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I’m stunned that a business of this size would still be using Heroku. Heroku’s sweet spot (to me at least) is for anyone with less than 3-4 servers. After that

by bdibs 7y ago

I’m stunned that a business of this size would still be using Heroku. Heroku’s sweet spot (to me at least) is for anyone with less than 3-4 servers. After that, it just becomes so expensive there’s no rationalization in the world that makes sense.

quickthrower2 7y ago
Moreover what if Heroku goes out of business? Then they’re f’d. Hosting on k8s, using Terraform or whatever would give them a lot of automation and provider independence.
- quickthrower2 7y ago
  I’m guessing I’m being grayed because I’m suggesting Heroku might go out of business? Ok let me explain. That is one scenario, it’s unlikely but there might be other similar scenarios that pose risk being tied in to one providers stack. DDOS, TOS issues, simply out growing them, Heroku themselves having TOS issues with their cloud. There are almost weekly posts on HN of “this major service is down” and “that major service is down”. I understand a scrappy startup needing to focus on growth and using the most convenient tools, but once you’ve been around a bit it’s time to think of boring stuff like what if stuff goes wrong. It might be technical, security related, business related or political. Eliminating SPOFs is wise. Happy for you to downvote this but if you do please drop a sentence to say why I’m wrong. I’m happy to be proved wrong it helps me learn.
  - mypalmike 7y ago
    I didn't downvote, but... "I understand a scrappy startup needing to focus on growth and using the most convenient tools" Well, there's your answer. As a scrappy startup, you can't afford to plan migrations you aren't planning to execute. It's that simple. Heroku is not going away (they're owned by salesforce) and they have a good reputation for uptime. The "what if" worst case scenarios have to be weighed against other business concerns. And this company appears to have done a good job of navigating such things.
  - scarface74 7y ago
    Well let’s see where to start. Terraform is not magic. All of the provisioners are specific to a platform.
  - sudhirj 7y ago
    Heroku mandates the use or 12Factor apps, which makes it much easier to migrate. They support docker as well. Pretty much every app I write I usually starts on Heroku and migrate later if the client / traffic needs it, and it’s always been seamless. Most apps have Dev/test on Heroku with a staging and production on AWS, and because of the 12 factor principles, which also work on Beanstalk / ECS / normal servers it’s never a problem.
    - ukoki 7y ago
      Yep. Or bake your app into a docker image using https://buildpacks.io/docs/using-pack/building-app/ https://buildpacks.io/docs/using-pack/building-app/ and deploy to any k8saaS such as GKE, EKS, or AKS.
  - stickfigure 7y ago
    Downvoter (of your previous comment) here. Your comment is not only bad, but outright dangerous. This is a company that is burning through hundreds of thousands of dollars on hosting and staff with no business model yet. The primary risk to this company is not their host going away; the primary risk to this company is that they won't figure out how to make money. Worry about optimizing your serving infrastructure after you have a business that you know is worth saving.
    - quickthrower2 7y ago
      Cool thanks it’s nice to hear the story behind the downvote. I agree you’d need to be flying their plane so to speak to know the reasoning behind their business decision. I still forget there are businesses that burn through that much cash looking for product market fit etc. it’s not the European way so I often don’t correlate spending 100k/m on hosting with fighting to stay alive. Anyway I was sort of making a general point about lock in. It may not apply to this company.
- Mizza 7y ago
  Can we please, please, please kill the myth that Terraform in any way helps in any way with provider independence?
  - kitotik 7y ago
    I find it much easier to maintain terraform code that allows me to use multiple cloud providers than if I had to do the same without terraform. You seem to have some insight to share here though, could you expound? *edit typo
    - scarface74 7y ago
      How would Terraform help you move between cloud providers when all of the provisioners are specific to the cloud platform. If you’re a small startup, the least of your business risks are one of the major cloud providers shutting down.
      - quickthrower2 7y ago
        > How would Terraform help you move between cloud providers when all of the provisioners are specific to the cloud platform You don't move. You load balance across the clouds prior to the disaster. You have your stuff work on both. I mentioned K8s because you could set up a managed cluster of that on a few cloud providers, and most of your TF will be the same in terms of setting up k8s, with some differences on how you set up those clouds. This might be overkill for many people though so see below... > If you’re a small startup, the least of your business risks are one of the major cloud providers shutting down. I agree. a major cloud provider wont shut down.... ... but they might shut YOU down. Why? Billing Issues / TOS / 'Suspicious Activity' [0] / etc. Now do you mitigate for that? Not necessarily but it is worth considering if you need to. At the preparedness extreme you have a probe that detects the problem and flicks you over to cloud 2. Or a load balancer as I mention above (which would probe). That's probably too much for a scrappy startup. But a middle ground is you have tech that is easy to move. Doesn't have to be k8s/TF but maybe a bash script you run on a new debian VM or whatever. Then you phone one of you awesome developers at 3am and tell them to migrate to AWS or whatever, and because it's easy they'll figure it out as they go, most stuff running by 3:30am and everything dandy by 5am. The other extreme is you are tied in heavily to specific stacks by specific providers, and it take X hours/days to get back online again. I'm not recommending to anyone what to do here - but I am saying consider the black swan events. You might consider them and say no I want my devs adding feature X so we can sell more. Fine, but I think when you can spend $100k a month on cloud you can probably afford to think about it a bit. [0] Source: one of the major cloud providers cut all our services for 12 hours due to "suspicious activity". Turned out later it was due to a reused IP we were given from a pool that someone else f'd with. They gave us some credits to be nice afterwards.
- arnvald 7y ago
  I'm pretty sure that worrying about your hosting provider going out of business is one of the least important things to think about when you have a startup that's still trying to build its business model. And seriously, not everything has to be hosted on k8s, not everyone has to use Terraform, it's ok running your application on Heroku, DO or some other hosting. If Heroku goes out of business, you'll have a few months to preapre a migration plan. It's ok to handle it then, right now there are probably more important things for them to do.
novok 7y ago
Seeing how heroku is a relatively minor item cost wise, they should probably focus on the bigger cost items first before thinking about getting away from heroku

by bdibs 7y ago

quickthrower2 7y ago

Moreover what if Heroku goes out of business? Then they’re f’d. Hosting on k8s, using Terraform or whatever would give them a lot of automation and provider independence.

quickthrower2 7y ago
I’m guessing I’m being grayed because I’m suggesting Heroku might go out of business? Ok let me explain. That is one scenario, it’s unlikely but there might be other similar scenarios that pose risk being tied in to one providers stack. DDOS, TOS issues, simply out growing them, Heroku themselves having TOS issues with their cloud. There are almost weekly posts on HN of “this major service is down” and “that major service is down”. I understand a scrappy startup needing to focus on growth and using the most convenient tools, but once you’ve been around a bit it’s time to think of boring stuff like what if stuff goes wrong. It might be technical, security related, business related or political. Eliminating SPOFs is wise. Happy for you to downvote this but if you do please drop a sentence to say why I’m wrong. I’m happy to be proved wrong it helps me learn.
- mypalmike 7y ago
  I didn't downvote, but... "I understand a scrappy startup needing to focus on growth and using the most convenient tools" Well, there's your answer. As a scrappy startup, you can't afford to plan migrations you aren't planning to execute. It's that simple. Heroku is not going away (they're owned by salesforce) and they have a good reputation for uptime. The "what if" worst case scenarios have to be weighed against other business concerns. And this company appears to have done a good job of navigating such things.
- scarface74 7y ago
  Well let’s see where to start. Terraform is not magic. All of the provisioners are specific to a platform.
- sudhirj 7y ago
  Heroku mandates the use or 12Factor apps, which makes it much easier to migrate. They support docker as well. Pretty much every app I write I usually starts on Heroku and migrate later if the client / traffic needs it, and it’s always been seamless. Most apps have Dev/test on Heroku with a staging and production on AWS, and because of the 12 factor principles, which also work on Beanstalk / ECS / normal servers it’s never a problem.
  - ukoki 7y ago
    Yep. Or bake your app into a docker image using https://buildpacks.io/docs/using-pack/building-app/ https://buildpacks.io/docs/using-pack/building-app/ and deploy to any k8saaS such as GKE, EKS, or AKS.
- stickfigure 7y ago
  Downvoter (of your previous comment) here. Your comment is not only bad, but outright dangerous. This is a company that is burning through hundreds of thousands of dollars on hosting and staff with no business model yet. The primary risk to this company is not their host going away; the primary risk to this company is that they won't figure out how to make money. Worry about optimizing your serving infrastructure after you have a business that you know is worth saving.
  - quickthrower2 7y ago
    Cool thanks it’s nice to hear the story behind the downvote. I agree you’d need to be flying their plane so to speak to know the reasoning behind their business decision. I still forget there are businesses that burn through that much cash looking for product market fit etc. it’s not the European way so I often don’t correlate spending 100k/m on hosting with fighting to stay alive. Anyway I was sort of making a general point about lock in. It may not apply to this company.
Mizza 7y ago
Can we please, please, please kill the myth that Terraform in any way helps in any way with provider independence?
- kitotik 7y ago
  I find it much easier to maintain terraform code that allows me to use multiple cloud providers than if I had to do the same without terraform. You seem to have some insight to share here though, could you expound? *edit typo
  - scarface74 7y ago
    How would Terraform help you move between cloud providers when all of the provisioners are specific to the cloud platform. If you’re a small startup, the least of your business risks are one of the major cloud providers shutting down.
    - quickthrower2 7y ago
      > How would Terraform help you move between cloud providers when all of the provisioners are specific to the cloud platform You don't move. You load balance across the clouds prior to the disaster. You have your stuff work on both. I mentioned K8s because you could set up a managed cluster of that on a few cloud providers, and most of your TF will be the same in terms of setting up k8s, with some differences on how you set up those clouds. This might be overkill for many people though so see below... > If you’re a small startup, the least of your business risks are one of the major cloud providers shutting down. I agree. a major cloud provider wont shut down.... ... but they might shut YOU down. Why? Billing Issues / TOS / 'Suspicious Activity' [0] / etc. Now do you mitigate for that? Not necessarily but it is worth considering if you need to. At the preparedness extreme you have a probe that detects the problem and flicks you over to cloud 2. Or a load balancer as I mention above (which would probe). That's probably too much for a scrappy startup. But a middle ground is you have tech that is easy to move. Doesn't have to be k8s/TF but maybe a bash script you run on a new debian VM or whatever. Then you phone one of you awesome developers at 3am and tell them to migrate to AWS or whatever, and because it's easy they'll figure it out as they go, most stuff running by 3:30am and everything dandy by 5am. The other extreme is you are tied in heavily to specific stacks by specific providers, and it take X hours/days to get back online again. I'm not recommending to anyone what to do here - but I am saying consider the black swan events. You might consider them and say no I want my devs adding feature X so we can sell more. Fine, but I think when you can spend $100k a month on cloud you can probably afford to think about it a bit. [0] Source: one of the major cloud providers cut all our services for 12 hours due to "suspicious activity". Turned out later it was due to a reused IP we were given from a pool that someone else f'd with. They gave us some credits to be nice afterwards.
arnvald 7y ago
I'm pretty sure that worrying about your hosting provider going out of business is one of the least important things to think about when you have a startup that's still trying to build its business model. And seriously, not everything has to be hosted on k8s, not everyone has to use Terraform, it's ok running your application on Heroku, DO or some other hosting. If Heroku goes out of business, you'll have a few months to preapre a migration plan. It's ok to handle it then, right now there are probably more important things for them to do.

novok 7y ago

Seeing how heroku is a relatively minor item cost wise, they should probably focus on the bigger cost items first before thinking about getting away from heroku