimes are ok, then go for it.

I've had a server made of old desktop parts running in my basement for years. Its rarely gone down, and never during vacations. I've added a UPS two years ago, so unless I have an hours long power outage, everything still hums along.

Yes I too have had multiple Frankenstein servers in my house with UPSs, for over 25 years. And most of the time they work great. Except when they don't.

Re: Ask HN: Best free compute and other resources for startups?

#20

Post by aetimmes »

segmondy wrote: post #4

your own computer.

Reasons this might be a bad idea:

* Electricity costs for networking/compute hardware often equal VPS costs

* Massive single points of failure WRT power, compute, networking

* ISPs don't like when people run their businesses over consumer networks and will retaliate (forced to change to business plan, account terminated, etc)

* Vastly increased overhead managing the full infra stack (power, HVAC, networking, compute, firmware, OS, etc)

* Massively increased security liability (your site goes viral and now Hacker News and Reddit are sending traffic to your house, on the same network where your personal laptop with your CC info saved on it lives)

XaaP services abstract away so very many of these concerns for prices that oftentimes are below what you pay for the electricity to run your own infrastructure.

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