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We run applications for dozens of clients across several different language stacks on Heroku. Our entire (rapidly expanding) business depends on it. If we had t

by Aqueous 11y ago

We run applications for dozens of clients across several different language stacks on Heroku. Our entire (rapidly expanding) business depends on it. If we had to maintain those instances ourselves, it would require a full time dev ops employee, if not multiple. We've side-stepped the requirement for any dedicated devops staff by relying on Heroku's automation for this. So I really do not see how PaaS is even remotely close to dead. Those companies probably don't release glitzy PR bragging about their success (like most VC-funded companies trying to generate hype) because they don't need to - the money just keeps rolling in. If I start seeing PaaS companies vanishing inexplicably then I'll start to wonder.

dougbarrett 11y ago
I 100% agree. I was launching apps on linode and running into open file limit issues because of the amount of traffic the application was receiving. One server could handle the load find if it wasn't for that (as far as I knew at the time) but I tried launching it on Heroku and saw immediately there were no issues handling the traffic we were sending to it. It may not be the fastest or cheapest, but it was turning into the majority of my time spent on figuring out how to configure a server that could handle the traffic rather than me focusing on actual development. The added monthly cost is a fraction of the cost it would take me to actively manage the servers. People thought that the price changes a few months ago would be the death of Heroku but in reality we are saving money compared to what we were playing previously.
- ownagefool 11y ago
  You should be able to change the file handle limit without much effort? I'm not saying you made the wrong choice, if you don't have some pretty deep sysadmin skills, you should probably be outsourcing your hosting, but that seems like a weird justification. All that really matters is Heroku is cheaper than people. When it no longer is, you start thinking about hiring.
mattmanser 11y ago
You'd need a full time devops staff, but you can run your stuff on heroku? I very much doubt it. This just comes across as you vastly over-estimating how hard it is to run a server. Most of the time it's painful, you take a day or two to write a build script, then everyone forgets about it because it's fully automated.
- drchiu 11y ago
  Agreed. I run my SAAS on bare metal infrastructure. I don't anticipate my software to suddenly go viral, but have a steady growth. If I had to use Heroku, I wouldn't be able to run my projects for profit because of the number of resources I'd need.
- orf 11y ago
  That's an unpopular opinion on HN but quite valid.
  - icebraining 11y ago
    The good thing about unpopular opinions on HN is that they're so widespread among its userbase.
- jonesb6 11y ago
  I think it depends on how hard your software pushes the hardware. If complex configuration / maintenance is needed then the likelihood of a human-error bringing the system down is much higher. Service disruptions can have costs much higher then a dev-ops salary (or several) so if a PAAS solution can cause you to avoid that..
- steveklabnik 11y ago
  It's not about difficulty, it's about time and money. I _can_ manage a server. But for $25/month to just forget about it? I'll take that tradeoff any time. (And have, back when I had production machines myself. And will, if I have time for that side project again sometime soon...) And for stuff that needs more than one dyno, well, if we assume $100k/year for an ops person, that still gives you sixteen of Heroku's beefiest instances for the same price? I still think it makes sense.
Aeolun 11y ago
My problem with Heroku is that their database instances are so ridiculously expensive. I can get 10 times the resources for the same price. Even more so in the case of Redis.
- smathieu 11y ago
  There's no reason why you can't have Heroku to connect to a RDS instance or a DB you manage yourself. It's not has easy as using the Heroku way, but not very difficult either.
  - hdra 11y ago
    I'm curious, would this adds considerable amount of latency to the DB queries? I'm guessing connecting to RDS from an EC2 instance would have less latency compared to connecting to RDS from a Heroku or DigitalOcean instance, but how much is the difference and is it significant enough?
    - arnvald 11y ago
      Heroku's hosted on Amazon servers, so you still can have your app and db in the same data center

by Aqueous 11y ago

dougbarrett 11y ago

I 100% agree. I was launching apps on linode and running into open file limit issues because of the amount of traffic the application was receiving. One server could handle the load find if it wasn't for that (as far as I knew at the time) but I tried launching it on Heroku and saw immediately there were no issues handling the traffic we were sending to it. It may not be the fastest or cheapest, but it was turning into the majority of my time spent on figuring out how to configure a server that could handle the traffic rather than me focusing on actual development. The added monthly cost is a fraction of the cost it would take me to actively manage the servers. People thought that the price changes a few months ago would be the death of Heroku but in reality we are saving money compared to what we were playing previously.

ownagefool 11y ago
You should be able to change the file handle limit without much effort? I'm not saying you made the wrong choice, if you don't have some pretty deep sysadmin skills, you should probably be outsourcing your hosting, but that seems like a weird justification. All that really matters is Heroku is cheaper than people. When it no longer is, you start thinking about hiring.

mattmanser 11y ago

You'd need a full time devops staff, but you can run your stuff on heroku? I very much doubt it. This just comes across as you vastly over-estimating how hard it is to run a server. Most of the time it's painful, you take a day or two to write a build script, then everyone forgets about it because it's fully automated.

drchiu 11y ago
Agreed. I run my SAAS on bare metal infrastructure. I don't anticipate my software to suddenly go viral, but have a steady growth. If I had to use Heroku, I wouldn't be able to run my projects for profit because of the number of resources I'd need.
orf 11y ago
That's an unpopular opinion on HN but quite valid.
- icebraining 11y ago
  The good thing about unpopular opinions on HN is that they're so widespread among its userbase.
jonesb6 11y ago
I think it depends on how hard your software pushes the hardware. If complex configuration / maintenance is needed then the likelihood of a human-error bringing the system down is much higher. Service disruptions can have costs much higher then a dev-ops salary (or several) so if a PAAS solution can cause you to avoid that..
steveklabnik 11y ago
It's not about difficulty, it's about time and money. I _can_ manage a server. But for $25/month to just forget about it? I'll take that tradeoff any time. (And have, back when I had production machines myself. And will, if I have time for that side project again sometime soon...) And for stuff that needs more than one dyno, well, if we assume $100k/year for an ops person, that still gives you sixteen of Heroku's beefiest instances for the same price? I still think it makes sense.

Aeolun 11y ago

My problem with Heroku is that their database instances are so ridiculously expensive. I can get 10 times the resources for the same price. Even more so in the case of Redis.

smathieu 11y ago
There's no reason why you can't have Heroku to connect to a RDS instance or a DB you manage yourself. It's not has easy as using the Heroku way, but not very difficult either.
- hdra 11y ago
  I'm curious, would this adds considerable amount of latency to the DB queries? I'm guessing connecting to RDS from an EC2 instance would have less latency compared to connecting to RDS from a Heroku or DigitalOcean instance, but how much is the difference and is it significant enough?
  - arnvald 11y ago
    Heroku's hosted on Amazon servers, so you still can have your app and db in the same data center