

Node.js Application Hosting Service running on Digital Ocean - 0stanislav
http://stackful.io/

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felipebueno
I have some questions and, please, don't get me wrong, I'm not being
sarcastic. I am really interested in your services.

I got a cheap server on DO I use to deploy some apps just for testing purpose
and, sometimes, I think I waste too many time configuring, breaking stuff and
fine-tunning my servers (I do like it but it's not very productive). The
languages I play with are Python (Django and Flask), PHP (Symfony2 and
Wordpress) and Javascript (Node.js/Express).

My questions are: Why would I choose Stackful.io over Digital Ocean? Will it
help me with that?

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ovi256
I'm amazed something that works like stackful.io or heroku for your own
servers has not been written yet. Like you, many tinkerers have a cheap server
to use as a lab. It would be great if one could install on it some piece of
software that provided heroku-like zero-friction deploy for new apps. Just do
"app create", push a git repo and, bam, the app is deployed, with sensible
defaults. The defaults are not supposed to make everyone happy, but, like a
default heroku deployment, to allow you to start new apps with zero friction,
thus encouraging experimentation and hacking.

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michaelbuckbee
You should check out Cloud66.com they are _almost_ there with what you are
describing. I'm really hoping to be using them in a month or two.

They'll read in your Github repo and then based on that configure VPS's for
you according to your specs (shared db server, standalone, etc.), it's very
slick.

Right now, they're lacking in documentation and don't handle some aspects of
admin (most notably server security updates) very well.

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trotsky
As a Chef user, what are the honest selling points of cuisine vs. something
like Chef Solo? I'm definitely up for moving to something that isn't as heavy
as Chef but so far nothing has really clicked. Is it just that you preferred
python? Looking at the sample code it doesn't seem more compact or sraight
forward than the ruby equivalents. The excellent knife cloud bootstrap
plugins, good hypervisor metadata coverage and active community makes it hard
to say goodbye.

I'm sure you're not looking to go head to head with opscode or plabs, but
what's the elevator pitch? I'd really love something that ended up being much
more concise for the 90% of the deploys that are dead simple.

(and no, I haven't tried ansible yet)

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hdeshev
Regarding cuisine vs. Chef Solo... I think it mostly depends on what your
scripts do. In my opinion, Fabric/Cuisine make it absurdly easy to execute
commands against a remote server and most of the time that's enough for a
decent deployment. Chef's execution API is, to put it mildly, clumsy. I cringe
every time I have to type something like:

execute "#{virtualenv_dir}/bin/pip install -r #{requirements_file}" do user
deploy_user group deploy_user end

IMO Chef shines when you have to move a lot of config files and generate node-
and role-specific configs. I feel it's a lot simpler to just have recipe-
specific files and templates packaged with the recipe and move them over with
commands like cookbook_file and template.

Right now we are using both the technologies. Our stacks are Chef-based since
we want people to be comfortable with reading (and possibly modifying) its
code. We also reuse a lot of the Opscode recipes which simply do not exist for
Fabric/Cuisine. Fabric and Cuisine have their place when we bootstrap a server
and prepare the Chef environment and at several odd places where they keep
things running together.

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grayprog
With regards to Digital Ocean. My server there which I installed about a month
ago (Amsterdam location), with 2GB of RAM is not responding for several hours
now. Including not possible to reboot. Support says they're aware of the
issue. But it's been several hours like this now. Never had with with Linode
in my 3 years with them. Guess I'll be moving this server back.

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mitchwainer
Gray - send me an email -> mitch [at] digitalocean

I will take care of it for you.

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bergie
Ah, cool. I'm already using Digital Ocean for hosting the development Linux
box that I access from my "Android workstation":
<http://bergie.iki.fi/blog/working-on-android/>

Their service has been working without any hassles until now, and so I
wouldn't mind having them as a Heroku alternative for hosting my Node.js apps.

~~~
0stanislav
Great post, btw.

Unfortunately, there is a problem with DO Amsterdam location.

"The 512MB and 1GB sizes are currently not available in the Amsterdam region
due to RIPE IPv4 restrictions and limited availability of IP space."

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andy_boot
This is offering a lot more server for your money than Heroku / Gondor.io /
dotcloud.

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rpledge
Looks nice, price seems right. I'll have to try it when I have some free time.

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0stanislav
Thank you!

Feedback and feature requests are welcome.

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paukiatwee
how about custom domain? Where can see/vote feature request publicly?

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0stanislav
Feature request / voting is now enabled on our site. All ideas and feedback
are more than welcome!

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nodesocket
Founder of <http://www.nodesocket.com> here, best of luck guys. Are you guys
in the bay area?

~~~
0stanislav
Thank you so much! Good luck with Commando.io!

Our team is located in Europe.

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Maarten88
Azure Websites also offer Node.js hosting [1], and they have a free plan for
small (development) sites. Paid plans there seem more expensive.

[1] <http://www.windowsazure.com/en-us/develop/nodejs/>

~~~
0stanislav
Unfortunately, the problem with freemium is that at the end paying customers
have to sponsor the free accounts.

And in most cases providers do as much as possible to lock you in, so you
don't switch to a cheaper option when you reach certain size.

On the other hand, we want customers to know that they can leave us whenever
they need to. Your apps are completely portable, so there is no reason not to
give it a try.

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spiri4
Is there a free plan ?

~~~
0stanislav
You can launch your sever and deploy your app for free. You can keep the
server alive later if you need to.

Prices start from $8/mo for 512 ram SSD server.

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wasd
This is awesome. I love that there is a new one push deploy in town other than
Heroku. Will you guys ever support a Rails stack?

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0stanislav
Thanks! Yes, we will definitely support Rails soon (several weeks). We are
working hard to make all major stacks available.

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lucian1900
Interesting how much Python they use. Perhaps they'll add Python hosting as
well?

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hdeshev
Most of the backend and frontend is written in Python and we are working on a
Python stack. Stay tuned!

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kbar13
> PaaS Service

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0stanislav
Fixed. Thanks!

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jaredmcateer
Also the only VCPU that is pluralized on your pricing page is the 1 VCPU under
the 16gb plan.

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0stanislav
Fixed, thanks a bunch!

