Earlier quoted context omitted.
Cool I must have missed that in the video. Thanks!
There's a video?
Show HN: Build your own Heroku on your own servers
71–80 of 110 posts
Re: Show HN: Build your own Heroku on your own servers
#72for a still fairly new to intermediate developer like myself, this seems more work than running it on heroku. not a bad concept, but maybe for more advanced developers.
Fair point. What can we do to make it easier for you?
Re: Show HN: Build your own Heroku on your own servers
#73What about security? How do you address it?
We provision the servers to be as secure as possible at the OS level using open source and industry tested best practices. If you are running on a cloud vendor like AWS you can benefit from added security layer provided by our partners at Dome 9 to provide network level security.
Thank you for responding. I'd like to see a page about security in your site. Its important.
Re: Show HN: Build your own Heroku on your own servers
#74Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes. Elastic Beanstalk is great for deploying your code to EC2. However Cloud 66 doesn't end at the end of deployment. It actively manages the app by monitoring the processes, making it extremely easy to add load balancers, scale web servers or background processes, add SSL certificates, schedule backups with one click and a lot more. It is also not limited to AWS and supports Linode, Joyent, Telefonica Cloud with Ra…
Actually attended a local user group presentation on elastic beanstalk last night. Elastic Beanstalk not only handles auto scaling. You can set limits that enable it to launch a replacement server if your pages start responding slowly. The new console lets you easily add SSL certificates and schedule backups. I was pleasantly surprised how much Amazon has added to it in the last few years.
I confirm all this. Elastic Beanstalk is so good, I don't even touch EC2 anymore. All my webapps are now being deployed through it. It costs more due to fact that each environment needs its own load-balancer even if only one server is involved which is extra $18/month but it is still worth.
If you deploy code that crashes webapp, just revert back to previous version. Problem fixed in a minute on all your servers.
And you don't even need to do that actually, spin new environment with new set of servers. Upload new version to new environment, do the testing, then promote this environment to production status (takes a few seconds), and terminate previous production environment.
Perhaps other companies can offer service like this too, but my platform of choice is ASP.NET which narrows the field quite a bit.
Re: Show HN: Build your own Heroku on your own servers
#75Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why!?
I assumed (perhaps wrongly) that if you don't want to deal with infrastructure you'd prefer PaaS solutions like Heroku and therefore you wouldn't want to manage not only a software package like CloudFoundry but also the servers that run it.
Well, Cloudfoundry actually offers both:
When you don't want to run the servers yourself, you can use services like appfog and nodejitsu (there may be more like those), which run a CloudFoundry stack.
When you decide "Hey, I want to run it on my server(s)", then you just setup their open source stack (there's even an automatic setup process for this) on your server and you're running on your own machine.
I assume I can't do that with your service, can I?
Re: Show HN: Build your own Heroku on your own servers
#76At $9/month I suspect you are drastically under-valuing the service you provide. Sysadmin time is expensive, and your value proposition is the same as Heroku: pay us so you don't waste time sysadmining your boxes. Time is unimaginably precious for small SaaS shops, and if you deliver what you promise, it's worth far more than $9/month.
Not to nay-say, but if you don't price according to value delivered, you don't stay in business long. Your income should grow faster than the infrastructure that you need to run the business.
It's also not clear what company is backing this service and how you're structured. Are you VC-backed? What happens when the money runs out, am I left holding the short end of the stick?
Re: Show HN: Build your own Heroku on your own servers
#77At $9/month I suspect you are drastically under-valuing the service you provide. Sysadmin time is expensive, and your value proposition is the same as Heroku: pay us so you don't waste time sysadmining your boxes. Time is unimaginably precious for small SaaS shops, and if you deliver what you promise, it's worth far more than $9/month. Not to nay-say, but if you don't price according to value delivered, you don't sta…
Fair points. We are a new service and are focusing on helping development teams at this point. Your point about the business is very valid and we are working on it to find the right price point.
I think the best point about our service is that since we don't own the infrastructure, you can always pickup the servers in the worst case scenario of us going out of business.
Re: Show HN: Build your own Heroku on your own servers
#78Earlier quoted context omitted.
I assumed (perhaps wrongly) that if you don't want to deal with infrastructure you'd prefer PaaS solutions like Heroku and therefore you wouldn't want to manage not only a software package like CloudFoundry but also the servers that run it.
Well, Cloudfoundry actually offers both: When you don't want to run the servers yourself, you can use services like appfog and nodejitsu (there may be more like those), which run a CloudFoundry stack. When you decide "Hey, I want to run it on my server(s)", then you just setup their open source stack (there's even an automatic setup process for this) on your server and you're running on your own machine. I assume I c…
I don't believe nodejitsu runs on CloudFoundry. The other one I know of is Stackato.
Re: Show HN: Build your own Heroku on your own servers
#79At $9/month I suspect you are drastically under-valuing the service you provide. Sysadmin time is expensive, and your value proposition is the same as Heroku: pay us so you don't waste time sysadmining your boxes. Time is unimaginably precious for small SaaS shops, and if you deliver what you promise, it's worth far more than $9/month. Not to nay-say, but if you don't price according to value delivered, you don't sta…
Fair points. We are a new service and are focusing on helping development teams at this point. Your point about the business is very valid and we are working on it to find the right price point. I think the best point about our service is that since we don't own the infrastructure, you can always pickup the servers in the worst case scenario of us going out of business.
Your last point is DEFINITELY a +1 over Heroku. Although I'd be pissed to lose my deployment & monitoring tools and have to piece it all back together (especially after I thought it was "solved").
Just sayin', this is a tough business, and people get very cranky when things break. :-)
All that said, this is a huge space for new business, and I'm glad to see you guys throw your hat in the ring. Definitely an interesting take on things. Best wishes!
Re: Show HN: Build your own Heroku on your own servers
#80What about server security updates? How do you handle normal package updates, restarting services after an update, etc?