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Ask HN: Is there server-side software that we are missing in 2018?

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Re: Ask HN: Is there server-side software that we are missing in 2018?

#71

Post by joshavant »

I'm a front-end developer.

I'd like an OSS solution that will allow me to deploy an arbitrary server-side service - be it a Ruby, Python application or even a package like OpenVPN - to some cloud infrastructure, easily.

This solution should spin up a hardened OS distro (CIS-compliant, maybe?), provision it with my arbitrary services (using Ansible or Chef or something), and deploy it to AWS or some cloud infrastructure for me (using Terraform or something).

All these component pieces exist, but nothing ties all of them together for an easy deploy for a front-end developer like me.

(And, I know things like Heroku and CodeDeploy exist, but I dislike lock-in and they nearly universally come with their own restrictions, like lack of support for server-side Swift applications or custom services like OpenVPN or git-annex.)

EDIT - I'm strongly considering taking some time off to write this soon, so get in touch if this is something you're interested in! Contributing or using!

Re: Ask HN: Is there server-side software that we are missing in 2018?

#72

Post by takinola »

I should be able to copy and paste a server configuration and create an identical copy of my server. Right now, the only solutions I see are generating images (too big and cumbersome) or writing scripts (too complex).

I would like to be able to type in a single command and replicate all the packages, services and configuration present in a particular server to a new target system.

Re: Ask HN: Is there server-side software that we are missing in 2018?

#73

Post by btown »

fooyc wrote: post #70

ACID databases that can scale easily on multiple machines still don’t exist.

https://cloud.google.com/spanner/ and the open-source https://www.cockroachlabs.com/product/cockroachdb/ both provide scalable ACID transactions; however, both introduce added latency compared to traditional databases.

Re: Ask HN: Is there server-side software that we are missing in 2018?

#74

Post by kawera »

rambojazz wrote: post #61
simonw wrote: post #3

I'm still waiting for a rock-solid scalable open source graph database in the mold of the Freebase database engine or the amazing graph database that Facebook have built for themselves. I'm very excited about dgraph as an option here but I think it's still an area that is very open for new entrants.

This would be really useful. Now there are Fuseki and Janus[1]. Years ago there was 4store [2]. There is also gStore in development [3]. They all require a lot of help. Would be nice if somebody could pick up and help one of these. [1] https://jena.apache.org/index.html http://janusgraph.org [2] https://github.com/4store/4store [3] https://github.com/Caesar11/gStore

Adding Cayley to the mix: https://github.com/cayleygraph/cayley

Re: Ask HN: Is there server-side software that we are missing in 2018?

#75

Post by hathathat »

takinola wrote: post #72

I should be able to copy and paste a server configuration and create an identical copy of my server. Right now, the only solutions I see are generating images (too big and cumbersome) or writing scripts (too complex). I would like to be able to type in a single command and replicate all the packages, services and configuration present in a particular server to a new target system.

Doesn't Puppet(.com) do something like this?

Re: Ask HN: Is there server-side software that we are missing in 2018?

#76

Post by noir_lord »

gfodor wrote: post #32

I don't think anyone has solved the issues raised in Out of the Tar Pit in the data storage space. We still spend a ton of effort, perhaps more than ever before, wrangling incidental complexity. In 2018, I should be able to define a simple relational schema in 30 seconds and start using it with effectively zero constraints around data access patterns, transaction volume, and data scale, and with no design decisions n…

This leads me to one of my constant bugbears.

Why is RDBMS tooling so completely shite.

I have an IDE that can index several million lines of code and apply accurately timely context dependent intelligent code completion - I have yet to find a good way to debug a MySQL stored procedure (I hate them, I inherited them, except for very simple use cases they are getting slow replaced).

Re: Ask HN: Is there server-side software that we are missing in 2018?

#77

Post by noir_lord »

takinola wrote: post #72

I should be able to copy and paste a server configuration and create an identical copy of my server. Right now, the only solutions I see are generating images (too big and cumbersome) or writing scripts (too complex). I would like to be able to type in a single command and replicate all the packages, services and configuration present in a particular server to a new target system.

You can get a fair way down that path with ansible if you are very careful but it still requires too much work, modern operating systems and packaging where not built for idempotent rollbacks.

We try to treat pets like cattle then wonder why they bite us (to reverse the usual refrain).

I agree though, it should be declarative but everything shits everything else all over the filesystem.

Re: Ask HN: Is there server-side software that we are missing in 2018?

#78

Post by hobofan »

freehunter wrote: post #35

I'm a big believer in logging, and I find it hard to believe that collecting and monitoring logs needs to have a server with 32GB of RAM and massive Java and ElasticSearch back-ends like ELK, Splunk, Graylog, or similar monitoring software. I've been searching for something self-hosted that can run in my server's spare capacity and monitor the OS and application logs with a simple searching interface (just a web inte…

I used to do something similar (but a bit less fancy), with logs processed by Heka + bash scripts using jq. Heka has now been phased out in favor of hindsight[0], but I haven't personally tried that one out yet.

[0]: https://github.com/mozilla-services/hindsight

Re: Ask HN: Is there server-side software that we are missing in 2018?

#80

Post by rs86 »

takinola wrote: post #72

I should be able to copy and paste a server configuration and create an identical copy of my server. Right now, the only solutions I see are generating images (too big and cumbersome) or writing scripts (too complex). I would like to be able to type in a single command and replicate all the packages, services and configuration present in a particular server to a new target system.

Maybe you will find Nix useful.
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