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Introducing Empire: A Self-Hosted PaaS Built on Docker and Amazon ECS

engineering.remind.com

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Re: Introducing Empire: A Self-Hosted PaaS Built on Docker and Amazon ECS

#31

Post by jordanthoms »

ejholmes wrote: post #16
jordanthoms wrote: post #8

How do you handle running one-off tasks (consoles, migrations etc) on this setup? This is something most of these systems seem to ignore...

We actually have a relay ( https://github.com/remind101/empire/tree/master/relay ) service that can be run alongside Empire that acts as a proxy to interactive Docker sessions. It's a bit of an experiment right now and something we'd like to solve better in the future, but it allows you to run containers with `emp run -a `.

Interesting! We are in a similar situation to where you were, with a bigish app on Heroku which we are keen to move over to EC2 to join the rest of our infrastructure, definitely keen to see how empire develops

Re: Introducing Empire: A Self-Hosted PaaS Built on Docker and Amazon ECS

#32

Post by Zaheer »

ejholmes wrote: post #15
sagivo wrote: post #5

personally i use dokku ( https://github.com/progrium/dokku ). i would be happy to see one standard "heroku-like" paass since i feel too many people trying to tackle the same problem.

Dokku is definitely an awesome project (pretty much anything from Jeff Lindsay is pretty good)! The primary problem is that dokku is meant for just 1 service and we have quite a few. We'd love to see one standard too. Personally, I think it's good to have a lot of competing solutions right now (ECS vs Kubernetes, Docker vs Rocket, etc) and we'll see things settle in the next couple of years as containerization become…

Not exactly sure what you mean by its meant for just 1 service? Do you mean just one box? I run multiple services/apps on my dokku instance

Re: Introducing Empire: A Self-Hosted PaaS Built on Docker and Amazon ECS

#33

Post by stephenr »

nickpsecurity wrote: post #29
stephenr wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From the point of view of software, I generally consider something self-host{ed,able} if I can run it on a machine I choose, without enforced network/environment requirements.

It's a fair viewpoint. I guess my critical point is control: control over the hardware, its software, legal rights to it, and so on. If they're in control, it's theirs. How can it be myself if outsiders control or own it? I guess a combo of philosophical and legal.

I understand your point about control completely!

My highest priority for businesses making these choices is usually slightly more pragmatic, and focuses on avoiding provider lockin - something that you can install and run on your own local hardware, you can also (in most cases) install and run on co-located hardware, on rented hardware, on traditional rented virtual hardware (i.e. VPS) or on "flexible" rented virtual hardware (i.e. AWS, Azure, etc).

Re: Introducing Empire: A Self-Hosted PaaS Built on Docker and Amazon ECS

#34

Post by stephenr »

mentat wrote: post #17
stephenr wrote: post #6

Does this really classify as "self hosted" if it's heavily dependent on AWS?

It runs inside networks you control at least at the configuration level, so I would say so.

As I explained in a sibling thread, I would consider "self host{ed,able}" to mean that you can run it on an arbitrary machine (virtual and/or physical) regardless of provider (e.g. this is AWS specific, so I can't run it on physical hardware I own/rent or even on a competing provider of virtual machines)

Re: Introducing Empire: A Self-Hosted PaaS Built on Docker and Amazon ECS

#35

Post by mixmastamyk »

Congrats, not everyone can create a simple elegant platform and write about it in such an accessible manner. I suppose you're standing on the shoulders of giants, but still.

This is the level of engineering/communication I always shoot for, and which (somewhat disappointingly) is rare where I've worked.

Re: Introducing Empire: A Self-Hosted PaaS Built on Docker and Amazon ECS

#36

Post by davidbanham »

floridaguy01 wrote: post #7

aws is silly expensive. Why didnt you build this on top of digitalocean? Digitalocean is so awesome right now. They dont even charge for bandwidth overages.

DO is great for a lot of things, but it's not AWS. You can't allocate extra disk to a droplet, for example. AWS is a _much_ more complete offering than DO.

Re: Introducing Empire: A Self-Hosted PaaS Built on Docker and Amazon ECS

#37

Post by bgentry »

Really cool stuff. Seems like you found a good way to hand off most of the hard stuff to AWS and only do a few key things yourselves to make the experience better. As such I think Empire has the potential to be a viable option for many companies, which is something I rarely say about a PaaS project :)

Re: Introducing Empire: A Self-Hosted PaaS Built on Docker and Amazon ECS

#38

Post by merb »

helloiamaperson wrote: post #27
Veratyr wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cloud Foundry requires a ton of (compute) overhead to get set up. It's very much intended for large projects. Hell, you need a separate VM just to install it. For anyone looking at a Dokku alternative, Cloud Foundry isn't one. Openshift is nice though.

> Hell, you need a separate VM just to install it. I'm not sure why that's a problem. If you want something that's actually like heroku like in terms of uptime and what not, you need something that can manage the health of the cluster. Dokku's cool, but it doesn't make sense for anything you actually need to depend on. If it doesn't make sense to pay for the overhead of running your own paas, just use Heroku instead.

Heroku isn't cheap. And to run a small PaaS like alternative there are many many more solutions that are way better and faster and more secure than Cloud Foundry. Hell I mean did you even read the requirements of Cloud Foundry, it takes a hell lot of everything just to manage a few boxes. Also CF comes from Pivotal, listen to the talks they made, they say, start out small, however starting out small with CF is just impossible.

And OpenShift ist great, especially Origin M5 which is coming, soon tm.

Re: Introducing Empire: A Self-Hosted PaaS Built on Docker and Amazon ECS

#39

Post by mateuszf »

Zaheer wrote: post #32
ejholmes wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dokku is definitely an awesome project (pretty much anything from Jeff Lindsay is pretty good)! The primary problem is that dokku is meant for just 1 service and we have quite a few. We'd love to see one standard too. Personally, I think it's good to have a lot of competing solutions right now (ECS vs Kubernetes, Docker vs Rocket, etc) and we'll see things settle in the next couple of years as containerization become…

Not exactly sure what you mean by its meant for just 1 service? Do you mean just one box? I run multiple services/apps on my dokku instance

He means multiple instances - for scaling horizontally when traffic increases.

Re: Introducing Empire: A Self-Hosted PaaS Built on Docker and Amazon ECS

#40

Post by serferfish »

floridaguy01 wrote: post #7

aws is silly expensive. Why didnt you build this on top of digitalocean? Digitalocean is so awesome right now. They dont even charge for bandwidth overages.

Digitalocean is silly expensive. Why don't you look at Atlantic.net they are so awesome and charge way less than overpriced digitalocean. Why not run it on your laptop which you've already paid for, that would be even cheaper than overpriced atlantic.net!
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