
Show HN: InstaDocker – Run any Docker container on the cloud instantly - tahaozket
http://instadocker.com
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nickstinemates
I created something like this a long time ago (about 2 years, in fact) in the
now defunct tryrethink.info[1]

I worked on it some more after doing a few try* sites, and open sourced a
version [2] which could take any docker image name and do the same.

1: [https://blog.docker.com/2013/07/try-rethinkdb-in-the-
cloud-w...](https://blog.docker.com/2013/07/try-rethinkdb-in-the-cloud-with-
docker/)

2: [http://github.com/keeb/any-saas](http://github.com/keeb/any-saas)

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tarikozket
What kept you from continuing?

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nickstinemates
My day job :)

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tarikozket
Just noticed that you are working at Docker :) Were you there at that time?

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nickstinemates
Yes, I joined a few months prior. I have been here pretty much the same
capacity since the beginning

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tahaozket
Wow, so does it mean even Docker workers thought having such a service like
InstaDocker would be great at some time?

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nickstinemates
I thought it was a great demonstration of the technology, and there are a
number of people/companies who came to the same conclusion.

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tarikozket
We thought same and here we are! We'd love to stay in touch, please reach us
from Taha's email. He shared it below. Thanks!

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joshstrange
Would be neat to pair this service or one like it with the "Deploy on
Heroku"-type buttons/badges I've seen on github before. A "Run this container
now" type thing.

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nickstinemates
There was a YC proposal by a couple of cofounders who wanted to start a
business around this premise and had a working prototype, including WEB IDE
integration for quick PR submissions.

I met with them about a year ago, thanks for reminding me to check in!

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tahaozket
We also would like to meet with them! If you reach them, could you also
introduce us? You can reach me from tahaozket[at]gmail.com

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kordless
I just did a continuously integrated container post that achives the same
thing with Wercker and Giant Swarm: [https://github.com/giantswarm/swarm-
wercker](https://github.com/giantswarm/swarm-wercker)

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tarikozket
Interesting, I'll check it later. Are there any services using it currently?

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kordless
If you are referring to Giant Swarm, yes, we have a few private deployments in
production in Europe. If you are referring to the CI project, nah, it's just
an example of what you can do! :)

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keedot
On mobile, nothing is readable in what I'm guessing is the Q&A section at the
bottom.

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tahaozket
Thank you very much for heads up! We fixed it.

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mayli
"This container will be alive for next 15 minutes. If you would like to keep
it running more than 15 minutes please contact us on Twitter." \- Changing 12
hours to 15 minutes, is the server overloaded?

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tarikozket
We already receive a lot of interest but we just wanted to have more
engagement on Twitter too :) We hit 300Mbps on our traffic and 30% on our CPU
load. So, we still have more resources to serve. Also, our clusters are
waiting to be spinned. Do you have any other recommendations to handle those
requests and processes?

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xur17
15 minutes seems reasonable to me. I thought the original 12 hours was too
long - I was done with the container I spun up a few minutes after I started
it.

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tarikozket
Thanks for the feedback! Just like we thought. But we also wanted to be
generous :)

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ilaksh
I made a couple of things sort of like this, one I spent several months on.
Another was simpler. Neither was finished since I needed to work eventually
for money.

Here is the simpler one which is a backend for a barely started mobile front
end.

[https://github.com/runvnc/oicapp](https://github.com/runvnc/oicapp)

I basically came to the conclusion that for scale simplicity and security I
needed a new Digital Ocean VPS for each container so that's what I did. To
make it faster you could sort of pool them ahead of time.

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lyschoening
Would love to use this for on-demand IPython parallel computing.

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monatron
PiCloud did something like this, but they were bought by Dropbox. Haven't
heard much about them since.

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lyschoening
The company that was supposed to take over never did.

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xur17
Really great implementation. I was delighted to see that clicking on the 'Run
Now' button immediately launched a container - no sign in, etc required.

I've been working on a similar idea for running docker containers on a cron
schedule. I use them for data processing, and web crawling, but don't have a
good way to manage their schedules / logs. Right now I run everything off a
single box with a cron schedule for each one.

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tarikozket
Thank you very much! Scheduling could be an interesting feature. Why do you
schedule your containers? Have you tried another approach?

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xur17
I schedule them so I can run a recurring task every day.

Examples:

1\. Crawl a website, and store the data to a database - update every few
hours.

2\. Check a website for changes.

3\. Process log data, and save it to another location.

Docker may be overkill for some of these, but it provides a simple way to
launch a new task in a container with all dependencies installed. The overhead
seems to be relatively small for starting a new container, so it's worth the
overhead vs. configuring a machine to run the container.

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tarikozket
Seams reasonable. I think it also can help to not have zombie processes after
cronjobs. Well, then we'll definitely consider having scheduling. Thanks mate!

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joshmn
Interesting choice in building this atop DigitalOcean. Not that it's wrong by
any means, but I'd be interested in hearing what process you took in choosing
them. (just curiosity)

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tarikozket
Wow, you are the first person who noticed that! :) We already had a couple of
DigitalOcean servers running and wanted to add this one next to them. Do you
have any recommendations? Why are you curious about it?

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joshmn
Makes sense!

I've said this before and time and time again, but I LOVE what they're doing
over at RunAbove (OVH incubated). I'm not affiliated by any means, just a
very, very very very very happy customer. The performance is unmatched and the
price is so competitive!

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tarikozket
The team also seemed worth to check. Why don't they change their website
design?

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kiernan
What are people planning on using this for? Testing their own containers, or
more testing things that rely on the services provided by existing published
containers?

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Procrastes
Cool idea. Will you have support for passing environment variables?

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tahaozket
Yes, you will be able to easily pass env variables when you start a container.
What is your opinion about passing variables as JSON or web based form?

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Procrastes
I'm torn. Your UX is about convenience, so probably expose a form for the MVP,
so I can set an initial user and DB credentials for WordPress, for instance. I
would probably implement it as JSON from the start though, then make it
available when the REST API is ready.

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tarikozket
Form sounds pretty but how would you understand which Docker file needs how
many and which variables? Do you have any ideas?

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masta
This sounds like a REALLY bad idea. Docker is not really meant to run
untrusted images.

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gtirloni
That was my first reaction as well. It seems that with all the downvotes,
that's not something we should be really worried about.

