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MoonHome: Remote Development Environment
- haarts 5y agoI've been doing a lot of this lately. I got the cheapest Macbook Air and SSH into my machine at the office. Tmux attach and go! Lag is never an issue for me. I could get used to this.
- bengale 5y agoI’ve been using eternal terminal for this and it’s rock solid.
- movedx 5y agoMe too. I'm on very powerful hardware but the thin-client nature of using Remote-SSH is friggin' sweet.
- agrippanux 5y agoCheck out Mosh, it’s an upgrade over ssh if you are doing remote development
- TomatoTomato 5y agoNo port forwarding though. Must use ssh https://github.com/mobile-shell/mosh/issues/337 https://github.com/mobile-shell/mosh/issues/337
- paxys 5y ago"Cheapest Macbook air" is still upwards of $1000 and more than capable of running serious workloads. This kind of remote development perfectly suits my $135 chromebook though.
- gtirloni 5y ago> Lag is never an issue for me Is that because you have extremely good latency to the VM or because delays while typing don't bother you? Just wanted to clarify as latency (especially over VPN) is what keeps me away from these solutions.
- g051051 5y agoTyping lag...that reminds me of something I saw in the 90's. Someone was trying to figure out a production problem and asked for help. I sat down at their computer, and was trying to use their terminal shell window (HP/UX). It was terribly laggy, worse than I'd ever seen before. I asked if it was OK to exit and open a new window and they said OK. So I typed exit to close the telnet connection, then exit again to exit the terminal...but it didn't go away. So I typed exit again. and got another shell prompt. At that point I realized that they had been hopping from machine to machine without exiting. It turned out that the lag was from 22 nested telnet commands!
- kv12291 5y agoCan I run intellij on it?? Or is this intended for more docker based workflow... Either way it looks interesting... congrats on the launch.
- turbocon 5y agoJetbrains IDEs have hooks where you can run the ide local and execute code on an external machine. You can also host the IDE on the server and use the ide in a browser although I've never tried that before https://lp.jetbrains.com/projector/ https://lp.jetbrains.com/projector/
- omarfarooq 5y ago"We do not have access to your data" How can I independently verify the accuracy of this claim?
- reilly3000 5y agoYou could encrypt your drive to be sure.
- robjan 5y agoIt would have to be E2E encrypted which would break the functionality of a remote development environment
- easton 5y agoWhat's the value-add here over a traditional VPS? Codespaces (or Coder/code-server, or gitpod) have the benefit of launching in your browser and being really easy to destroy/spin up if needed. This seems like you're paying for a box and you'll get SSH credentials to connect to it. Ease of use counts for something, of course, but the market for this is developers that probably either know how to use DigitalOcean or don't know what SSH is and will stick with Codespaces or its alternatives. Static IPs are also interesting, but given the use case for me is being able to nuke my dev environment just like I nuke a git branch, as long as it's accessible somewhere I don't know how much that matters. (I'm not trying to be down on this at all, I don't know where I'd start with launching a VPS provider. But I think there's something missing from this landing page.)
- freemint 5y agoI think it just resells Hetzner cloud offer at a premium.
- smackeyacky 5y agoI have a lot of questions about this. What kind of machine can I provision? Can I make a remote mac for XCode shenanigans? What if I have some awful Windows thing I need to rebuild but don't want to install Visual Studio locally any more, is this a decent substitute for running up a local VM? What kind of security is sitting around my source code? How would I guarantee when I stopped using the service that a copy wasn't kept somewhere? Is it backed up / a snapshot done regularly? What kind of control do I have over those snapshots, the timing of them and deleting them if I decide to stop using the service?
- freemint 5y ago> What kind of machine can I provision? Virtual Private Servers with AMD EPYC 2nd Gen cores, probably resold from Hetzner Cloud at a premium. > Can I make a remote mac for XCode shenanigans? Maybe QEMU, probably runs Linux. > How would I guarantee when I stopped using the service that a copy wasn't kept somewhere? The offer GDPR compliance just like Hetzner Cloud > Is it backed up / a snapshot done regularly? Nothing on the website. Since they charge more for storage, maybe they do something?
- xnyan 5y agoIf the developer is here, I like the website! One question that stands out to me, after visiting your site I don't really see how this is significantly different from a VPS. The features (CPU, ram, bandwidth, public IP address, semi-managed OS, storage) seem to be more or less on par with what I would pay with AWS Lightsail, Linode VPS or a dozen other providers.
- jagger27 5y agoThe pricing seems reasonable and more or less inline with what an equivalent VPS would cost. I have a couple questions: > When not used, Moonhome is disconnected from the network for maximum protection. When running, it sits safely behind the built-in network firewall. So does this mean when I ssh in it proxies and forwards the connection to the actual host which is otherwise unexposed to the public internet? Seems like a reasonable thing to do, I guess. > We update system images every night, so you don’t have to worry about any of that. Okay, this seems fine at first glance but it’s really unclear. If I have Go installed, for example, will that be updated automatically or are my own development tools fully under my control and up to me to update? Also, what is the underlying distribution behind all of this? Is it just running ‘apt upgrade’ on a cron job or are you doing something else? Is it a giant stack of Docker containers with some persistent storage? Is this open source? Can I run a single command on a North American Digital Ocean droplet and run this closer to home? I don’t see much point in putting my dev env on the other side of an ocean.
- xtracto 5y ago> more or less inline with what an equivalent VPS would cost. I am curious of what the VPS options would look like pricewise, and how would a DIY approach entail. A 32GB DigitalOcean droplet is $192 a month . A 32GB VM in OVH is $62.56 a month. Same thing in Oracle Cloud is around $145 (according to their confusing cloud cost estimator), and AWS r3.xlarge with 32gb is around $252
- aetherspawn 5y agoThis is cool. I wish there was something like this for MATLAB.
- garyfirestorm 5y agohttps://www.mathworks.com/products/matlab-parallel-server.html https://www.mathworks.com/products/matlab-parallel-server.ht...
- aetherspawn 5y agoNeat, I forgot about this. Thanks!
- ozten 5y ago"Use Visual Studio Code with integrated Git, Terminal and IDE features just like you would use it locally." Is this using rsync or ? What is the best way to synchronize local disk with the remote server? Curious if this could work with iPad pro. There are a few cloud IDE things in this space, but MoonHome's pricing is much friendlier.
- tprynn 5y agoVisual Studio Code has built-in support for remote development. It runs a local agent on the remote server via SSH which does essentially whatever you would be doing locally (e.g. viewing, editing, searching) and only sends the minimal results you need over the network. https://code.visualstudio.com/docs/remote/remote-overview https://code.visualstudio.com/docs/remote/remote-overview
- wyldfire 5y agoVSCode has an existing remote option that uses ssh as the transport. Maybe it's leveraging that?
- dreyfan 5y agoThis is a really rich description of a completely standard VPS.
- omarfarooq 5y agoThe more you tell, the more you sell. David Ogilvy
- playpause 5y agoA remote dev environment is just one of many use cases for a VPS. They're not the same thing at all. My brain just isn't good at servers. I have set up many generic cloud servers over the years, but I always hate doing it, it takes me ages to get it right, and I find it hard keep track of everything once set up, and I'm always worried I might have set up something wrong and end up with a security hole or a runaway bill. If I was looking to set up a remote dev environment right now, I would be far more inclined to spend a few dollars per month in overhead for someone to hand-hold me through the process, by providing a clear and simple pricing structure, docs, and support, all narrowly focused on the use case of remote dev environment. If you're someone who is comfortable playing around with servers, then it makes more sense for you to go lower-level and just set up your own VPS, as you'll probably value the extra freedom and flexibility. For many developers though, that flexibility isn't worth it for the extra complexity and time it takes.
- dreyfan 5y agoYou don't have to setup anything whatsoever for VSCode Remote-SSH. You give it an IP and user+pass/ssh-key and it takes care of the rest.
- boolean 5y ago> Currently, MoonHome is a single-man operation, 100% self-funded. I wouldn't highlight this on the homepage as I don't think it's a plus. I personally wouldn't want my dev environment to depend on a single person operation.
- movedx 5y agoCompared to what? If you ran this yourself, like I do on LightSail, that would be a (worse) one man operation.
- boolean 5y agoCompared to GitHub Codespaces or LightSail which have proper support teams behind the products.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- movedx 5y agoLightSail (AWS) don't manage the OS upwards for you.
- boolean 5y agoYou're right. However, I'd rather have myself as a single point of failure (for OS and VS Code server) than another individual. Keep in mind that you're also trusting an individual with your codebase.
- movedx 5y agoGood points. I think the OP's service needs to introduce a second person/founder, for sure.
- freemint 5y agoIf, as i suspect, this is just a resold Hetzner Cloud at a premium, so i would not worry about reliability.
- avidphantasm 5y agoHey guys, there are these things called “workstations.” Have heard of them?
- digitallyfree 5y agoHaving a personal workstation in university (kept it at home and had a VPN set up to connect to my LAN) was probably one of the best choices I made. I could carry a cheap disposable laptop that served as a web browser and dumb terminal and the powerful machine was just a SSH connection away.
- smackeyacky 5y agoYeah, I don't understand the thinking behind this product when you can buy a recently decommissioned Dell, HP or SuperMicro server with a pile of memory and a couple of fast Xeons in it, load up your Linux of choice and go to town with QEMU. This beast here has two ethernet ports as well, so one is dedicated to the I/O for the QEMU VMs and they appear on the local network as actual machines via a bridge. Stick an old ATI HD6750 in it and run two QHD monitors. You may need some mechanism to make it a bit quieter but on the whole it's cheap, awesome and easy to keep running. Got a Big Sur VM, a Windows 2019 server, Windows 10 and a Solaris VM just for giggles because I like to watch the old screen savers sometimes. Remote access: no problem. Power consumption: err... Best of all, HP have integrated lights out on their enterprise gear, so if you need to reboot it remotely, you can!
- gallexme 5y agogod i wish my power costs were not 0.38€/kwh for me renting servers is cheaper all around(https://www.hetzner.com/de/dedicated-rootserver/ax41-nvme https://www.hetzner.com/de/dedicated-rootserver/ax41-nvme)
- wongarsu 5y agoWhenever I ran the numbers, decommissioned servers were hard to justify. They are cheap to buy, but you pay that back quickly in electricity. And if you want something that's not incredibly noisy you pay a decent premium for that.
- freemint 5y agoI find the pricing structure surprisingly similar to Hetzner Cloud. There are the same RAM and CPU core tiers running the same AMD EPYC 2nd Gen (one to one and onto mapping). Except prices for storage is almost double. And hourly costs are higher which is kinda hidden by not assuming 24/7 operation compared to Hetzners monthly pricing. You will pay less with Hetzner as they also offer hourly billing. More smoking guns, while moonhome.io is hosted by Amazon both app.moonhome.io and alpha.moonhome.io (shared by the founder on Twitter) resolve to 78.47.78.87 which is static.87.78.47.78.clients.your-server.de which is an Hetzner IP. [1] For my own legal safety i am not claiming that this service is just reselling Hetzner Cloud. Just that i found a lot of things that convinced me that that could be reselling Hetzner Cloud. Same disclaimer applies to all comments i made in this thread. [1] https://web.archive.org/web/20211014004453/https://mxtoolbox.com/SuperTool.aspx?action=a%3Aapp.moonhome.io&run=toolpage https://web.archive.org/web/20211014004453/https://mxtoolbox...
- hakube 5y agoYou know, he could be using a dedicated server hosted on Hetzner.
- jmnicolas 5y agoWhat would be wrong if they're reselling Hetzner? Obviously the price difference come from whatever they include on top.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- KronisLV 5y agoActually wondering about this as well, currently considering making my own SaaS, though it's not like there's that many approaches to do billing. In my eyes, a pretty good option would be to automate VPS provisioning and allow each client to order a particular amount of resources, with the software installed on top of them. That way, multi tenancy can be limited to services that handle provisioning, billing and setup, while the individual instances can allow avoiding a single point of failure as far as the day to day operations are concerned. Basing pricing on the underlying VPS costs with a profit margin in mind just seems like one of the few ways to do it, why would there be anything wrong with it, if the SaaS provides value?
- hoherd 5y agogoogle cloudshell is also free for GCP users and has a lot of the same use cases as this. I've been using it for building and pushing docker images, among other things. > Cloud Shell is available at no additional cost for Google Cloud customers. https://cloud.google.com/shell https://cloud.google.com/shell `gcloud cloud-shell ssh --authorize-session`
- daviddaviddavid 5y agoAt a glance, the screenshot on the main page seems indistinguishable from Visual Studio Code with the remote-ssh plugin, which is my daily driver and works fantastic.
- stef25 5y agoInteresting that more and more people seem to be using remote dev environments. Do you have any guides on building a good setup? I get the VS Code + ssh plugin part but how do you manage urls / domains and keeping things private?
- filmgirlcw 5y agoIt's a well-designed site, but as others have noted, there aren't enough details about how it works, how data is handled, and its security for this to be something I would ever even think about giving money to. I don't have a problem trying to undercut Codespaces by selling a hosted preset cloud-environment offering, even if it is just built atop Hetzner, but I do have a problem with the lack of clarity about what it is and how it works. There is a huge niche/hobby that is there are tons of VPS resellers and smaller hosts who just throw up a rack or two in a data center and then sell cheap VPS boxes, but the thing is, when you get something from a lowendbox type of place or an upstart VPS provider, you usually understand that the company might not be around forever, that support is spotty, and that you're on your own. When you target something as a hosted remote dev environment, for me, that requires a lot more trust (whether it should or shouldn't) because it's my dev environment. Still, it's a nice idea and I'm sure we'll see more of these offerings pop up over time.
- sneak 5y ago> We do not have access to your data Pretty sure that this isn't true.
- cstrat 5y agoThere is an open source implementation of this you can just spin up in docker. https://github.com/cdr/code-server https://github.com/cdr/code-server I've been using it for a couple of years now. It's been amazing for me. Run a server at home and I can just edit stuff on the fly via browser from where ever I am.
- pjmlp 5y agoLovely how we now resell in 2021 the enterprise computing model from 1980's timesharing systems.
- gtirloni 5y agoIs that good or bad?
- pjmlp 5y agoBad, we just go around in circles, with the browser replacing green phosphor terminals.
- wongarsu 5y agoBut how do you know that reintroducing the mainframe model is the mistake, not that we completely got rid of it? Or maybe the total dominance of personal computers was an intermediate state caused by the low availability of good enough network connections
- pjmlp 5y agoWhen your data is in someone else computer, it is a big mistake.
- ithkuil 5y agowhat's the simplest way to have a fool-proof time based scheduler for an AWS instance?
- everyone 5y ago"Modern notebooks prioritize pretty screen and battery time. And when you do need some more computing power you end up with hot casing and laud fans. It is no longer a pleasant experience. " I guess they mean modern mac notebooks
- danparsonson 5y agoAnd presumably 'loud' not 'laud'
- schaefer 5y agoTypo “ laud fans” should be “loud fans”.