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AppFog Wants To Do For Developer Platforms What Google Did For EMail

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11–20 of 38 posts

Re: AppFog Wants To Do For Developer Platforms What Google Did For EMail

#11

Just curious - How is this different than buying a server from Amazon, and sticking Ruby (or whatever it is that I need) on it and using it? Does the incremental value provided by Appfog lies in the fact it abstracts this get-meself-a-server-from-amazon part? Genuinely curious and hence asking.

A thousand words, or 30 seconds start to finish of deploying a Ruby app yourself on AppFog - https://console.appfog.com/signup

Re: AppFog Wants To Do For Developer Platforms What Google Did For EMail

#12
Im really not sure about the pricing model. Here are a couple of points:

There are tons of people looking for $5 vps that have like 500mb on ram. Your pricing structure will be like a magnet for those type of people. I dont think may of those people will upgrade to a $100 a month plan though.

As with the point above, you are relying to heavily on the people who have bought into the system at the free plan and now have to migrate. If I were to go onto one of the paid plans I would feel bad knowing most of the money im spending is going to provide a free service tier.

50Gb data transfer limit 0_0. Its 2012, bandwidth is dirt cheap and 50GB really is not that much. Especially if the person is paying $100+ per month. If someone is using more than 2GB of ram they are most likely using more than 50GB of incoming/outgoing data.

Edit: I signed up to test it out and while it says unlimited services (free plan) once you signup it limits you to 10.

Edit2: Turns out you need to have some ruby knowledge to get started (even if they offer a ton of languages). Since I dont I will have to postpone playing with it till the weekend where I can dedicate some time to playing with ruby.

Re: AppFog Wants To Do For Developer Platforms What Google Did For EMail

#13

Just curious - How is this different than buying a server from Amazon, and sticking Ruby (or whatever it is that I need) on it and using it? Does the incremental value provided by Appfog lies in the fact it abstracts this get-meself-a-server-from-amazon part? Genuinely curious and hence asking.

A thousand words, or 30 seconds start to finish of deploying a Ruby app yourself on AppFog - https://console.appfog.com/signup

I registered as you suggested. I agree that getting productive in 10-15 minutes is great, but the setup time, at least for me, even if it takes a whole day, is a negligible overhead in my life as a programmer. Currently I run multiple servers on Amazon and as someone that programs in more than two languages, I drop an instance of whatever I am working on (Ruby, Java, Django as examples) and they really do not take much time at all. I am sure this post shows my age, but I am trying to understand the real value a service like Appfog provides.

Also may I ask how do I setup ssh trust and how do I access the command prompt.

Re: AppFog Wants To Do For Developer Platforms What Google Did For EMail

#14
AppFog's service extends across different infrastructure providers

Dropping into the IaaS world for a minute, is this as common as it seems me to be?

Personally, I run servers over number of cloud providers, and then have a few VPSs around too, plus some servers at home, and lots of people I know are the same.

Is this a common thing people do?

I've been thinking about doing a dashboard type app to display/manage servers across providers.

What tools are people using at the moment for this kind of thing?

(I'm actually running a very short survey on this at the moment. I'd love it if people would do it - happy to share the results here: http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/LDNZFG3)

Re: AppFog Wants To Do For Developer Platforms What Google Did For EMail

#15
post #14

AppFog's service extends across different infrastructure providers Dropping into the IaaS world for a minute, is this as common as it seems me to be? Personally, I run servers over number of cloud providers, and then have a few VPSs around too, plus some servers at home, and lots of people I know are the same. Is this a common thing people do? I've been thinking about doing a dashboard type app to display/manage serv…

It may be a common thing individual developers that play with everything do. I doubt it's common for businesses to deploy production apps across multiple clouds. Unfortunately I don't think that survey will be able to answer that either way.

Re: AppFog Wants To Do For Developer Platforms What Google Did For EMail

#18
post #16

They claim to support .NET. But after sign up and creating an app in "Step 1: Choose an application" i can not select any .NET "Application". So their .NET Support claim is essentially a lie ?

It seems, from their past blog posts, that some advertised features are in "private beta" still.

Re: AppFog Wants To Do For Developer Platforms What Google Did For EMail

#19
post #14

AppFog's service extends across different infrastructure providers Dropping into the IaaS world for a minute, is this as common as it seems me to be? Personally, I run servers over number of cloud providers, and then have a few VPSs around too, plus some servers at home, and lots of people I know are the same. Is this a common thing people do? I've been thinking about doing a dashboard type app to display/manage serv…

It may be a common thing individual developers that play with everything do. I doubt it's common for businesses to deploy production apps across multiple clouds. Unfortunately I don't think that survey will be able to answer that either way.

It's interesting.

I've been running that survey for a little while, with a non-HN audience. More than 50% use more than one provider, and people managing more than 10 servers (who I presume are doing it for a business) don't seem any less likely.

(Thanks for all the answers BTW. I especially liked the OrionVM vs Ninefold comparison someone did in a comment - I'm from Australia, and for various reasons are reasonably familiar with the offering available. Alex from OrionVM is on HN, too)

Re: AppFog Wants To Do For Developer Platforms What Google Did For EMail

#20
post #16

They claim to support .NET. But after sign up and creating an app in "Step 1: Choose an application" i can not select any .NET "Application". So their .NET Support claim is essentially a lie ?

It seems, from their past blog posts, that some advertised features are in "private beta" still.

I spend 30 Minutes trying to find the "magic .NET" option. If they have "private beta" features dont advertise them or clearly mark them as private.

This just leaves a very bad taste and wasted my time and probably time of a lot of other devs.

Are this the same guys that got "owned by a teenager", http://blog.phpfog.com/2011/03/22/how-we-got-owned-by-a-few-... ?

Already two big red flags for me.

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