For my side project I try to keep it as simple as possible.
After I run tests locally, I've got a makefile that deploys to either Google Cloud Run or fly.io.
Database is Cloud SQL which works well enough for me.
Ask HN: Solo-preneurs, how do you DevOps to save time?
91–100 of 328 posts
Re: Ask HN: Solo-preneurs, how do you DevOps to save time?
#92Lots and lots of best practice exists specifically to help teams , and especially teams with some normal amount of turnover. The problems of a solo dev are very different than a dev on a team. Knowledge silos don't exist. Distributed expertise doesn't exist. There's no one to mentor, no shared vision to maintain, no intertia to combat. I consult on big complicated team projects. I also manage multiple solo projects.…
> I pay a service to manage backups so I can walk away from a solo project for months and know it's ticking away.
Any recommendation of such service?
Re: Ask HN: Solo-preneurs, how do you DevOps to save time?
#93I just use Ansible, Docker, Jenkins, Gitea, NewRelic, rclone, and some custom build services with GoLang for DB backups and maintenance, that’s it.
I’m fairly sure I can maintain up to 50 servers as solo developer with the above mentioned tools.
Re: Ask HN: Solo-preneurs, how do you DevOps to save time?
#94As a solo founder, your time is the most precious resource so all your DevOps effort should be minimized to the extent that you can prevent and debug issues. In practice, for me, this meant using tools that I'm already comfortable with (preferably in the same language as my codebase to minimize context switching) and resisting making things overly complicated with too many tools in the chain. For automated deployment, I'm using Fabric (for Python) that allows me to remotely run commands. DB backups are handled by cloud snapshots and rollbacks are ad-hoc based on Git.
This was also how things began at a previous startup I worked at until we grew and we could hire more resources to fix things.
Re: Ask HN: Solo-preneurs, how do you DevOps to save time?
#95I have been working on https://quantale.io since a year and half. It's a web based alternative to Bloomberg Terminal. I personally manage the CI/CD infra as well as the data infrastructure for my startup. Here is my setup: 1. Self-hosted Drone.io instance connected to github(the instance is behind a firewall and can only be accessed via a self-hosted VPN. Github IPs are whitelisted so that auto build/deployment can b…
> 2. Self-hosted production and staging server that hosts my web/django app. It has a local postgres db and is encrypted and backed up on S3 every hour. Did you have any instance where you needed to restore the DB / Have you done restoration tests to ensure this is a feasible solution? Also, since you are using local postgres DB, do you not run into issues like transaction id wraparound ? Also, how many days of backu…
> Did you have any instance where you needed to restore the DB / Have you done restoration tests to ensure this is a feasible solution?
Whenever a build is deployed to stage server, it automatically pulls the latest version backup in last 1 hour and restores it on the stage for testing with the latest data. I have config to do the same restore to the prod if needed.
I have been using the same setup for over 2 years to support an internal web app of a company.
> Also, since you are using local postgres DB, do you not run into issues like transaction id wraparound ?
This problem only arises when there is heavy load on the database, specifically high WRITE/UPDATE/DELETE operations. Quantale uses postgres to store only user info and all the other data is stored in Elasticsearch(twitter, reddit, news, SEC, Financial data on over 15000+ stocks). This is intentional because with the scalable server resources, my postgres setup can handle a large number of users before I see that problem. I can always scale up later when needed rather than over-engineering it right now.
>Also, how many days of backup you keep on S3? Considering you create 24 backups a day.
I have 7 days backups on S3 with versioning switched on for 60 days. So at anytime I can access the version backed up in last 60 days.
Re: Ask HN: Solo-preneurs, how do you DevOps to save time?
#96I recommend not doing any devops at all if you're a solo founder and trying to get it off the ground. You want to spend time on your product market fit, not fuck around with linux.
New services like render.com make it really easy to get robust, cheap hosting up. Much cheaper than Heroku.
Re: Ask HN: Solo-preneurs, how do you DevOps to save time?
#97I scaled to millions of users as a solo founder and still run the whole show myself. AMA if you like. Here is what works for me: CI: From the terminal, I run my tests and commit to git. Deployments: rsync Rollbacks: Never did one. If something breaks, I fix it and rsync the fix to production. DB: MariaDB k8s: I don't use it. Computers are very fast these days. A cheap single VPS will get you a long way. Nightmare: No…
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Re: Ask HN: Solo-preneurs, how do you DevOps to save time?
#98Earlier quoted context omitted.
> spooky arcane oldhat sysadmin deploy techniques (scp release to prod hosts, run deploy script I never realised I was using spooky arcane oldhat stuff! I feel wizardly now. My projects (for small clients and myself) basically use this. - A "build.sh" script that does a local build of back end and front end - A "deploy.sh" script that scp's everything to the server (either a digital ocean VPS or an EC2 instance), run…
This is great. Until you need to roll back.
git checkout abcd1234
./build.sh && ./deploy.sh
Re: Ask HN: Solo-preneurs, how do you DevOps to save time?
#99First you worry about meeting your paying customers need. Then you spin up just enough infrastructure to handle effectively meeting the need to continue getting paid.
You can do that with some shell scripts on an instance and an e-mail service and manually copy the whole mess for backup if it makes sense. The how of implementation is very case specific.
Thinking more on it I'd sum up as "provide a service that doesn't require that you be Google". If you start by specifying an impossible amount of infrastructure maybe there's an issue with management :).
Re: Ask HN: Solo-preneurs, how do you DevOps to save time?
#100I think this is going to be a pretty contrary comment, let's see how this goes.
I don't know what everyone is doing with kubernetes that takes up so much time and effort, especially in a SME environment.
I'm currently operating three separate kubernetes clusters for three different clients. And this is just me, there are no other tech people involved day-to-day. These clusters require minimal maintenance, just the occasional upgrade.
These clusters are small (1-10 nodes), and are on either GKE or bare metal. The biggest is around 100-200 running pods. I have a CI/CD pipeline setup in GitHub actions for each client. Development & CI uses docker-compose.
I used to do the old-hat 'scp your code to the server' kind of deployment, and this was a lot more pain. Kubernetes is big, but it solves so many problems. Ensuring everything is actually running, networking, SSL certs, persistence, configuration, etc etc.
I've been running this setup for 3+ years now. If I cast my mind back, I think I spent a weekend reading the k8s docs concepts section, then pretty quickly deployed a cluster on GKE. Given it was a team of one, I ditched RBAC which removed some complexity. Getting the CI/CD pipeline setup took some time (maybe a few more days), and I built more tooling as a went.
I really think kubernetes can be really useful for tiny teams, but there is a lot in there that is aimed at big teams. Use the bare minimum possible at first, and grow from there.
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Now here is a bonus unsolicited contrary comment.
Deploying k8s used to really require a cloud provider, particularly for persistent volumes and load balancing. But I think that has changed over the last few years. OpenEBS and MetalLB look like they are really addressing this.
Also, has anyone noticed that dedicated servers are cheap as chips now? I think the equivalent dedicated server would cost around 10x as much as an AWS instance. (I'm looking at Hetzner in particular, but OVH isn't far behind)
Given what is currently available from the k8s ecosystem, there seems to be a really strong case for deploying on bare metal these days.
For example, at a ballpark you can get a 400GB+/40core cluster for around $300/month (which also includes another 80GB/10cores of ancillary gubbins). The cost for that easily comes in at around $3,000 on AWS (ex any storage).
OpenEBS gives you replicated storage, MetalLB gives you your load balancing, and each instance has a couple of terabytes of NVMe too. And, if you're worried about reliability of physical servers, at that price you could replicate your setup across datacenters at minimal cost.
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I should add a caveat here. I've been working freelance in tech for 15 years and I am a massive generalist. I do everything from business consulting to design, devops to development, and I also run an ISP so know my way around networking/BGP etc. That being said, setting up a quick cluster on GKE doesn't require many of those skills.
Having written this ambling comment I guess I'll also say that I am am available if anyone wants a cluster setting up. I'm also about to start providing managed k8s services.