
Show HN: Cloudron – Get Your Own Cloud - nebulon
https://www.cloudron.io/?showhn
======
condescendence
Site looks great, the video down the bottom has a pricing model in it, and the
sites does not. From the looks of it, the price model in the video was just
set for development reasons because it's listing at $0.2/month.

I would fix this, you don't want to give people any wrong ideas about your
price model if you haven't finalized it yet.

The software and setup ease, from what I'm able to read, seems pretty nifty.
There's a good product here just be careful not to sell yourself short.

From a product identification point of view, I think it would be good for you
to list the specifications (at least hard drive space for example) of the VPS
you're using in the backend. It would only make sense especially for some of
the apps you want to provide such as OwnCloud which is basically to stores
files and such.

These were just some thoughts from a first look at the site, take them with a
grain of salt.

~~~
nebulon
Thanks for hint, the video was taken by me from a developer build. We have not
yet figured out the pricing model.

~~~
condescendence
If you'd like some instant feedback, or a test user to help with dev feel free
to shoot me an email:

james -at- royalholdings.net

~~~
nebulon
Thanks for your enthusiasm! Let me at johannes@cloudron.io know if you haven't
received the invite. Looking forward to any feedback from your side.

~~~
xxdesmus
Would love to poke around sooner than later also. :)

~~~
nebulon
Sure thing. I just checked and we have multiple email ids with your first
name. Can you send me a mail? Thanks!

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dochtman
I don't really understand this. "Private Cloud", to me, means a cloud that
only I have access too. If you actually have access to my infrastructure,
what's "private" about it?

~~~
nebulon
If we take the term "private" to an extreme, you are absolutely right. We took
the term in a similar way as it is used with virtual private servers. Also our
business model will be based on providing the logistics around a private
cloud, which focuses on convenience.

~~~
simonturvey
Is there any plan to allow the service to point at one's own DO or AWS
account? That would remove one more privacy concern some folk seem to have.

~~~
nebulon
Not currently, but we will be working with VPS providers to provide this
option.

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jedisct1
Looks very similar to [https://sandstorm.io/](https://sandstorm.io/)

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ams6110
How is this not just a regular VPS with the word "cloud" nailed on?

~~~
nebulon
VPS only gets you a server. If you were to install apps (gitlab or wordpress
or a wiki) on your server, you need to take care of keeping the server
updated, the apps updated, backing up the apps, configuring dns, installing
certs. etc. In addition, each of the apps need authentication as well.

This is the pain we intend to solve - you can install apps from our App Store.
We take care of backups, updates, dns, certs etc. You can install apps using
the same set of credentials / single Sign On. You can read more at
[https://cloudron.io/features.html](https://cloudron.io/features.html).

Think of this as a 'smart server', a server intended to be used by anyone
without deep technical knowledge (or doesn't want to put in the effort of
self-hosting).

There's also a video on the landing page, please check it out.

~~~
bigiain
How does it differ from cPanel/Plesk and similar non-cloud-branded server
management solutions?

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nickpsecurity
Rule of thumb: mutually distrusting users sharing physical resources typically
creates vulnerabilities. Do everything right and you still have covert
channels. So long as they use _physical_ separation rather than virtual then
I'm excited to see this development. Separation that's (a) physically isolated
per customer and (b) behind a stable interface allow the specifics of the
security to constantly improve without work on the customer's end while
blocking risks that come with virtualization.

See the co-founder in the comments. nebulon, would you clarify if it's
physical and how do the boxes interface at the networking layer? That would be
a start on upper-bounds of security.

~~~
nebulon
We do not run physical servers and have only virtual separation between users.
Thanks for the input, we will work to clarify that. Please see
[https://www.cloudron.io/faq.html](https://www.cloudron.io/faq.html)

~~~
nickpsecurity
So it's basically still in same ballpark as other cloud providers with pro's
and con's. You've just added some logical isolation, extra functions like
authentication, and procedural/policy protections for customers as a
differentiator, yes?

~~~
nebulon
While the features you list are important and true, our main focus is on
convenience. To be able setup your personal cloud without deep technical
knowledge. You can read up our intentions at
[https://dev.cloudron.io/about.html](https://dev.cloudron.io/about.html)

~~~
nickpsecurity
I appreciate you clarifying. Yeah, that's certainly helpful to all kinds of
people. Much easier to get started and grow in that market than pricey, bare-
metal. Good luck on your business.

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sirspudd
The video does look cool. I keep on intending to use my primary Linux dev box
as an outwards facing web server, but every time I take steps towards this, I
realize how much I would be dropping my shorts in the process.

You people should be targeting professional photographers, smug mug and
friends offer really limited functionality to content owners who really should
control their own material.

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nebulon
Hi everyone, co-founder here. We are now in developer beta. Please request an
invite if you would like to develop Cloudron apps.
[https://www.cloudron.io/documentation.html](https://www.cloudron.io/documentation.html)

~~~
nivertech
How Cloudron differs from the following projects?

\- [http://cozy.io/en/](http://cozy.io/en/)

\- [https://sandstorm.io/](https://sandstorm.io/)

\- [http://www.cloudstead.io/](http://www.cloudstead.io/)

~~~
nebulon
From what I understand cozy.io and cloudstead.io are focusing on specific
services around personal information, like owncloud. Our architecture allows
installing arbitrary apps like owncloud as an app. Cozy.io and cloudstead.io
would not have gogs or gitlab as apps.

Sandstorm and us are trying to solve very similar issues, but the approach and
architecture is different.

~~~
mwcampbell
Can you go into more detail on the differences between Cloudron and Sandstorm?

~~~
nebulon
From a developer point of view we try to keep changes required for existing
apps to be ported to a minimum. To achieve this, we use docker as well as an
heroku inspired deployment approach.

Sandstorm have their own containerization.

You can see how much porting effort is required for Cloudron, by looking at
our current samples of ported apps
[https://www.cloudron.io/documentation.html#samples](https://www.cloudron.io/documentation.html#samples)

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nickpsecurity
Just did some research. Turns out there is a combo of physical servers and
cloud-style provisioning/pricing: it's called bare metal clouds. Gotta watch
it as some say that but are virtual. Here's one I found that's physical:

[http://www.softlayer.com/bare-metal-servers](http://www.softlayer.com/bare-
metal-servers)

The physical separation is a prerequisite for any real security as you need
control over what executes in the box and definitely don't want untrusted
processes sharing resources outside of what's already in TCB. Combining a
rapid-provisioning, paid-hourly, physical hosting solution with strong privacy
policies (e.g. MyKolab's) and terms of service backed by contract would be _an
awesome offing_ for a niche market.

The niche, off top of head, is essentially two groups: (a) people needing
temporary and/or scalable resources for operation on private data; (b) people
wanting steady, scalable, private servers who don't want to go all out on
running their own. Category (b) would put the physical cloud in competition
with with dedicated, hosting market. Potential advantages are manageability,
scaling, cost reduction due to pay-per-use, and integration with popular cloud
tech (eg Docker) pre-installed on that server. So, anyone looking for a
business plan to submit to YCombinator feel free to do an assessment of this
market as I think it has potential. The existence of the above company
confirms that but I can't say how big this niche is.

~~~
condescendence
I don't mean to be an asshole, but your criticism is basically along the lines
of "You're doing this all wrong, do it how I say this should be done"

They don't have physical servers, he's already answered that in your last
comment. Each user is going to get their own VPS through AWS or another
provider, so most likely these "hosts" are technically physically separated.

This service is basically a drag and drop app foundation, its a glorified
SaaS. It's adding a layer of ease between having to purchase your own VPS and
deploy these apps. Now someone can just purchase through this service, get
their VPS purchased for them and deployed with a nice interface that magically
sets up software.

What you're mentioning is an entirely different business plan on its own.
You're talking about buying physical hardware, servers, switches, etc. Which
would require setting up VLans...etc for true separation.

Cloudron is making an argument about privacy through the features they offer.
I'm sure they would have loved to buy hundreds of servers and allow for
everyone to have their own little Fort Knox in a Box but this is unobtainable
from their viewpoint. They've come up with compromises to create a unified and
monetarily obtainable product.

A good product is a compromise between what's needed, and what's available.
You can't make something out of nothing (most of the time). If the resources
aren't available, or if implementability isn't possible then you start to
compromise. This is what happened here. Two guys who had a similar idea of
privacy wanted to get together to provide a nice server/cloud service, and
this cool little website is the result of that. Maybe in the future they can
get their Fort Knox going, but for right now I don't see that happening
because of the costs associated with it.

~~~
nickpsecurity
That comment was directed at any readers who clicked on this interested in a
more private cloud offering comparable to dedicated servers in isolation. I
clicked it hoping for something like that. Every similar link on private
clouds was something like Cloudron or a hybrid cloud that scaled up using
something like Cloudron. It was all virtualization.

So, far from a gripe at Cloudron, this second comment is for HN readers who
were looking for what I was looking for. Also found the appropriate buzzword
("bare metal") to help them find comparable offerings. Far as Cloudron, the
co-founder already helpfully told me what their goals/market were, they made
sense, and I wished them well on that. That I had nothing more to say on that
tangent is why I made a separate comment for bare-metal, cloud hosting.

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zodPod
What are you guys looking at price-wise for these tiers? Kind of annoying that
you don't even attempt to list them.

~~~
nebulon
Hi, sorry for not listing them yet. We are currently not able to provide any
numbers, as we are figuring out how much resources the various models will
need.

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simonturvey
Great to see this launched at last. Congratulations guys! Good luck.

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kilimchoi
Looks good!

Great Job!

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vishalzone2002
a hypervisor is the only private cloud :)

