
Carina – High-Performance, Instant-On Docker Containers - eddywashere
https://getcarina.com/blog/announcing-carina/
======
jdub
I'm surprised and a bit disappointed that this new platform still exposes
users to the idea of a container host. In Carina lingo, you have to create a
"cluster" and choose the number of "segments" in it.

Joyent's Triton avoids this completely: Their whole data centre is a Docker
"host", and you never have to care about it. The way it should be.

(I'm not paid by Joyent, nor am I a customer -- I just like what they've done
to push the model forward.)

~~~
jnoller
This is honestly fantastic feedback and spot-on for the level of abstraction I
want (and will) aim for. This is an early Beta, so things like this are top of
mind.

~~~
girvo
That's excellent to hear, because I believe that Docker/containers will truly
take off once developers can treat them as the "highest level" of computation;
ie. no hosts needed, containers are all that are worked from!

~~~
nzoschke
Containers are here to stay and almost certainly will be the new abstraction
of computation.

My big question is around a service like AWS Lambda. Is that not already the
logical conclusion of container based computation? If magic units of
computation can run instantly on demand, what more do you need?

No hosts, but also no OS images, and no specific containerization tools!

~~~
IanCal
It's a massive shame that PiCloud went down as that had containerized
environments, extremely fast startups and auto scaling. It was one of the few
things I've used that really solved my small-scale data processing problems
simply and cheaply.

> If magic units of computation can run instantly on demand, what more do you
> need?

Some control over flow, scaling and batching wrap everything up for me.
Startup times for my code are non-zero even if the environment is, and adding
on queues with a "batch grab" means I can scale things far more sensibly (I
can cram a lot of stuff into a single matrix mul if I can pull 100 items at a
time from a queue).

I really, really miss picloud :(

~~~
jnoller
We rebuilt picloud as a foray into the getcarina.com space -
[https://github.com/cloudpipe/cloudpipe](https://github.com/cloudpipe/cloudpipe)
we're going to be bringing that back now that carina is landed.

------
callahad
This looks fun. Any word on ballpark pricing or the duration of the beta? (or
at least a lower bound on anticipated pricing -- will there be plans that are
suitable for hobbyists who are otherwise on DO's $5-10/mo tier.)

~~~
phymata
[https://getcarina.com/docs/faq#how-long-will-carina-be-
free-...](https://getcarina.com/docs/faq#how-long-will-carina-be-free-when-
you-start-charging-what-will-it-cost)

------
knite
How does this compare to Joyent Triton?

~~~
herpityderpity
Poorly.

~~~
abrookewood
Explanation required ...

------
nikolay
This is a joke! I can't use my Rackspace account as I have 2FA enabled and
Carina does not support it! I can understand a legacy app not supporting 2FA,
but a brand new one - this is a fiasco! There are things that you can "leave
for later", but security should be a top priority task for a cloud provider!

------
shabinesh
Interesting. No luck for past one hour, I am facing a i/o timeout for any
docker command. Trying to figure out.

------
whalesalad
At first glance this looks incredible but what's with the naming of a
"segment" ???

~~~
wmf
This is a concept that doesn't even exist in most other systems, so there
isn't an agreed name for it (we call it a "slice" in Spyre). It's similar to a
Kubernetes "pod" but not quite.

~~~
jnoller
Exactly - we really struggled with this. A node (for example, when doing a
Docker info when having $SWARM hosts) implies to the user physical isolation.
As a distributed systems nerd, I pushed for "anything that doesn't make a
contract it's on a different machine". Segment, slice, pod, chunk, block -
something other than implying the isolation and therefore fault tolerance of
the overall system.

[https://getcarina.com/docs/faq/](https://getcarina.com/docs/faq/) has more

~~~
whalesalad
This level abstraction seems unnecessary. We need to just let-go of the
concept of physical or virtual hosts. A machine should boot and join a
cluster, advertising its capabilities (ssd drives, gpu's, enhanced networking,
it's availability zone or region, etc...) and you should never need to think
about that stuff, period.

I don't care how many devices/segments/nodes/slices/dynos/widgets are in my
cluster. I care that I have X GB of total memory and Y cpu's. I want to check
a box to make an app or service highly available (on more than one node, and
in more than one zone) and Ronco™ set it and forget it.

Everything else is just noise.

I love the ideas behind Kubernetes and Fleet/CoreOS (and this) but everyone is
SO excited about these low level technologies that have yet to be composed
into beautiful experiences.

A tweet from Kelsey Hightower sums it up perfectly:

    
    
        It's going to be nearly impossible for people
        to evaluate and chose a container management platform
        during the gold rush.
    

[https://twitter.com/kelseyhightower/status/65918202241030553...](https://twitter.com/kelseyhightower/status/659182022410305536)

~~~
jnoller
I actually completely agree, and that's where I want to head with Carina. That
user experience is the end-game.

------
haosdent
not open source?

------
beefsack
People using stupid captioned images in their blog posts and technical
announcements are a real turn off for me; I'm not sure if people are trying to
be funny or edgy but it comes off really lame and childish. Feels like being
in one of the Reddit default subs.

~~~
voltagex_
Eh, the corporate world is bland and grey. I'm glad if a company does
something different.

