
Heroku's Provisionless Hosting for Rails Apps is Revolutionary - drm237
http://www.infoq.com/news/2009/05/heroku-provisionless-revolution
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jeremyw
Once you have a big knob to scale (or automatic scaling), you next need to
identify points on the curve where app rearchitecture is needed, like adding a
caching tier or moving activities out-of-band. It sounds like Heroku wants to
help do this -- which is great.

Alternatively, I wonder if Five Runs-style companies will partner will cloud
vendors, figure out your current cloud mapping and give you this kind of
analysis.

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coopr
Why _wouldn't_ you deploy your small to medium RoR web app on Heroku? It seems
damn awesome, but I'm just a business guy, so I might be missing some
technical details.

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nir
I tried using Heroku for a (very) small project which I already had working in
Ruby, and using Google App Engine (even though it meant rewriting the code in
Python). The reasons were:

1\. Heroku didn't support a certain Ruby gem I needed for the application.

2\. While (1) in itself is understandable (and eventually I found a way around
it) Heroku never replied to my email asking whether they would support it in
the future. As far as I recall there was no other way to contact them but
feedback@heroku email address - if they don't answer it, that's that.

3\. Heroku is just not certain to be around for as long as Google (or Amazon
etc) will.

4\. I admit I didn't research this thoroughly, but Heroku seems more expensive
for what you get than other options (eg GAE, perhaps even Slicehost & co)

All in all, I'd say support was by far the most important issue. The last
thing you want is to trust your application to someone who won't respond
quickly (or at all). I realize Heroku is a small team, but this is just a
critical requirement for such a service.

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jamesheroku
Hey Nir, it's James from Heroku. Sorry to hear you had trouble with Heroku.
I'd like to address some of your concerns:

1\. Gems

We completely support all types of gems, including gems with native bindings
(which get compiled automatically for your app). Detailed documentation:
<http://docs.heroku.com/gems>

2\. Support

While we were were running our completely unsupported public beta, we tried
hard to answer support requests, but our main focus was getting the technology
developed. Now that we have launched commercially, we have a full support
ticket system, fast response times, and are committed to making immediate
support a priority.

3\. Financial Solvency

It's true, we aren't Google. We are, however, backed by high quality investors
with large investment funds, who are committed to Heroku's success. We have
strong interest from many additional firms if we wanted to raise more capital,
and we currently have a very healthy runway.

I'd love to talk with you directly to better understand your needs and get
more detailed feedback, please feel free to email me at james at heroku
dotcom.

~~~
nir
Hi James. No worries, thanks for replying here :)

The gem in question was curb (<http://curb.rubyforge.org/>) - I suppose it
might a particularly tricky one, due to libcurl dependencies. (I'll email you
with more details)

I understand the issues of supporting a free beta and hope to give Heroku a
try on my next project. You really did some impressive work.

~~~
jamesheroku
Awesome, we look forward to it.

I just created a quick Rack app that uses curb and deployed it to Heroku, no
problem: <http://gist.github.com/108315>

If you keep having trouble with your app, please shoot me an email or open a
support ticket, and we'll get you sorted out.

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mtpark
Which types of smaller RoR apps would work well with Heroku as opposed to say
EngineYard's solo plan?

