Great feedback. We've heard this and we've been making strides to improve it. For the most part, this is largely our own doing: we didn't do a good job at all of marketing Atlas to the open source community. There are various reasons for this, including not wanting the community to feel we were pushing commercializing onto them. Another reason is that as Atlas was in tech preview, we wanted to build more features and stabilize on the features we had. But we're carefully learning what the boundaries are and are spreading them a bit more.
If you're an open source user, the first thing that you can do is just go to atlas.hashicorp.com and see the features we add on top of the project you're already using. We now break down features by project being augmented.
We'll continue to improve this! Thanks for the feedback.
EDIT: Sorry, I was answering "why don't I know what Atlas is" versus the answer that was expected for "what is Atlas". The best answer for that is to use the homepage and click on the product (Vagrant, Packer, etc.) you use the most! http://atlas.hashicorp.com
Good rationale for not having the people who write the product promote the product. You're too close to remember everybody else doesn't know what things are.
Based only on the leading description, it sounds like something trying to be a non-crap Docker replacement that was actually built from experience instead of just trying to capture a VC money waterfall? Atlas builds upon and unites our popular open source tooling to create a version control system for infrastructure. Automate, audit, and collaborate on infrastructure changes across any infrastructure provider.
Though, looking more at this post, it's a "we did this product" post, not a post about the product: the product has become a polished, intuitive experience.
That's nice?
The actual product page starts with: Atlas unites HashiCorp development and infrastructure management tools to create a version control system for infrastructure. Automate, audit, and collaborate on infrastructure changes.
Which, I'm still not sure.
Atlas can be used for all its features, or features can be used individually. All components are HashiCorp open source tools that are hosted and run in Atlas.
That's what it can do, but not what it do. Is this a side effect of SF startup culture? Do we forget everybody doesn't live inside our startups?
As best I can tell, Atlas is their map (heh) of how all their pre-existing products work together, and you can buy one umbrella product/support instead of buying 4 individual products?
For any of us who have watched this team's output and quality and wondered _Why isn't this team being acquired?_, here is Hashicorp's play. Congrats to team on shipping.
It will be interesting to see how all this plays out.
I've never used any of Hashicorps stuff (thought consul did arrive on my radar theother day..). Any recommendations? We use the Atlassian stack here (stash, bamboo, etc) and deploy to AWS (regular AMIs rather than any of that fancy docker stuff). Anything here we should look into?
I don't really use anything of Hashicorp's except for Vagrant. That his been fairly revolutionary for all of the teams I've brought it to. That is, Vagrant + Ansible. A repository of Ansible configuration scripts that can easily be slurped down to provision a Vagrant image means much more portable development environments.
In the case of the company I'm currently at it's even more important because we have a firmware build system with a non-trivial configuration that would take days to replicate correctly (because of all the "missing pieces" required that the original developer forgot to write down when documenting the process post-setting it up).
Packer is great for generating AMIs, particularly if you're already using some form of config mgmt. It will let you tie in your existing puppet/chef/salt/ansible/shell/etc. and output amis based on your config.
Kudos to the team though, love the projects and will continue to support it as it continues to mature.
There's still some pretty significant pain points, bit surprised they released already. Hope they get piles of cash to roll in for all their hard work.
One question I have; with general availability, it seems they indicate packer builds inside of Atlas are free now? It was my understanding that this would be a paid product, so I have my workflow for the OSS vagrant boxes I build all local.
If I can switch my workflow to build and store all the box versions inside of Atlas, that would save some time and effort...
While $40 per node might sound high, I think it is reasonable. I've worked on several products that are priced per node/server.
Per-node a difficult proposition -- the price of "per server" of something varies wildly, for example a t1.micro is roughly $9.50 a month, while a m4.4xlarge is $738. $40 on 9.50 seems extreme, but $40 on $738, and Atlas is only a 5% of the cost of your server.
But when your target customer is using high end instances, because they are creating more value for their company that way, a 5% upcharge for better management, can be justified. Mostly its because the team of ops/software engineers supporting production environment are going to cost more than the infrastructure anyways.
Additionally, any large deal (>1000 nodes) is gonna get negotiated anyways, so public pricing is kinda a wash.
[+] [-] tptacek|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mitchellh|10 years ago|reply
If you're an open source user, the first thing that you can do is just go to atlas.hashicorp.com and see the features we add on top of the project you're already using. We now break down features by project being augmented.
Example: Vagrant augmentation: https://atlas.hashicorp.com/learn/vagrant
We have pages like that for all our tools.
We'll continue to improve this! Thanks for the feedback.
EDIT: Sorry, I was answering "why don't I know what Atlas is" versus the answer that was expected for "what is Atlas". The best answer for that is to use the homepage and click on the product (Vagrant, Packer, etc.) you use the most! http://atlas.hashicorp.com
[+] [-] seiji|10 years ago|reply
Based only on the leading description, it sounds like something trying to be a non-crap Docker replacement that was actually built from experience instead of just trying to capture a VC money waterfall? Atlas builds upon and unites our popular open source tooling to create a version control system for infrastructure. Automate, audit, and collaborate on infrastructure changes across any infrastructure provider.
Though, looking more at this post, it's a "we did this product" post, not a post about the product: the product has become a polished, intuitive experience.
That's nice?
The actual product page starts with: Atlas unites HashiCorp development and infrastructure management tools to create a version control system for infrastructure. Automate, audit, and collaborate on infrastructure changes.
Which, I'm still not sure.
Atlas can be used for all its features, or features can be used individually. All components are HashiCorp open source tools that are hosted and run in Atlas.
That's what it can do, but not what it do. Is this a side effect of SF startup culture? Do we forget everybody doesn't live inside our startups?
As best I can tell, Atlas is their map (heh) of how all their pre-existing products work together, and you can buy one umbrella product/support instead of buying 4 individual products?
[+] [-] vladikoff|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mmcclellan|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jalfresi|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jtreminio|10 years ago|reply
So much so that I created a FOSS that uses it and Puppet: https://puphpet.com
[+] [-] WestCoastJustin|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Ixiaus|10 years ago|reply
In the case of the company I'm currently at it's even more important because we have a firmware build system with a non-trivial configuration that would take days to replicate correctly (because of all the "missing pieces" required that the original developer forgot to write down when documenting the process post-setting it up).
[+] [-] imperialWicket|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] devhead|10 years ago|reply
There's still some pretty significant pain points, bit surprised they released already. Hope they get piles of cash to roll in for all their hard work.
[+] [-] geerlingguy|10 years ago|reply
If I can switch my workflow to build and store all the box versions inside of Atlas, that would save some time and effort...
[+] [-] sethvargo|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mrdrozdov|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pquerna|10 years ago|reply
Per-node a difficult proposition -- the price of "per server" of something varies wildly, for example a t1.micro is roughly $9.50 a month, while a m4.4xlarge is $738. $40 on 9.50 seems extreme, but $40 on $738, and Atlas is only a 5% of the cost of your server.
But when your target customer is using high end instances, because they are creating more value for their company that way, a 5% upcharge for better management, can be justified. Mostly its because the team of ops/software engineers supporting production environment are going to cost more than the infrastructure anyways.
Additionally, any large deal (>1000 nodes) is gonna get negotiated anyways, so public pricing is kinda a wash.
[+] [-] ipedrazas|10 years ago|reply
Pricing seems a bit Atlassian: almost free if you're small, very expensive if you are not.
[+] [-] lloydde|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ende|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bahador|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mrmrcoleman|10 years ago|reply
Now send someone to softwarecircus.io to talk about it!
[+] [-] unknown|10 years ago|reply
[deleted]