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Localstack – Local AWS Emulator

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Re: Localstack – Local AWS Emulator

#61

Post by kortilla »

IceWreck wrote: post #13
shiftpgdn wrote: post #6

I’ve been saying for a couple of years whoever builds a tool to one click deploy an AWS alike to run on local bare metal has built the next billion dollar a year company. I know of a lot of big shops that are desperate to get out of the cloud due to 7-8 figure AWS bills but their software and engineering is too tightly wound into AWS tooling.

But AWS is huge. They employ thousands of engineers. Granted most of the complexity is due to its huge huge scale, but still it has too many features to do what youre asking. And then there are AWS exclusives like DynamoDB. Yes there are open source public/private cloud alternatives like OpenStack but they won't solve the problem of lock in and you'd still have to change all your tooling.

> they won't solve the problem of lock in

Conflating lock in to an open source tool with lock in to a vendor who you literally have to keep paying money to survive is a shitty tactic used by companies like Amazon.

Using open stack absolutely solves the problem of lock in from a business perspective. You can’t be cancelled, the price can’t be changed, etc.

Re: Localstack – Local AWS Emulator

#62

Post by Sanguinaire »

whummer wrote: post #49
sverhagen wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It frustrates me how they always go for the biggest common denominator there, the lowest level shared by everyone, but what's hardly used by professional users: don't let me download a jar file, please give me Maven coordinates. Don't tell me how to click in the console to get an EC2 instance, please give me an example Terraform snippet. Don't just show me how AWS CLI returns a blob of JSON when I assume role, please…

+100 Another example to add to your list - the new AWS CLI v2: > don't force me to download a 30MB binary with embedded Python interpreter baked in, please just give us a pip package instead! ;)

Or better yet, rewrite it in Go to avoid both the fat blob and python dependency management at the same time!

Re: Localstack – Local AWS Emulator

#64

Post by whummer »

Sanguinaire wrote: post #62
whummer wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

+100 Another example to add to your list - the new AWS CLI v2: > don't force me to download a 30MB binary with embedded Python interpreter baked in, please just give us a pip package instead! ;)

Or better yet, rewrite it in Go to avoid both the fat blob and python dependency management at the same time!

Touché!

Re: Localstack – Local AWS Emulator

#65

Post by belter »

jdreaver wrote: post #53
belter wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Correct. I meant to use it to save some money while developing your apps, not as a solution for local deployment.

Ah understood. I thought this comment thread was talking about replacing _production_ AWS use cases with a bare metal system that has a compatible API.

LocalStack says its about testing:

"...Whether you are testing complex CDK applications or Terraform configurations, or just beginning to learn about AWS services, LocalStack helps speed up and simplify your testing and development workflow..."

Re: Localstack – Local AWS Emulator

#66

Post by EADGBE »

Can I use it in conjunction with something like CDK? I’m trying to learn the AWS CDK, but I would feel much better if I could run all these orchestrations on a local docker instead of a real AWS account.

…And just trust that I destroy them before they incur cost.

Re: Localstack – Local AWS Emulator

#67

Post by thayne »

IceWreck wrote: post #13
shiftpgdn wrote: post #6

I’ve been saying for a couple of years whoever builds a tool to one click deploy an AWS alike to run on local bare metal has built the next billion dollar a year company. I know of a lot of big shops that are desperate to get out of the cloud due to 7-8 figure AWS bills but their software and engineering is too tightly wound into AWS tooling.

But AWS is huge. They employ thousands of engineers. Granted most of the complexity is due to its huge huge scale, but still it has too many features to do what youre asking. And then there are AWS exclusives like DynamoDB. Yes there are open source public/private cloud alternatives like OpenStack but they won't solve the problem of lock in and you'd still have to change all your tooling.

For DynamoDB specifically, ScyllaDB had a Dynamodb compatible mode. There are several options (open source and otherwise) with s3 compatible APIs. I think it is more likely we'll end up with replacements for individual services and maybe at some point it will be possible to glue them together as a replacement for a significant subset of AWS

Re: Localstack – Local AWS Emulator

#68

Post by NathanKP »

kortilla wrote: post #61
IceWreck wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But AWS is huge. They employ thousands of engineers. Granted most of the complexity is due to its huge huge scale, but still it has too many features to do what youre asking. And then there are AWS exclusives like DynamoDB. Yes there are open source public/private cloud alternatives like OpenStack but they won't solve the problem of lock in and you'd still have to change all your tooling.

> they won't solve the problem of lock in Conflating lock in to an open source tool with lock in to a vendor who you literally have to keep paying money to survive is a shitty tactic used by companies like Amazon. Using open stack absolutely solves the problem of lock in from a business perspective. You can’t be cancelled, the price can’t be changed, etc.

I legitimately wonder how many people feel free from lock in after they finish paying $75k to Canonical for a 12 node OpenStack "private cloud build" (https://assets.ubuntu.com/v1/d4766546-Private-Cloud-Build_Da...), not to mention ongoing support bills and billing for addons "starting at $25k".

Just because something is open source does not mean your org will actually have the expertise to be successful at running it yourself. That's how most "open source" projects like Kubernetes and OpenStack become so successful: the supporting orgs behind the project make lots of money charging companies for support and maintenance and issues that pop up with the setup.

There are many forms of lock in. Buying a big upfront investment that has to pay itself off for the next X years is a form of lock in. Paying for expensive professional consulting support to build out the system and keep the system up and running is a form of lock in. Or even worse, hiring or training expensive dedicated employees to learn the open source system and become the internal professional consultants for the rest of the org, that is also lock in.

Re: Localstack – Local AWS Emulator

#69

Post by kongin »

shiftpgdn wrote: post #6

I’ve been saying for a couple of years whoever builds a tool to one click deploy an AWS alike to run on local bare metal has built the next billion dollar a year company. I know of a lot of big shops that are desperate to get out of the cloud due to 7-8 figure AWS bills but their software and engineering is too tightly wound into AWS tooling.

It's kind of stunning that starting with fully open technologies we build another closed mainframe on top of it.

All that's old is new again.

Re: Localstack – Local AWS Emulator

#70

Post by whummer »

EADGBE wrote: post #66

Can I use it in conjunction with something like CDK? I’m trying to learn the AWS CDK, but I would feel much better if I could run all these orchestrations on a local docker instead of a real AWS account. …And just trust that I destroy them before they incur cost.

Absolutely - CDK under the covers generates CloudFormation templates, which deploy natively on LocalStack. Certainly a great use case for local dev&test - especially if you want quick feedback cycles, ability to destroy the stack immediately, etc.

There's also a "cdklocal" command line which should make it fairly easy to get started with local CDK development: https://github.com/localstack/aws-cdk-local

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