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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?

#31

Post by tjoff »

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.

Still more reliable and orders of magnitude more powerful than any free service.

You can also buy two.

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

#32

Post by iampims »

reilly3000 wrote: post #23
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

I have that stack and security concerns are holding me back. Any suggestions for ways to secure a home network for public hosting?

Cloudflare Argo tunnels. Reverse HTTP tunnel, similar to ngrok and others.

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

#34

Post by Benjamin_Dobell »

As others have mentioned, Linode is great value. Pair it with Dokku and you've got an even cheaper / more customizable (but not scalable) Heroku.

However, be weary of Linode's "backup" service if you intend to store a lot of files (as opposed to lots of data / large files). It's file-based (not block-based) backup, and I can confirm it does fail. In our case, we weren't storing tiny files either, they were images uploaded to our infrastructure. Granted, don't do that(!), use S3.

Also, regarding AWS/S3, there's a plethora of ways to get into AWS's Activate program (https://aws.amazon.com/activate/) which includes a decent chunk of free credits.

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

#35

Post by 013a »

Heroku's free tier is good. GCP App Engine is pretty similar, a little more powerful, but also more limiting in how you build your app.

My pick for MVPs is AWS Lambda. It's very easy to get up and running, and you get access to the rich AWS ecosystem. Yeah yeah, the "unlimited scale" benefit will be great when you're accelerating user growth, but that's not why its a good pick for MVPs. Need a cron? Not too bad on App Engine, but pretty hard on Heroku. Cinch on Lambda. Aggregated logs? Easy on most managed platforms. How about distributed tracing? Ridiculously easy on lambda. Need a quick queue? Horrible on heroku, alright on google cloud, but on AWS? Create one on SQS, wire it up to a lambda, done. There's a learning curve, but the power of the AWS platform is really what makes lambda a great choice.

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

#36

Post by DenisM »

jabart wrote: post #33
DenisM wrote: post #27

Bizspark

Bizspark changed and is no longer available. I was in the last round when they shut down early.

They still seem to have something going:

  Available for qualified Startups

  Technical enablement
  Microsoft technology to help your bottom line:

  Up to $120k of free Azure cloud for two years
  Visual Studio Enterprise cloud subscription
  Office 365 Business Premium
  Dynamics 365 for Customer Engagement and Talent
  Enterprise grade Azure support
https://startups.microsoft.com/en-us/benefits/

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

#38

Post by mmcwilliams »

ljm wrote: post #24
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 not a bad idea if your ISP gives you a static IP and you’ve got some spare hardware lying around (just in case closing your laptop causes downtime). If you can isolate that box from the rest of your home network, even better. Personally I’ve been using $3 Lightsail instances on AWS. There’s a lot you can do with one CPU and half a gig of RAM. An MVP Rails app will squeeze into that easily enough.

Even without a static IP, a free dynamic DNS service is good enough to prototype on a local machine as long as you aren’t using enough bandwidth to tip off your ISP. At that point, however, you’ve probably got enough market validation to move to another host.

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

#39

Post by eropple »

013a wrote: post #35

Heroku's free tier is good. GCP App Engine is pretty similar, a little more powerful, but also more limiting in how you build your app. My pick for MVPs is AWS Lambda. It's very easy to get up and running, and you get access to the rich AWS ecosystem. Yeah yeah, the "unlimited scale" benefit will be great when you're accelerating user growth, but that's not why its a good pick for MVPs. Need a cron? Not too bad on Ap…

The difficult part with AWS is local development. Waiting on AWS deploys is not a fast process and it kills momentum.

LocalStack tries, but IMO it's not great.

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

#40

Post by Sohcahtoa82 »

znpy wrote: post #15

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... )

OP is asking for free tier stuff and you respond with servers that start at $69/month?
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