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Apollo – An Extensible Docker-Based Platform as a Service (PaaS)

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Re: Apollo – An Extensible Docker-Based Platform as a Service (PaaS)

#11

Post by gavinray »

This looks incredible! Has some serious offerings against the current Self-Hosted PaaS scene, hope I can check it out over the weekend.

I have used Dokku[0] in production, and played with CapRover[1] on hobby projects. Flynn was like a better Dokku, before development died.[2]

CapRover is a great experience, and it's not a toy IMO. It nails the role of "I want to press a button and have a self-hosted Heroku, with a nice dashboard, auto-provisioned HTTPS domains, and be able to deploy a bunch of Docker images or Buildpack apps." A single-node $10 box can run a good number of services.

This looks well-positioned and closer to something like Nomad, but going through the readme I had a few questions:

  "Apollo requires a manager- or control-node. We call this manager-0. This node runs the entire controlplane and monitoring stack for a cluster and should be sized appropriately (8GB Memory, 2-4 vCPUs)."
Is there a way to run this single-node and disable some of the peripherals for cheap/play $5-10 instances (disregarding best-practices)? An 8GB mem + 4vCPU DO droplet is $40/mo. Not an arm and a leg, but if you have to add at least a secondary server, seems like minimum would be ~$50/mo?

  "Your space has been created. Now let's cd to its directory: cd $HOME/.apollo/.spaces/demo-1.space"
Are the Apollo Spaces not meant to be checked in to version control and used for infra + shared between people on your team?

And final question (sorry if this is dumb):

  Automated infrastructure (currently only DigitalOcean and HETZNER Cloud supported)
Does this mean I can still deploy to AWS/GCP, I just need to do it manually, or are these infrastructure templates required?

[0] https://github.com/dokku/dokku

[1] https://github.com/caprover/caprover

[2] https://github.com/flynn/flynn

Re: Apollo – An Extensible Docker-Based Platform as a Service (PaaS)

#12

Post by giovannibonetti »

alpb wrote: post #5

Despite the nice packaging, it appears to be a single-person maintained project. There are quite a few reasons why no opinionated PaaS built on Docker Swarm or Kubernetes (maybe surprisingly) came even close to being a popular choice in the market. Usually, anyone serious who's going to bet on a PaaS that runs their stack will also need a serious corporate entity (i.e. software vendor) supporting the tools in case th…

What about Google App Engine Flex, Google Cloud Run and Amazon Fargate?

In my company we have been using App Engine Flex in production successfully for a few years already.

Re: Apollo – An Extensible Docker-Based Platform as a Service (PaaS)

#14

Post by gavinray »

alpb wrote: post #5

Despite the nice packaging, it appears to be a single-person maintained project. There are quite a few reasons why no opinionated PaaS built on Docker Swarm or Kubernetes (maybe surprisingly) came even close to being a popular choice in the market. Usually, anyone serious who's going to bet on a PaaS that runs their stack will also need a serious corporate entity (i.e. software vendor) supporting the tools in case th…

The fact that it works with an existing docker-compose.yaml and will provision itself on a cloud for you is pretty compelling I think.

I have tried the Docker AWS ECS plugin for deploying your compose stack, and it's buggy.

The AWS ECS CLI would deploy docker-compose files in V1. V2 (now called Copilot) has shifted away from this, and it uses a custom manifest YAML file. Copilot isn't bad.

Most of the platforms I work on have a docker-compose stack with Postgres, a backend API, a frontend, and potentially ancillary services. Anything that integrates well with this is a godsend tbh, because otherwise you need to maintain two sets of configuration and keep them in sync.

Re: Apollo – An Extensible Docker-Based Platform as a Service (PaaS)

#15

Post by axbytg »

randtrain34 wrote: post #9

This seems very similar in concept to https://caprover.com/

Looks like the main difference is docker compose compatibility but admittedly I have more reading to do. Still tho that is a good difference! I have multiple caprover nodes in prod for hobby stuff so absolutely not knocking it.

Re: Apollo – An Extensible Docker-Based Platform as a Service (PaaS)

#16

Post by alpb »

giovannibonetti wrote: post #12
alpb wrote: post #5

Despite the nice packaging, it appears to be a single-person maintained project. There are quite a few reasons why no opinionated PaaS built on Docker Swarm or Kubernetes (maybe surprisingly) came even close to being a popular choice in the market. Usually, anyone serious who's going to bet on a PaaS that runs their stack will also need a serious corporate entity (i.e. software vendor) supporting the tools in case th…

What about Google App Engine Flex, Google Cloud Run and Amazon Fargate? In my company we have been using App Engine Flex in production successfully for a few years already.

Disclaimer: I work on Cloud Run.

In my comment I was referring to open source PaaS projects building on Kubernetes/Docker. Those are managed services where you aren’t exposed to the underlying infra (to varying degrees). So they aren’t apples to apples with this project.

Re: Apollo – An Extensible Docker-Based Platform as a Service (PaaS)

#17

Post by zoom6628 »

agloeregrets wrote: post #6
verisimilidude wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also: https://github.com/ApolloAuto/apollo It’s a contested open source project name, for sure.

And let’s not forget the well-liked iOS Reddit client as well. Or the Greek god Or the moon missions. Or Counter Culture’s Light Roast beans. Basically the name is a bit tired and few actually have a reason to call it that. (Apollo the Reddit client to browse the world of Reddit which has an alien as it’s avatar almost makes sense.)

or the premium workstation of the 80s.

Re: Apollo – An Extensible Docker-Based Platform as a Service (PaaS)

#18

Post by filmgirlcw »

gavinray wrote: post #11

This looks incredible! Has some serious offerings against the current Self-Hosted PaaS scene, hope I can check it out over the weekend. I have used Dokku[0] in production, and played with CapRover[1] on hobby projects. Flynn was like a better Dokku, before development died.[2] CapRover is a great experience, and it's not a toy IMO. It nails the role of "I want to press a button and have a self-hosted Heroku, with a n…

Agreed with all of this. The other option I would mention, although it has a wonky pricing structure is Cloudron [1].

I use CapRover on a spare droplet and it’s a really good solution. This looks like a compelling option too.

[1]: https://www.cloudron.io/

Re: Apollo – An Extensible Docker-Based Platform as a Service (PaaS)

#19

Post by filmgirlcw »

axbytg wrote: post #15
randtrain34 wrote: post #9

This seems very similar in concept to https://caprover.com/

Looks like the main difference is docker compose compatibility but admittedly I have more reading to do. Still tho that is a good difference! I have multiple caprover nodes in prod for hobby stuff so absolutely not knocking it.

Yeah that seems like the main difference. Like you, I use CapRover for hobby stuff and love it.

But Docker compose could make this really compelling too.

Re: Apollo – An Extensible Docker-Based Platform as a Service (PaaS)

#20

Post by christophilus »

andrewxdiamond wrote: post #7
agloeregrets wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And let’s not forget the well-liked iOS Reddit client as well. Or the Greek god Or the moon missions. Or Counter Culture’s Light Roast beans. Basically the name is a bit tired and few actually have a reason to call it that. (Apollo the Reddit client to browse the world of Reddit which has an alien as it’s avatar almost makes sense.)

Amazon engineers will also recognize Apollo as something else https://www.allthingsdistributed.com/2014/11/apollo-amazon-d...

As will old NASA astronauts.
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