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Don't be discouraged by the docker love in tech right now. I'm not saying it's a fad (it's basically critical for local dev these days), but nothing will replac

Don't be discouraged by the docker love in tech right now. I'm not saying it's a fad (it's basically critical for local dev these days), but nothing will replace the joy of simplicity and empowerment of working with the Linux virtual machine directly instead of through endless PaaS or compose or k8s abstractions.

greyskull 7y ago
If we assume there's a way to quickly build an image for a vm (like docker build), are there workflows to quickly spin up and throw away those images?
- scarface74 7y ago
  Fargate.
  - greyskull 7y ago
    1. That's docker. 2. I should have specified "in local development".
- scaryclam 7y ago
  I think Packer (https://www.packer.io/ https://www.packer.io/) might what you want there.
- eatonphil 7y ago
  From a thread a while ago I know of these that work on Dockerfiles but build fully bootable disk images: https://godarch.com/ https://godarch.com/ https://github.com/imc-trading/dock2box https://github.com/imc-trading/dock2box https://buildroot.org/ https://buildroot.org/ https://github.com/ottomatica/slim https://github.com/ottomatica/slim
- takeda 7y ago
  There is packer I highly recommend to use it together with salt module to do all the configuration. There is also NixOS together with NixOps it has some steep learning curve, but I think it is worth it. You edit configuration.nix which is like Dockerfile, and then you can either use standard AMI and provide the configuration, that will result in setup similar to salt, ansible, chef etc. You can also use NixOps to provision such machine, you can then place /etc/NIXOS_LUSTRATE file which removes state after next reboot, stop it and generate AMI that essentially emulates what packer is doing. You can also use nix build to generate an image file and upload that to AWS. NixOps is also a great tool to test, you can deploy your configuration to local virtual box, or public cloud provider.
scarface74 7y ago
With Fargate you don’t need Kubernetes or any crazy abstractions. I went from not knowing anything about Docker to setting up an autoscaling (didn’t need autoscaling, I needed HA) Node/Express microservice with CloudFormation within two days.
- elcritch 7y ago
  For me, modern Linux VMs keep changing with all the systemd stuff. It’s like every time I try to do something basic like configuring networking I have to lookup whatever they’re doing this week. Fargate and k8s seem better documented nowadays and just runs my app.
  - scarface74 7y ago
    That’s the second part of the story for me. From 2000 until last year, all of my development and deployments have been on Windows. I just started developing with .Net Core, Node, and Python last year. My “Linux deployments” were all Lambda. The Node/Express app used the lambda proxy integration. I needed to move past the lambda limitations - 6MB request body and cold starts - and I didn’t want to introduce Linux servers into a Windows shop or host Node on a Windows server and I didn’t know Linux well enough myself. I was able to deploy a Linux Docker Container on Fargate and have all of the console output to go to Cloudwatch.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]

greyskull 7y ago

If we assume there's a way to quickly build an image for a vm (like docker build), are there workflows to quickly spin up and throw away those images?

scarface74 7y ago
Fargate.
- greyskull 7y ago
  1. That's docker. 2. I should have specified "in local development".
scaryclam 7y ago
I think Packer (https://www.packer.io/ https://www.packer.io/) might what you want there.
eatonphil 7y ago
From a thread a while ago I know of these that work on Dockerfiles but build fully bootable disk images: https://godarch.com/ https://godarch.com/ https://github.com/imc-trading/dock2box https://github.com/imc-trading/dock2box https://buildroot.org/ https://buildroot.org/ https://github.com/ottomatica/slim https://github.com/ottomatica/slim
takeda 7y ago
There is packer I highly recommend to use it together with salt module to do all the configuration. There is also NixOS together with NixOps it has some steep learning curve, but I think it is worth it. You edit configuration.nix which is like Dockerfile, and then you can either use standard AMI and provide the configuration, that will result in setup similar to salt, ansible, chef etc. You can also use NixOps to provision such machine, you can then place /etc/NIXOS_LUSTRATE file which removes state after next reboot, stop it and generate AMI that essentially emulates what packer is doing. You can also use nix build to generate an image file and upload that to AWS. NixOps is also a great tool to test, you can deploy your configuration to local virtual box, or public cloud provider.

scarface74 7y ago

With Fargate you don’t need Kubernetes or any crazy abstractions. I went from not knowing anything about Docker to setting up an autoscaling (didn’t need autoscaling, I needed HA) Node/Express microservice with CloudFormation within two days.

elcritch 7y ago
For me, modern Linux VMs keep changing with all the systemd stuff. It’s like every time I try to do something basic like configuring networking I have to lookup whatever they’re doing this week. Fargate and k8s seem better documented nowadays and just runs my app.
- scarface74 7y ago
  That’s the second part of the story for me. From 2000 until last year, all of my development and deployments have been on Windows. I just started developing with .Net Core, Node, and Python last year. My “Linux deployments” were all Lambda. The Node/Express app used the lambda proxy integration. I needed to move past the lambda limitations - 6MB request body and cold starts - and I didn’t want to introduce Linux servers into a Windows shop or host Node on a Windows server and I didn’t know Linux well enough myself. I was able to deploy a Linux Docker Container on Fargate and have all of the console output to go to Cloudwatch.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]