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Why I left Heroku, and notes on my new AWS setup

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Re: Why I left Heroku, and notes on my new AWS setup

#21

Post by koa »

Can you share approximately how long the process took you? Thinking of going down that road with 2 small basic heroku rails apps 1 web, 1 worker, 1 small postgres DB. very little traffic. Both apps already at ~$170/month on Heroku. These are paid SaaS B2B apps, but they generate so little traffic but the way heroku partitions their services or addons, this really should cost like $30-40/month on a regular "hosting environment"

I know almost nothing from a unix sysadmin perspective, but would invest the time if it is feasible.

Re: Why I left Heroku, and notes on my new AWS setup

#22

Post by mjackson »

From the OP:

> I changed the app to use cookie-based sessions, so that session data is stored in signed cookies rather than in memcache. This way, the web app servers don't need to share any state (other than the database). Plus it's faster for end users because the app doesn't have to hit memcache for session data.

The switch to using cookies for storing session data instead of memcache has tradeoffs. Sure, you no longer need to ask memcache for the session data. But you are also shipping a significantly larger cookie back and forth on every request.

If you're storing a lot of data in your session, this could actually slow things down in the long run. [1]

[1]: http://yuiblog.com/blog/2007/03/01/performance-research-part...

Re: Why I left Heroku, and notes on my new AWS setup

#23

Post by sigmavirus24 »

boothead wrote: post #16

If you think puppet/chef is too much complexity you might find saltstack worth some attention. I haven't used it in real anger yet, but I've really liked what I've seen so far. I see they've even got instructions specific to aws now too [1] Also worth mentioning cloud formation as well [2]. That might make the pain of chef/puppet more of a worthwhile investment! [1] https://salt-cloud.readthedocs.org/en/latest/topics…

Also there are some useful example states on GitHub: https://github.com/esacteksab/salt-states

Re: Why I left Heroku, and notes on my new AWS setup

#24

Post by gingerlime »

This sounds pretty great. I haven't used Heroku, but have used Rackspace, AWS and Linode.

What worries me the most with AWS, is that there's virtually no support. I guess you can pay and get decent support, but on the low-end of the scale, it's pretty thin or non-existent. Now, I don't hear of so many issues with AWS that warrant contacting support about, and I don't face any issues myself, but just the thought of something going strange and having nobody to talk to makes me nervous.

In contrast, Linode does not have so many cool features, but their support is there and very responsive.

Re: Why I left Heroku, and notes on my new AWS setup

#25

Post by shanelja »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #14
bearwithclaws wrote: post #4

> The way we set up Soundslice is relatively simple. We made a custom AMI with our code/dependencies, then set up an Elastic Load Balancer with auto-scaling rules that instantiate app servers from that AMI based on load. Doesn't sound that simple to me (as a complete sysadmin noob). Somebody should write a book about this.

Would you be interested in a blog post about it? I'm a sysadmin/devops with 12 years in, and build stuff like this on a daily basis. I wouldn't mind sharing how the sausage is made.

I'm a PHP dev working with Apache on a daily basis, but besides .htaccess and some minor changes I can't really do much. I would love an article which explained in a simple way how to scale your server and really debug problems with it.

Re: Why I left Heroku, and notes on my new AWS setup

#26

Post by toomuchtodo »

scottvdp wrote: post #15
adrianh wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hehe, yeah, that sentence doesn't sound particularly simple. :-) Check out the code snippets I linked to from that blog post. It's pretty easy, I promise -- the tricky thing is just figuring out the various APIs.

I apparently need to get back to that book.

You know those days when you think you know a bit, and stumble upon someone who knows vastly more than you? Today was one of those days. It appears we're both Devops guys in Chicago; can I buy you a beer sometime?

Re: Why I left Heroku, and notes on my new AWS setup

#27

Post by tomsthumb »

boothead wrote: post #16

If you think puppet/chef is too much complexity you might find saltstack worth some attention. I haven't used it in real anger yet, but I've really liked what I've seen so far. I see they've even got instructions specific to aws now too [1] Also worth mentioning cloud formation as well [2]. That might make the pain of chef/puppet more of a worthwhile investment! [1] https://salt-cloud.readthedocs.org/en/latest/topics…

Ansible is another alternative that is relatively simple.

Re: Why I left Heroku, and notes on my new AWS setup

#28

Post by adrianh »

mjackson wrote: post #22

From the OP: > I changed the app to use cookie-based sessions, so that session data is stored in signed cookies rather than in memcache. This way, the web app servers don't need to share any state (other than the database). Plus it's faster for end users because the app doesn't have to hit memcache for session data. The switch to using cookies for storing session data instead of memcache has tradeoffs. Sure, you no l…

Definitely a great point. Fortunately my session cookies are teeny.

Re: Why I left Heroku, and notes on my new AWS setup

#29

Post by ceejayoz »

gingerlime wrote: post #24

This sounds pretty great. I haven't used Heroku, but have used Rackspace, AWS and Linode. What worries me the most with AWS, is that there's virtually no support. I guess you can pay and get decent support, but on the low-end of the scale, it's pretty thin or non-existent. Now, I don't hear of so many issues with AWS that warrant contacting support about, and I don't face any issues myself, but just the thought of so…

You can just bump up to AWS's $50 paid support as-needed for one month, if you need to. They've been very responsive to us with the three cases we've opened - roughly an hour to resolution each time.
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