
Dear Joyent - epall
http://svallens.com/eric/article/87/dear-joyent
======
RodBoothby
My name is Rod Boothby. I head up the Evangelism team at Joyent.

It's true that some of our user interface stuff needs improving. We are
planning on delivering some powerful solutions in the near future.

Over the past year, we have been focusing on helping clients deploy truly
massive sites. The largest Ruby on Rails application in the world runs on
Joyent.

<http://www.joyent.com/a/scale-rails-to-1-billion-pageviews>

Joyent has helped clients like ABC, CNN, Disney, Boston.com, and Gilt.com to
deploy and scale sites that deliver Billions of page views a month.

For example, we have a Drupal site running on Joyent that can support 2.5
Billion page views a month.

Over the last month, we have delivered to clients solutions that you simply
can not get from some of our competitors mentions below..

#1 Joyent VPN Cloud - a secure cloud deployment that is segregated at the
switch level. This delivers the PCI compliance required by large sites.

#2 Joyent's Virtual Data Center software - we will be announcing more in the
next few weeks, but the first instance of this product was delivered to a
client in Japan in December '08. Even with virtualization solutions like XEN
or VMWare, most data centers can only achieve 8% to 12% utilization. Joyent's
Virtual Data Center software can help large data centers to achieve up to 80%
utilization.

#3 Joyent Cloud as a Service API. For an example, check out what Aptana has
down with Joyent's API: <http://www.aptana.com/cloud>

The stuff coming down the pipe is also really interesting.

The first includes a new tool that lets you fully instrument a production
application and get true performance analytics designed to help you identify
bottle necks and you to true Application Performance Level agreements.

The second is a new web based interface that lets you manage complex cloud
deployments.

If you have questions, our would like to learn more, please feel free to ping
me directly. ( rod at joyent ).

~~~
catch23
Jeez, can this sound more like a marketing pamphlet please? Are you going to
address the blogger's concerns, or are you trying to distract us with shiny
objects?

------
pclark
I litereally just, JUST. Like two moments ago, paid for a year of a 1Gb
Accelerator.

What has Joyent done thats bad? I know their control panel is a tad clunky,
but their support has always been top notch - sure its slightly pricey but I
feel really confident they wont fuck up.

~~~
chaostheory
I don't know if this is still a problem, but for a company that claims to be
the official Rails host; they don't work closely with popular Rails related
software.

For example a few months ago the latest version of Capistrano wasn't working
on Joyent's Accelerator (Solaris). Joyent support acknowledged this, but it
didn't sound like they even cared or planned to do anything, so I just
canceled my account and I moved to Slicehost. It's not perfect but you get
more for the money.

~~~
chadr
Just out of curiosity, why did you go with Slicehost instead of Linode? For
Rails hosting, RAM seems to be limiting factor if you only want to spend
$20/month. On a Linode 360 I'm running 3 mongrels, nginx, and MySQL with some
RAM to spare for crons and such. I'm just curious what advantages a Slicehost
256 would give me considering RAM seems to be the main difference between the
two.

~~~
chaostheory
that's simple, because until now I haven't even heard of Linode; thanks for
the tip

~~~
chadr
If you are starting out with linode you should be aware of the backup policy.
Basically you have to roll your own. Let me know if you have any linode
questions. I've been using them for about a year now. I think backups are the
only feature linode is missing (compared to slicehost).

------
larrywright
I left Joyent several years ago for much the same reason. Their shared hosting
was unusable for Rails. Joyent's Accelerators look like a nice solution, but
they are significantly more than a VPS. I've been with VPSLink for several
years and am very happy with them.

------
llimllib
I actually haven't even migrated off the FreeBSD servers yet. I'll go when
they tell me to, but I don't need anything more than I've got.

I've had them for 3 years and been very happy with their service. (Though I
agree that their long-promised big improvements sure haven't happened since
becoming Joyent).

------
mattmaroon
Have fun paying Engine Yard's hosting bill. Hope you got a VC round.

~~~
callmeed
I'm an EngineYard customer with no VC. We've also had to increase our
resources and storage several times since launching.

If your startup actually grows and makes money, you can pay for high-quality
hosting and growth ...

funny how that works ...

~~~
mattmaroon
My startup has grown and is profitable, and I would never pay that. We pay
about the same amount for a 16 core beast from Softlayer as you get there for
one slice, which is weaker than a $300 Dell I bought two years ago.

What makes you go that route over any normal hosting solution?

~~~
callmeed
For the specific Rails app we run at EngineYard, the fully-managed aspect is
very attractive. I've got multiple apps and even multiple business ventures–so
I can't be hands-on at the server level for everything.

Their staff is very pro-active and always available. I could go on, but my
point was simply that EngineYard isn't just for vc-backed companies who need
to burn some cash.

And, for the record, I also am a Slicehost and Joyent customer.

~~~
mattmaroon
So essentially you're buying consulting? I guess that makes sense.

~~~
callmeed
I'm not sure that managed hosting == consulting, but I suppose that's a fair
way to look at it.

Both Rackspace and Engine Yard have called me on the phone to alert me of
potential problems. I'm not sure that's something a consultant would do.

