

FathomDB (YC W08) introduces PlatformLayer: XaaS - tjpd
http://blog.justinsb.com/blog/2012/04/06/introducing-platformlayer/

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justinsb
That hit HN fast! I'm the founder of FathomDB (YC W08) & the primary author of
PlatformLayer.

PlatformLayer lets you run anything as a service: MySQLaaS, RedisAAS,
NginxAAS, DnsAAS etc. It's based on the code & know-how from running MySQL-as-
a-service for FathomDB.

I'm planning a series of explanatory blog posts & better documentation. In the
meantime, I'll hang out here to answer any questions.

~~~
gkelly
How does this compare to dotcloud?

~~~
justinsb
Dotcloud is closed source, but much more mature - they have customers using it
in production. PlatformLayer is open source, but I wouldn't run a bank on it -
yet!

But the big difference is one of scope: PlatformLayer makes it easy/easier to
build a service like DotCloud. You could choose to run it internally (e.g. if
you want to run on a private cloud). You could choose to make it publicly
available as a DotCloud competitor (maybe not today, but soon!)

The end-goal is that it will be much easier to build these services, so there
will be more of them, covering any software you want to run. So if you just
want to consume services your options should be better, cheaper and more
numerous; even if you never run PlatformLayer directly.

But this is the beginning of a project, where DotCloud is a useful hosting
platform today.

~~~
shykes
Ironically dotCloud started out in 2008 as a very similar project, with the
same lofty goals. We had VM templating and versioning
(<https://github.com/dotcloud/cloudlets>), cross-infrastructure deployment
(<https://bitbucket.org/dotcloud/vm2vm>), various goodies based on container
virtualization, copy-on-write filesystems
(<https://github.com/dotcloud/aufs.py>), and an orchestration layer to tie it
all together (I found an old fork at
<https://bitbucket.org/Foi3GraS/dotcloud>). It powered various 3d-party "XaaS"
throughout 2009 - here's a French provider that still seems to be alive:
<http://www.diva-cloud.com/softwares>

Then in 2010 we joined YC, and actually tested our claim that "you can make it
publicly available as a service!". Within 6 months we had rewritten 100% of
the codebase around the _real_ constraints of deploying and being responsible
for tens of thousands of applications. We are only now getting around to open-
sourcing some of these new, battle-tested components: a great example is
ZeroRPC (<http://github.com/dotcloud/zerorpc-python>). More to come.

My hard-earned advice to you Justin is: you _have_ to operate PlatformLayer as
a service first and foremost, and the code you publish must flow from the
real-world experience of operating that service, charging money for it, and
being accountable for its reliability - not the other way around. There's a
reason VMWare is a flop in the cloud world: they don't know how to operate
their stuff.

In any case, I'm super excited to see so much open-source activity around
solving these problems. Back in 2008 it was quite lonely :)

We hackers all benefit from this friendly competition in the end - happy
hacking!

~~~
chubot
Interesting -- what were the problems that came up from running real services?
Was there a fundamental architectural issue, or just polishing off all the
corner cases? Fault tolerance issues? Too complex? Idempotency, state
management, etc.?

I tried VMWare's cloud foundry. It's hidden behind a signup form that has to
be approved. Other than that it seemed decent. I managed to get through the
hello world and have a working rails app. Not as good as Heroku. I'm not
really sure if VMWare really wants people to use their service, or they just
want people to run their own Cloud Foundry so they can sell VM licenses.

~~~
shykes
> _I'm not really sure if VMWare really wants people to use their service, or
> they just want people to run their own Cloud Foundry so they can sell VM
> licenses._

I'm not sure they've figured it out themselves, either :)

------
nodesocket
Looks very interesting, would love to see a guide or video walkthrough from
the start (installation/configuration OpenStack) to building a simple service.

~~~
justinsb
Thanks. That's definitely the next step - just a matter of finding the time.

NodeSocket looks cool - would you mind sharing a bit about how you built it?
Would PlatformLayer have helped?

~~~
nodesocket
Sure our hypervisor management is OnApp. We have our own hardware in a
datacenter here in San Francisco. Are you here in the valley?

~~~
justinsb
I hadn't seen OnApp before - I'll check it out. Glad to see you went with your
own hardware rather than locking your architecture in to AWS - I hope that'll
be a big advantage for you long term.

DM me on twitter if you're interested in meeting up sometime to talk
platforms! @justinsantab

