
IaaS vs. PaaS vs. CaaS  – Which Cloud Architecture Is Right for You? - phildougherty
https://blog.containership.io/iaas-vs-paas-vs-caas-which-cloud-architecture-is-right-for-you-part-1-c7bf3c48c70c
======
cpitman
I never see this mentioned, but to me the most important feature of Docker
based CaaS (or PaaS) is that they are no longer purely for hosting custom
software. The focus of Heroku style PaaS systems has been the flow of code to
running software, but what about applications I have no code for?

I want to run GitLab, Mattermost, an API gateway, etc. With Docker based
CaaS/PaaS, this is easy since apps can be easily packaged as containers that
are treated the same as your own custom apps. This is only my opinion, but I
think we are getting to the point where _all_ server software can be run on
something like Kubernetes and traditional virtualization becomes even more of
a commodity.

Disclaimer, I work for Red Hat! We have both a CaaS (RHEL Atomic Enterprise
Platform ie Kubernetes) and a PaaS built on top of it (OpenShift v3).
Containers taking over the entire data center is my own opinion, but it would
be great!

~~~
eranation
Sorry for the silly question but is CaaS "Containers as a Service"? (I assume
it is not Content as a Service:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Content_as_a_Service](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Content_as_a_Service))

If so, then the wikipedia disambiguation page
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CAAS](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CAAS))
redirects to a yet unwritten one:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Containers_as_a_Service](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Containers_as_a_Service)

;)

~~~
phildougherty
Yes, Containers as a Service :)

~~~
eranation
Well... Here is your chance to be able to add "The guy who wrote the
encyclopedia entry on CaaS" to your resume ;)

------
smaili
Looks like the article has a "part 2" on a different page.

Here's both links to make it a little easier:

[http://blog.containership.io/iaas-vs-paas-vs-caas-which-
clou...](http://blog.containership.io/iaas-vs-paas-vs-caas-which-cloud-
architecture-is-right-for-you-part-1-c7bf3c48c70c)

[http://blog.containership.io/iaas-vs-paas-vs-caas-which-
clou...](http://blog.containership.io/iaas-vs-paas-vs-caas-which-cloud-
architecture-is-right-for-you-part-2-a72623d7d001)

------
insertnickname
> Saving around $300/month is a lot of money for a lot of companies.

You mean ones without any employees or an office?

~~~
nostrademons
That would be most of them.

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diegorbaquero
When you go from $100 Dedicated Server with 10TB of bandwidth in average, to
$900+ in AWS just for the bandwidth, well, you gotta think about it. Heroku
puts a 2TB/month BW soft limit, that won't cut for some of us.

------
cmalpeli
Can someone explain to me why I would consider moving from Heroku to CaaS?
Saving $300/month sure as hell doesn't seem worth it.

~~~
phildougherty
There are various reasons, but here are a few of the big ones:

1\. Getting ahead of your costs before they start to shoot up as you grow.
Check out this pricing calculator for an idea of what I mean:
[http://containership.io/#pricing](http://containership.io/#pricing)

2\. Cloud portability: Heroku runs in 2 AWS regions (us-east-1, eu-west-1).
What happens if you want to host in a specific country, a completely different
provider (maybe you have some free credits?) or even your own data center
eventually? Not gonna happen with heroku.

3\. More flexibility to run the types of databases, queues, or other open
source software that isn't possible to run on Heroku.

4\. With CaaS you have root access to the servers powering your software,
where Heroku is more of a black box. Remember what happened with (rap)Genius?
[http://techcrunch.com/2013/02/14/heroku-admits-to-
performanc...](http://techcrunch.com/2013/02/14/heroku-admits-to-performance-
degradation-over-the-past-3-years-after-criticism-from-rap-genius/)

