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My question is: why am I paying cloud providers for virtual machines with some imaginary virtual cpu count (or dynos or whatever) when I could be paying for M p

My question is: why am I paying cloud providers for virtual machines with some imaginary virtual cpu count (or dynos or whatever) when I could be paying for M process running my server executable (capped at N threads per process)? Why can't I just write a server, bundle up the exe and assets, and run it somewhere? Why do I have to futz about with admining, patching, and hardening the OS when that's not what I care about? Edit, to clarify, it just seems like an os with the capability to host a large number of user processes as here would really allow an order of magnitude reduction in hosting cost. Ie if a machine can host 1,000,000 paying accounts vs 10 vps/containered apps.

tiffanyh 9y ago
Not to sound cheeky but it sounds like you want to pay for timeshare on a mainframe. (and I agree, it'd actually be nice if cloud providers framed cost based on processes count not vCPUs. Heroku kind of does that with their concept of "dynos")
- le-mark 9y ago
  Yes, that's exactly what I'd like, with something more modern than cobol of course :)
- digi_owl 9y ago
  Given the incessant push towards treating the web as a front end for "cloud apps", timeshare is back baby. Only that now the terminal is replaced with the web browser.
majke 9y ago
Welcome to the Docker revolution. Historically it was hard to distribute software. You can't just copy over .elf files since these need dynamic libraries. Dependency hell is real, people invented .deb to solve many problems, but debs were always intended to be installed in global scope, making it hard to package user software. Roll forward and nowadays with namespaces you can "containerize" also disk, which means shared libs. Docker images are a better delivery mechanism than raw elf files, or even debs. Hosting docker images is inherently cheaper than virtual machines. I think Heroku were first large service to realize that.
- throwaway613834 9y ago
  I don't do Docker but from what I've heard it's not designed for security? Which means it wouldn't work for this scenario? Or am I misinformed?
  - icebraining 9y ago
    Docker is just regular processes limited by a bunch of Linux kernel isolation mechanisms, which means that you're subject to potential kernel exploits, which would allow a "neighbor" container to run code outside the container and then control your own. There are some ways of mitigating this, but the simplest one would be for the provider to run a VM for each container, then you get the security guarantees of regular VMs (though you still have to trust the provider to keep the OS up to date).
    - marktangotango 9y ago
      Is a docker container simply a process or is it more heavy weight than that? It certainly can be, so isn't this characterization that it's merely a "process" a bit disingenuous? https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/216618/what-do-the-processes-inside-a-docker-container-look-like https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/216618/what-do-the-...
      - icebraining 9y ago
        Processes, not process, and I was talking in terms of security, but even in terms of performance, yes, it mostly is. There are some Docker features that can be more expensive (NAT and layered filesystem), but they are optional. A "Docker container" itself is just a group of processes to which the kernel applies a different policy than the default. I'm not sure what that link is supposed to show, can you be more clear?
  - rdsubhas 9y ago
    Security without context is ambiguous and vague. To the parent comment - which asks about shipping and paying for "M" processes, docker is a reasonable (if not great) solution as container/namespace/process isolation are all, one way or another, sharing the same kernel and have mostly the same benefits/drawbacks.
gaius 9y ago
Why can't I just write a server, bundle up the exe and assets, and run it somewhere? You can do exactly this easily on Azure and probably others too eventually https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/announcing-azure-container-instances/ https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/announcing-azure-cont...
- svetlins 9y ago
  There is also Hyper.sh (https://hyper.sh/ https://hyper.sh/) that offers the same service as Azure Container Instances and it seems to work pretty well for a side project I'm trying it on. Azure Container Instances were only available for testing through their web shell last I checked a while ago.
icebraining 9y ago
You can: https://www.nearlyfreespeech.net/ https://www.nearlyfreespeech.net/ SSH in, upload your executable (or compile it on the server, they have many compilers pre-installed) and run it. The OS is managed by them.
joshribakoff 9y ago
> I could be paying for M process running my server executable (capped at N threads per process)? Isn't this essentially AWS lambda or shared hosting? The trade offs will of course be their limitations, max execution times, lack of flexibility, and vendor lock in. I found that AWS was too expensive because of their bandwidth. Its cheaper to just get a dedicated server with 5-10x the capacity that I need. Doing what you said requires developer time which is more expensive than hardware, which is probably why AWS is so expensive. Some day that price will probably come down but for now its probably cheaper to just throw hardware at the problem. > do I have to futz about with admining, patching, and hardening the OS I think this is a problem [partially] addressed by configuration management. For example download some pre-made ansible configuration for a lamp server, and change just the settings you care about. Or load up someone's docker image (you'd still need to do updates)
- digi_owl 9y ago
  Or perhaps unikernel, where the OS and the "app" is pretty much one and the same.
fapjacks 9y ago
That's pretty much what Docker is about.

tiffanyh 9y ago

Not to sound cheeky but it sounds like you want to pay for timeshare on a mainframe. (and I agree, it'd actually be nice if cloud providers framed cost based on processes count not vCPUs. Heroku kind of does that with their concept of "dynos")

le-mark 9y ago
Yes, that's exactly what I'd like, with something more modern than cobol of course :)
digi_owl 9y ago
Given the incessant push towards treating the web as a front end for "cloud apps", timeshare is back baby. Only that now the terminal is replaced with the web browser.

majke 9y ago

Welcome to the Docker revolution. Historically it was hard to distribute software. You can't just copy over .elf files since these need dynamic libraries. Dependency hell is real, people invented .deb to solve many problems, but debs were always intended to be installed in global scope, making it hard to package user software. Roll forward and nowadays with namespaces you can "containerize" also disk, which means shared libs. Docker images are a better delivery mechanism than raw elf files, or even debs. Hosting docker images is inherently cheaper than virtual machines. I think Heroku were first large service to realize that.

throwaway613834 9y ago
I don't do Docker but from what I've heard it's not designed for security? Which means it wouldn't work for this scenario? Or am I misinformed?
- icebraining 9y ago
  Docker is just regular processes limited by a bunch of Linux kernel isolation mechanisms, which means that you're subject to potential kernel exploits, which would allow a "neighbor" container to run code outside the container and then control your own. There are some ways of mitigating this, but the simplest one would be for the provider to run a VM for each container, then you get the security guarantees of regular VMs (though you still have to trust the provider to keep the OS up to date).
  - marktangotango 9y ago
    Is a docker container simply a process or is it more heavy weight than that? It certainly can be, so isn't this characterization that it's merely a "process" a bit disingenuous? https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/216618/what-do-the-processes-inside-a-docker-container-look-like https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/216618/what-do-the-...
    - icebraining 9y ago
      Processes, not process, and I was talking in terms of security, but even in terms of performance, yes, it mostly is. There are some Docker features that can be more expensive (NAT and layered filesystem), but they are optional. A "Docker container" itself is just a group of processes to which the kernel applies a different policy than the default. I'm not sure what that link is supposed to show, can you be more clear?
- rdsubhas 9y ago
  Security without context is ambiguous and vague. To the parent comment - which asks about shipping and paying for "M" processes, docker is a reasonable (if not great) solution as container/namespace/process isolation are all, one way or another, sharing the same kernel and have mostly the same benefits/drawbacks.

gaius 9y ago

Why can't I just write a server, bundle up the exe and assets, and run it somewhere? You can do exactly this easily on Azure and probably others too eventually https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/announcing-azure-container-instances/ https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/announcing-azure-cont...

svetlins 9y ago
There is also Hyper.sh (https://hyper.sh/ https://hyper.sh/) that offers the same service as Azure Container Instances and it seems to work pretty well for a side project I'm trying it on. Azure Container Instances were only available for testing through their web shell last I checked a while ago.

icebraining 9y ago

You can: https://www.nearlyfreespeech.net/ https://www.nearlyfreespeech.net/ SSH in, upload your executable (or compile it on the server, they have many compilers pre-installed) and run it. The OS is managed by them.

joshribakoff 9y ago

> I could be paying for M process running my server executable (capped at N threads per process)? Isn't this essentially AWS lambda or shared hosting? The trade offs will of course be their limitations, max execution times, lack of flexibility, and vendor lock in. I found that AWS was too expensive because of their bandwidth. Its cheaper to just get a dedicated server with 5-10x the capacity that I need. Doing what you said requires developer time which is more expensive than hardware, which is probably why AWS is so expensive. Some day that price will probably come down but for now its probably cheaper to just throw hardware at the problem. > do I have to futz about with admining, patching, and hardening the OS I think this is a problem [partially] addressed by configuration management. For example download some pre-made ansible configuration for a lamp server, and change just the settings you care about. Or load up someone's docker image (you'd still need to do updates)

digi_owl 9y ago
Or perhaps unikernel, where the OS and the "app" is pretty much one and the same.

fapjacks 9y ago

That's pretty much what Docker is about.