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Launch HN: Nimbus (YC W22) – Cloud dev environments for teams

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Re: Launch HN: Nimbus (YC W22) – Cloud dev environments for teams

#71

Post by nithayakumar »

boundlessdreamz wrote: post #69

1. Your pricing assumes 30 hour / week. What happens if we use it beyond that? 2. What do you mean by "Local File Sync" here - https://endurable-podium-3d4.notion.site/Nimbus-vs-the-compe...

1. The usage based fee goes up or down based on the hours used. So if you use 60 hours / week, expect it to be double the estimates. In a few months, we'll be launching our "self-hosted" option that lets you avoid usage fees from us by running it on your own AWS.

2. Basically, you'll be able to keep the files synced between your local environment and your Nimbus workstations

Re: Launch HN: Nimbus (YC W22) – Cloud dev environments for teams

#72

Post by neilxchen »

hardwaresofton wrote: post #70

Congrats on the launch -- great minds think alike I guess... I've got a little think I'm still churning on @ https://nimbusws.com Love the site, digging into the concept... One question, how does Nimbus manage secrets/creds? Integration with KMS?

Neil from Nimbus here

Thanks for the support!

> One question, how does Nimbus manage secrets/creds? Integration with KMS?

It actually depends on what type of secrets/credentials that you are referring here

- For third-party tool login credentials (e.g. the GitHub authorization that we currently support), we are handling that with OAuth. That means we don't directly store secrets/creds on our end and developers can revoke the authorization any time on that tool and/or Nimbus;

- For any secrets/credentials that may be used in environment variables and dotfiles. They are currently lives within the "workspace" scope. That means, if developers delete the workspace, the credentials will be gone, and we don't persist them at the moment.

We are actively working on persisting env variables and dotfiles as part of settings of org/template/user, and the feature will become available soon.

We are also actively working on self-hosting Nimbus on customer's cloud - so if security is the top concern in your mind, with self-host solution, any secrets/credentials will never leave your cloud (together with codebases, user data, etc.)

Happy to provide more insights if you have more questions!

Re: Launch HN: Nimbus (YC W22) – Cloud dev environments for teams

#74

Post by hardwaresofton »

neilxchen wrote: post #72
hardwaresofton wrote: post #70

Congrats on the launch -- great minds think alike I guess... I've got a little think I'm still churning on @ https://nimbusws.com Love the site, digging into the concept... One question, how does Nimbus manage secrets/creds? Integration with KMS?

Neil from Nimbus here Thanks for the support! > One question, how does Nimbus manage secrets/creds? Integration with KMS? It actually depends on what type of secrets/credentials that you are referring here - For third-party tool login credentials (e.g. the GitHub authorization that we currently support), we are handling that with OAuth. That means we don't directly store secrets/creds on our end and developers can re…

Hey Neil,

Thanks for explaining! this makes a ton of sense -- the workspace scoped creds I guess would be the only place where they'd be stored (temporarily).

Re: Launch HN: Nimbus (YC W22) – Cloud dev environments for teams

#75

Post by neilxchen »

hardwaresofton wrote: post #74
neilxchen wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Neil from Nimbus here Thanks for the support! > One question, how does Nimbus manage secrets/creds? Integration with KMS? It actually depends on what type of secrets/credentials that you are referring here - For third-party tool login credentials (e.g. the GitHub authorization that we currently support), we are handling that with OAuth. That means we don't directly store secrets/creds on our end and developers can re…

Hey Neil, Thanks for explaining! this makes a ton of sense -- the workspace scoped creds I guess would be the only place where they'd be stored (temporarily).

Yes, that's correct!

Re: Launch HN: Nimbus (YC W22) – Cloud dev environments for teams

#76

Post by nithayakumar »

zerop wrote: post #73

Are Cloud environments/IDEs going to replace the desktop/laptop we give to dev teams. What's the comparison wrt cost and ease between two?

Nish from Nimbus here.

The cost of a laptop is a factor but its a drop in the bucket relative to the cost of an engineer. A $4k machine over 2 years on an engineer that has a fully loaded cost of over $200k/yr is only 1% of the total cost - not huge.

The real win is in helping engineers do more while saving time. This has huge impacts on the dev experience, productivity and general happiness in a role where many experience burnout.

But to answer more plainly, in some cases it will replace laptops (e.g. some companies ship laptops to their contractors to keep their code and data secure. They wont have to anymore). In other cases, teams save money on laptops (through lower spec'd machines with a longer lifespan).

Re: Launch HN: Nimbus (YC W22) – Cloud dev environments for teams

#77

Post by zerop »

nithayakumar wrote: post #76
zerop wrote: post #73

Are Cloud environments/IDEs going to replace the desktop/laptop we give to dev teams. What's the comparison wrt cost and ease between two?

Nish from Nimbus here. The cost of a laptop is a factor but its a drop in the bucket relative to the cost of an engineer. A $4k machine over 2 years on an engineer that has a fully loaded cost of over $200k/yr is only 1% of the total cost - not huge. The real win is in helping engineers do more while saving time. This has huge impacts on the dev experience, productivity and general happiness in a role where many expe…

Thanks. How does it help the engineer to save time?

Re: Launch HN: Nimbus (YC W22) – Cloud dev environments for teams

#79

Post by boundlessdreamz »

nithayakumar wrote: post #71
boundlessdreamz wrote: post #69

1. Your pricing assumes 30 hour / week. What happens if we use it beyond that? 2. What do you mean by "Local File Sync" here - https://endurable-podium-3d4.notion.site/Nimbus-vs-the-compe...

1. The usage based fee goes up or down based on the hours used. So if you use 60 hours / week, expect it to be double the estimates. In a few months, we'll be launching our "self-hosted" option that lets you avoid usage fees from us by running it on your own AWS. 2. Basically, you'll be able to keep the files synced between your local environment and your Nimbus workstations

Regarding (2), what does it use under the hood? Rsync? Will the files be automatically synced to local on save?

Re: Launch HN: Nimbus (YC W22) – Cloud dev environments for teams

#80

Post by nithayakumar »

zerop wrote: post #77
nithayakumar wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nish from Nimbus here. The cost of a laptop is a factor but its a drop in the bucket relative to the cost of an engineer. A $4k machine over 2 years on an engineer that has a fully loaded cost of over $200k/yr is only 1% of the total cost - not huge. The real win is in helping engineers do more while saving time. This has huge impacts on the dev experience, productivity and general happiness in a role where many expe…

Thanks. How does it help the engineer to save time?

For engineers, the most immediate wins here are cutting build/test times with more power, removing new project setup, and reducing environment error rate and troubleshooting.

It also gives more visibility into environments which help SRE like teams resolve issues faster.

What excites me (and many of our users) are the "micro-wins" that save time/let engineers do more. Some of these come from making workflows simpler (e.g. saving time switching context [branches/data/credentials]), improving device performance (e.g. being able to work longer unplugged), and device flexibility.

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