opdemand's comments

Thanks. We're excited to share our take on private PaaS with the open source community.

Re: Puppet -- A good chunk of the "orchestration" is done by updating data bags on a Chef Server, and force-converging Chef nodes over SSH. However I know Puppet has similar constructs, so it's definitely possible to fork the Deis controller and Puppetize it. We'd encourage that sort of contribution.

We at OpDemand wish the Flynn crew the best of luck. I expect more Docker-powered PaaS's to sprout up, so I'm glad Solomon and the dotCloud crew are focused so heavily on interoperability.

OpDemand will be releasing a very similar open-source project called Deis in the next few weeks. It's an open-source PaaS powered by Docker & Chef, with a Heroku-inspired workflow.

We're busy ironing out a few final issues, putting together documentation, quick-start guides, tutorials, etc.. but we are very close to launching our public 0.1.0, which will allow you to deploy your own private PaaS providing you complete control over hosting, backends, proxies and more.

Deis will be released soon. It's an open-source PaaS based on Docker & Chef, with a user experience modeled after Heroku. You create a "formation" which contains a configurable number of backends and Nginx proxies. After you git push your app to the formation, you can scale web=N worker=N just like Heroku. Deis will automatically balance Docker containers across the backends, reconfigure routing, etc.. all using Chef. The goal is to provide a Heroku-like platform where you control everything: Chef Server, PaaS controllers, hosting providers, routing layer, etc..

OpDemand is working on exactly what you're describing. Heroku-style private PaaS with emphasis on control over instances, routing layer, hosting providers, etc. Current version has full scaling support (instances, processes & nginx proxies). It's based on Docker, Heroku buildpacks all glued together via Chef server. It'll be released under Apache license. More to come...

Whether you agree or disagree, this is a non-starter in the US due to the entrenched two-party system. Best option is to build a "digital activism" caucus in one of the two parties.

Very cool. If you're looking for off-the-shelf API integrations, Temboo seems like a great solution.

You should check out OpDemand's EC2-based Ruby on Rails stack. Workflow is also very similar to Heroku (one click deploys, or `opdemand deploy`) but you run it off your own AWS account:

http://www.opdemand.com/docs/ruby-on-rails-quick-start-guide...

The stack automatically provisions, monitors and maintains an ELB, EC2 Instance(s), RDS and all the networking and key pair infrastructure you need. Most Heroku apps don't even need to be modified due to OpDemand's use Procfiles and standard dependency management. Deployment automation is all open-source Puppet hosted on GitHub.

I don't see the issue here. From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defense_in_depth_(computing):

> In terms of computer network defense, defense in depth measures should not only prevent security breaches, but also buy an organization time to detect and respond to an attack, thereby reducing and mitigating the consequences of a breach.

If you're looking for a Heroku-like environment with buildpack compatibility, you should check out OpDemand: http://opdemand.com/

The application stacks are basically a collection of open-source Puppet modules that replicate a Heroku-like environment on EC2, compatible with most Cedar buildpacks (Node, Ruby, Python, Java, Clojure). Real-time logging is piped through the web console. Workflow is to push code to your GitHub repo, press deploy and your code is pulled onto the instances, Puppet policies applied, etc. Command line `opdemand deploy` is available too.

It's also more than just app stacks, you can also deploy/integrate your own custom EC2 "addons" alongside your app stacks and manage them all as a unit (Redis, Mongo, PostgreSQL, custom services, whatever). There's also native support for Heroku apps via the web console which makes it easy to migrate to/from Heroku and EC2.

Firing off API calls with an SDK is great when you're a one-man operation.

At a certain point you need deployment automation that respects infrastructure dependencies, change tracking with an audit trail, an at-a-glance view of environments... all things AWS is not very good at. Though they're trying with OpsWorks.

How do you work around that stuff?

I'm curious. If you have a dozen or so Heroku apps and a few peers you collaborate with, what's your management strategy?

Appreciate the feedback. We've heard this from others. Then again, we have customers happily paying these prices. If you look at competitors in the space (RightScale, Scalr) we're on the lower end.

Keep in mind we include orchestration, monitoring, collaboration, real-time log feedback, command-line interface, REST API, not to mention EC2 templates for 1-click deployment of any open-source stack you can think of.

Besides making the introductory plan include 3 environments, any other suggestions on pricing?