
Rack: Open-Source PaaS on AWS - JensRantil
https://github.com/convox/rack?utm_campaign=explore-email&utm_medium=email&utm_source=newsletter&utm_term=weekly
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nzoschke
One of the maintainers of Convox/rack here...

A few important differences between Convox and other options in the space.

AWS only. We use lots of AWS services to piggy back on all the reliability AWS
has baked in. For example we use DynamoDB to record all your builds because
none of us want to manage a Postgres for record keeping.

Open source. The layer between you and your AWS account is open, transparent,
and modifiable.

Simple. I want to remove as many moving parts as possible, not add a heavy
middleware.

~~~
simonebrunozzi
Hey there, thanks for putting this out as open source.

Curious: what's your business model? I am starting to write a book about open
source business models and I would be interested in hearing your thoughts.
Thanks!

~~~
tedmiston
I asked the same question in a thread about Convox a few months ago
([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10796165](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10796165)).
Their reply from that thread might help:

nzoschke 134 days ago

> Thanks for your question. A much more thorough pricing page is in the works.

> The most straightforward model, and where we are already making some money,
> is running a Convox as a managed service.

> In this setup you and your team get Convox API keys. Convox installs, runs
> and updates everything for you in our accounts. You get a monthly bill
> that's your AWS resource costs plus a percentage to Convox for management.

> We will be tweaking this model to sell packages so bills are really easy to
> understand.

> Some other experiments we're doing...

> We sell support packages and professional services for app setup, migration
> and custom feature development.

> We have a per-seat model for productivity features. Private GitHub repos and
> Slack integrations are $19 / user / month. There are more closed SaaS tools
> like this coming.

> Infra is trending to commodity prices industry wide.

> We'll be selling SLAs, support, productivity tools on top of that infra.

> You'll get a cutting edge private platform without hiring and managing your
> own devops team to build and maintain it.

> Open source users will help grow the user base and make the platform better
> without us running a freemium platform.

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mwmanning
Hi, Matt from Convox here.

I'm happy to answer any questions you have about Rack or any of Convox's other
offerings.

To join a discussion with our user community please join our Slack!
[https://invite.convox.com](https://invite.convox.com)

~~~
shimon
What's Convox's business/funding model? Not skeptical, just genuinely curious
and can't tell from browsing the site. Also, what are your other offerings? If
everything between AWS and my site is free, what else is there to offer?

~~~
mwmanning
We were in the Summer 2015 YC batch and we've taken some VC funding.

Our other main offering is a web console for managing your team's access to
rack(s) and integrations with 3rd party services.
[https://console.convox.com](https://console.convox.com) We charge a
subscription fee for that and we also sell support and services packages.

------
bizzleDawg
I'd be really interested to know more about how this compares and contrasts to
Elastic Beanstalk (EBS)? particularly the docker flavours of EBS.

I've looked through a couple of the previous threads and didn't find much on
this.

~~~
nzoschke
I'd say Elastic Beanstalk is the most direct "competition" because it his the
same points:

* Simple

* Configures AWS resources uniformly run your app

* Uses Docker

Some advantages to using Convox instead of Elastic Beanstalk:

* More flexibility in the experience. Convox has a simpler API and CLI for end users.

* More flexibility in the infrastructure. We can pick and choose the best infrastructure components and constantly evolve.

* Less lock in. This is speculative but having a thin layer between you and AWS could help with portability.

~~~
nzoschke
The biggest difference is that Convox is Convox...

AWS is awesome but their values might not exactly align with your
organization.

There are general advantages to letting the Convox team and community guide
you through your cloud journey.

We value developer experience where AWS simply doesn't. Our plans include
things AWS will never add to EBS like automating dashboards, monitoring and
alerts.

We are moving a lot faster. Convox has swap and CloudWatch Logs integration
where ECS doesn't.

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kolanos
What will a newly created rack cost on AWS? Trying this out now, but want to
get an idea of what it will cost me. Is there a list of all the AWS services
this uses?

~~~
mwmanning
The base cost for a rack is about $85/mo. Convox is extremely cost effective
for small businesses and up, but would be expensive for running a single, low-
traffic hobby app.

~~~
kolanos
Is that $85 for small instances or micro? I noticed it defaulted to small,
which is why I ask.

~~~
ddollar
That's for the default of t2.small

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sciurus
Previous discussions of Convox Rack:
[https://hn.algolia.com/?query=convox&sort=byPopularity&prefi...](https://hn.algolia.com/?query=convox&sort=byPopularity&prefix&page=0&dateRange=all&type=story)

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dekz
How do you feel Convox deals with the Hybrid approach? Of wanting to use a
PaaS App container service, but keep the app dependencies like Cache,
ElasticSearch DB hosted by AWS.

Does Convox continue to use hosted AWS services?

I like the idea of the App being containerised and that workflow, but I cannot
convince myself that running DB/Cache in something like Convox is a good idea
(vs Hosted in AWS).

Can you give your thoughts?

~~~
nzoschke
One of the core values of convox engineering is that services are better than
software.

We do not run dbs as containers other than for dev or testing.

'convox services add postgres' and 'convox services add redis' provisions RDS
and Elasticache respectively.

~~~
dekz
That is great. What about services which convox doesn't support (yet)?

For example SNS. Would convox ever support terraform/cloudformation for an
App, or would you add SQS service in convox, then create SNS outside of
convox, and then join them together somewhere else?

~~~
nzoschke
convox services add [sns|sqs|s3]

Is a thing.

Automatic provisioning services should be easy.

Your rack and all your apps and services are CloudFormation stacks. We favor
CloudFormation over terraform for the same reason, it's a managed service.

The dream is fully automated provisioning of everything you want inside a
single AWS account and VPC.

Then you can peer this VPC with another to keep linking things.

The framework is open source so it's pretty easy for us or anyone to add more
services when requested. SES would be a good one next.

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ShaneOG
It seems naming things is still one of the hard things in Comp Sci:
[http://rack.github.io](http://rack.github.io)

~~~
koolba
> It seems naming things is still one of the hard things in Comp Sci:
> [http://rack.github.io](http://rack.github.io)

I think rack is a pretty good name for something that is meant to be the
infrastructure for running services. Not sure of the etymology for this
project, but to me it conveys images of a server rack in a datacenter.

~~~
vidarh
It's not a bad name. The point is it's a name of a very well established,
years old open source project used as the near-universal interface points
between web servers and Ruby web frameworks.

~~~
benatkin
Where do you draw the line? I find using the same term just barely acceptable
right now. If ruby was as hot as it was three years ago, maybe I wouldn't.
[http://www.indeed.com/jobtrends/q-rails-q-
ruby.html?relative...](http://www.indeed.com/jobtrends/q-rails-q-
ruby.html?relative=1)

~~~
heartbreak
Wow three whole years ago? Pack it up ladies and gentlemen we're heading to
the Ruby funeral. Sorry for the snark, but tens of thousands of developers are
using the real Rack every day. It's a mature component in widely used web
frameworks.

Next up a JavaScript framework called Rake because who uses Ruby anymore.

~~~
ddollar
We picked Rack because we like the conceptual analogy. The naming conflict is
unfortunate but there are a limited set of good words available. We hope that
context will make the meaning clear.

Thank you for commenting :)

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tomc1985
Oy! The name 'rack' is already taken, referring to abstracted-out request-
handling glue code that Rails et al are built on top of :/

~~~
hk__2
Well that’s not the first time two pieces of software have the same name.

~~~
tomc1985
I know, it's just painful to see two projects so close together sharing a
name, esp. after a project is shown to the public

~~~
zeckalpha
Not unchartered waters for the Convox folks:

[https://github.com/ddollar/foreman](https://github.com/ddollar/foreman)
(Convox employee)

[http://theforeman.org/](http://theforeman.org/)

