6 ms·

Why are people still doing this kind of stuff instead of using a PaaS?

jvc26 15y ago
I'd imagine on the whole due to cost. Heroku, for example, is a great stack, but costs a significant amount if you aren't flush with cash. This can be run on a small ec2 instance for a fraction of the cost, whilst it does have greater administrative overhead.
wx77 15y ago
Because depending on the size of what you are running PaaS can be very expensive.
jemeshsu 15y ago
Why are people still think PaaS is the only way to host apps?
- latchkey 15y ago
  It isn't that people still think it is the only way. It is that people have realized that they don't want to be woken up in the middle of the night every time their server goes kaput. I have better things to do with my time. I'd rather pay the 'extra' money to a PaaS in order to not have to a) hire a sysadmin, or pretend to be one on TV. b) get a full nights sleep. c) be able to go on vacation without worrying if the server is up or not. d) not have to worry about adding servers when my traffic has spiked and this one server isn't enough. If you don't think EC2 instances go down, you are kidding yourself. Not only do they go down, but they 'appear' up. Talk about a mixed message. So, you also need to pay for a third party monitoring service just to tell you that your server is down. At the end of the day, when you've added up all of those 'costs' of running your own servers, PaaS starts to look at lot more attractive. I certainly trust a company like Google AppEngine to be able to hire a lot more sysadmins, setup better monitoring and have better response times for fixing servers than I ever could. I'd also love to never have to learn or remember the arcane list of setup configuration that this person blogged about. Instead, I'd rather be adding features to my app and making money.
crcsmnky 15y ago
There's always the ability to tweak specifics for your setup that aren't available in many platforms. IMHO, you shouldn't use a PaaS unless you know how to set your stack up. Essentially, if you don't recognize or have respect for the convenience you're being given (by going through a platform) then you'll potentially make bad decisions down the road. Personally, I prefer to learn how to set it up and scale it myself initially which helps me better understand what to look for in a platform. Plus, there's something fun about putting all the pieces together and watching your apps come up (especially if you don't normally handle this part of the stack).
- cardmagic 15y ago
  What do you think of Cloud Foundry that is a PaaS which is open source and you can control all the aspects of if you don't like them?
- malachismith 15y ago
  This is the same argument people use for not using an IDE. While I think it makes sense for the very skilled or very serious, and is IMHO vital as part of the learning process, I'm not convinced that it's globally applicable nor that it's the best thing for business.
pbreit 15y ago
With the cost and control advantages of cloud or owned servers, PaaS seems like a tough sell. Setting up and administering servers has become much easier and continues to improve.
- malachismith 15y ago
  True. If you love doing DevOps or are an IT person at heart.
mthreat 15y ago
And what shall the PaaS providers use for their web servers? PaaSaaS? :)
- candeira 15y ago
  I know you are joking, but the idea is that different levels of service are given by different people, and they may be layered one on top of another. I believe the term used these days is IaaS, Infrastructure as a Service. Amazon EC2 would be IaaS. Heroku or DotCloud would be PaaS. A PaaS company can have their infrastructure provided by an IaaS company. It's Turtles as a Service all the way down.
- technomancy 15y ago
  Many parts of Heroku are actually self-hosted: https://thestrangeloop.com/sessions/running-heroku-on-heroku https://thestrangeloop.com/sessions/running-heroku-on-heroku
devmach 15y ago
* Because i can. * Because i can understand the technology behind the "magic". * Because i can understand the technology behind the "magic" and design my system better. * Because i can understand the technology behind the "magic" and design my system better and if PaaS provider goes out of business i have a chance to survive. * Like snap said before : i've got the power... And most important : because i'm a masochist bastard, who has trust problems...
- cardmagic 15y ago
  But why not templetize the power into an open source system like Cloud Foundry, do it once and then forget about it? Why not design it once, use forever? You still get the power, you just have the time to think about other things, like actually getting shit done.
  - devmach 15y ago
    If you use Cloudfoundry.COM you are locked in, it's still in beta and we don't know about pricing model. If you use opensource version (Cloudfoundry.ORG) you still need "server guys".
deccico 15y ago
Heroku support to Django is promising but it still has things to improve like database access which is a performance bottleneck. Also I don't think comfortable having all this uncontrolled "magic" happening. EC2 is free for a year so I think it's worth giving it a shot.

jvc26 15y ago

I'd imagine on the whole due to cost. Heroku, for example, is a great stack, but costs a significant amount if you aren't flush with cash. This can be run on a small ec2 instance for a fraction of the cost, whilst it does have greater administrative overhead.

wx77 15y ago

Because depending on the size of what you are running PaaS can be very expensive.

jemeshsu 15y ago

Why are people still think PaaS is the only way to host apps?

latchkey 15y ago
It isn't that people still think it is the only way. It is that people have realized that they don't want to be woken up in the middle of the night every time their server goes kaput. I have better things to do with my time. I'd rather pay the 'extra' money to a PaaS in order to not have to a) hire a sysadmin, or pretend to be one on TV. b) get a full nights sleep. c) be able to go on vacation without worrying if the server is up or not. d) not have to worry about adding servers when my traffic has spiked and this one server isn't enough. If you don't think EC2 instances go down, you are kidding yourself. Not only do they go down, but they 'appear' up. Talk about a mixed message. So, you also need to pay for a third party monitoring service just to tell you that your server is down. At the end of the day, when you've added up all of those 'costs' of running your own servers, PaaS starts to look at lot more attractive. I certainly trust a company like Google AppEngine to be able to hire a lot more sysadmins, setup better monitoring and have better response times for fixing servers than I ever could. I'd also love to never have to learn or remember the arcane list of setup configuration that this person blogged about. Instead, I'd rather be adding features to my app and making money.

crcsmnky 15y ago

There's always the ability to tweak specifics for your setup that aren't available in many platforms. IMHO, you shouldn't use a PaaS unless you know how to set your stack up. Essentially, if you don't recognize or have respect for the convenience you're being given (by going through a platform) then you'll potentially make bad decisions down the road. Personally, I prefer to learn how to set it up and scale it myself initially which helps me better understand what to look for in a platform. Plus, there's something fun about putting all the pieces together and watching your apps come up (especially if you don't normally handle this part of the stack).

cardmagic 15y ago
What do you think of Cloud Foundry that is a PaaS which is open source and you can control all the aspects of if you don't like them?
malachismith 15y ago
This is the same argument people use for not using an IDE. While I think it makes sense for the very skilled or very serious, and is IMHO vital as part of the learning process, I'm not convinced that it's globally applicable nor that it's the best thing for business.

pbreit 15y ago

With the cost and control advantages of cloud or owned servers, PaaS seems like a tough sell. Setting up and administering servers has become much easier and continues to improve.

malachismith 15y ago
True. If you love doing DevOps or are an IT person at heart.

mthreat 15y ago

And what shall the PaaS providers use for their web servers? PaaSaaS? :)

candeira 15y ago
I know you are joking, but the idea is that different levels of service are given by different people, and they may be layered one on top of another. I believe the term used these days is IaaS, Infrastructure as a Service. Amazon EC2 would be IaaS. Heroku or DotCloud would be PaaS. A PaaS company can have their infrastructure provided by an IaaS company. It's Turtles as a Service all the way down.
technomancy 15y ago
Many parts of Heroku are actually self-hosted: https://thestrangeloop.com/sessions/running-heroku-on-heroku https://thestrangeloop.com/sessions/running-heroku-on-heroku

devmach 15y ago

* Because i can. * Because i can understand the technology behind the "magic". * Because i can understand the technology behind the "magic" and design my system better. * Because i can understand the technology behind the "magic" and design my system better and if PaaS provider goes out of business i have a chance to survive. * Like snap said before : i've got the power... And most important : because i'm a masochist bastard, who has trust problems...

cardmagic 15y ago
But why not templetize the power into an open source system like Cloud Foundry, do it once and then forget about it? Why not design it once, use forever? You still get the power, you just have the time to think about other things, like actually getting shit done.
- devmach 15y ago
  If you use Cloudfoundry.COM you are locked in, it's still in beta and we don't know about pricing model. If you use opensource version (Cloudfoundry.ORG) you still need "server guys".

deccico 15y ago

Heroku support to Django is promising but it still has things to improve like database access which is a performance bottleneck. Also I don't think comfortable having all this uncontrolled "magic" happening. EC2 is free for a year so I think it's worth giving it a shot.