10 ms·

OpenShift by Red Hat

329 points by kragniz 14y ago

japhyr 14y ago
Has anyone chosen openshift over heroku for django? I didn't see any pricing info; is openshift still in beta?
- bpp198 14y ago
  OpenShift is free.
  - ralphsaunders 14y ago
    But what's the catch?
    - halfasleep 14y ago
      It's Free Software, you can run it yourself or switch providers at will. The catch may be in the lack of features compared to a proprietary option (like Heroku)
    - pawmar 14y ago
      From their faq page: To get more information on the pricing and timing of a paid version of OpenShift please send an email to openshift@redhat.com
    - ttt_ 14y ago
      Yeah, is it free as in beer? For life? No matter how much it has to scale to? If it is, I would like to understand the reasoning behind that? Is it to gain traction and visibility for Red Hate as a PaaS? And then...
    - deleted 14y ago
      [deleted]
    - stonemetal 14y ago
      It is in open beta and has big warning labels to not use in production.
    - BHSPitMonkey 14y ago
      The free tier is limited in resources; When you want more, you'll be expected to pay for more (once they begin to offer paid plans).
  - _delirium 14y ago
    There are hints that it's free only for a preview period. From http://www.redhat.com/products/cloud-computing/openshift/ http://www.redhat.com/products/cloud-computing/openshift/, under the "How To Buy" tab, it calls it a "free developer preview" and says, "OpenShift is currently in developer preview and free to use. Stay tuned—pricing is coming soon."
- obtu 14y ago
  Beta: yes and no. The implementation has existed for some time and was liberated recently. But the pricing beyond a free slot hasn't been published yet: https://openshift.redhat.com/community/faq#t2n9495 https://openshift.redhat.com/community/faq#t2n9495 Being entirely open-source, if you outgrow it you can self host or move to an IAAS cloud.
amalag 14y ago
I tried openshift a few months ago for Rails. A real pain in the butt. They dont have simple deploy like Heroku. Even heroku can be time consuming in the beginning to get right, openshift was even more complicated. It may work better for Java I don't know, looks like they are right on the bleeding edge with support for Ruby 1.8.7.
- jwarzech 14y ago
  Thank you for posting your experience trying it with rails, I agree deployment of a non-trivial app to heroku can be a pain the first time but once you get everything working its a breeze for subsequent deployments.
- TheSteve0 14y ago
  Our roadmap has more support for newer versions of Ruby coming soon. We started with the base packages in RHEL but are now working to also bring newer versions as standard cartridges. That said, you can also use a DIY cartridge to get Ruby 1.9.x
  - sabat 14y ago
    Good to know; I just came here to complain. :-) On the other hand, though, I think you should have probably started with the 1.9.2/1.9.3 series rather than the ancient 1.8.7.
- TheSteve0 14y ago
  Our roadmap has more support for newer versions of Ruby coming soon. We started with the base packages in RHEL but are now working to also bring newer versions as standard cartridges. That said, you can also use a DIY cartridge to get Ruby 1.9.x
dabeeeenster 14y ago
No mention of pricing anywhere on their site. What?
- r080 14y ago
  FAQ has something: "To get more information on the pricing and timing of a paid version of OpenShift please send an email to openshift@redhat.com"
- rplnt 14y ago
  It's in some sort of beta and only limited free tier is available. You can still get it running on your server(s) though.
ique 14y ago
How can this be free? If I host a massive application here, will they shut it down or rate limit or how can this work?
- tikhonj 14y ago
  I think they mean free as in speech more than free as in beer. Of course, it is currently in a developer preview and so also free as in beer, but I think that's incidental--this is Red Hat after all; they actually care about users' freedom and they aren't afraid of offering paid plans and support. Happily, since it's open source, you can just host it yourself if you aren't happy with Red Hat's potential future pricing.
- wnm 14y ago
  the preview is free and has a limit: "The developer preview supports up to 3 gears per user. You have a quota of 40,000 files, 1GB of storage, and 512MB Memory per gear. It is free to use and you can run your application indefinitely. If you need to increase this quota, please mailto:openshift@redhat.com with your username, domain and Application URL." from: https://openshift.redhat.com/community/faq/how-many-applications-can-i-deploy-and-how-long-can-i-run-them-for https://openshift.redhat.com/community/faq/how-many-applicat...
  - noveltyaccount 14y ago
    https://openshift.redhat.com/community/faq#t2n9495 https://openshift.redhat.com/community/faq#t2n9495 Where can I get more information on Pricing ? To get more information on the pricing and timing of a paid version of OpenShift please send an email to openshift@redhat.com
- wmf 14y ago
  The software is free for you to use to build your own cloud. If you're not a cloud provider you're still going to pay (for production at least).
ctrlaltesc 14y ago
Interesting that the install instructions for Red Hat Linux distributions is far more complicated than that of other Linux distributions. But seriously, if they are offering a free platform to anyone with an email address then what sort of precautions are they taking to prevent abuse?
- Wickk 14y ago
  Are we talking content abuse? It's in their ToS if we are. Not entirely sure how effective they're going to be at monitoring malicious content, but it's there.
- ijroth 14y ago
  Here's Matt describing what is done to create security and prevent abuse: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=yRbRyLWAfBo# http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=y...!
nathell 14y ago
I made a mental typo when reading the name and omitted the "f."
- claytonc 14y ago
  I do that about 3 times a day. I also got rejected for an openshift license plate because of that significant f...
jamesu 14y ago
I have yet to find a service as straightforward as Heroku. Cloudfront comes close... but i get the feeling especially when looking at the documentation that Heroku have really put in a lot of effort into making a simple to use application platform.
- MatthewPhillips 14y ago
  Dotcloud does it for me. I'd love to support RedHat though.
  - jwarzech 14y ago
    Never heard of Dotcloud before, anyone have experience hosting a decent size app with them?
    - deleted 14y ago
      [deleted]
    - shykes 14y ago
      Wunderkit (http://wunderkit.com http://wunderkit.com) runs on dotCloud. So doe Punchtab (http://punchtab.com http://punchtab.com). Both serve many millions of monthly uniques.
  - andypants 14y ago
    I didn't really like dotcloud when they released their pricing info. It didn't really encourage apps that use a lot of services. But their new beta pricing of pay per hour per unit of memory is a lot nicer.
    - emperorcezar 14y ago
      I find the memory amounts way to fine grained. It encourages me to have as little buffer as possible. Why pay for 128megs when I can pay for 96?
  - mhicks 14y ago
jballanc 14y ago
If you're not paying, you're the product.
- diminish 14y ago
  moreover, paying also does not mean you are not the product.
- bgilroy26 14y ago
  It's in developer preview, they're hoping you tell your friends and generate buzz.
  - jballanc 14y ago
    Right. You're the product. In this case, you are the marketing product. It's not always bad to be the product. Cows eat for free, right? Just a good thing to keep in mind.
    - bgilroy26 14y ago
      Absolutely.
      - claytonc 14y ago
        Honestly the buzz I want to hear is "you guys suck, here's 10 ways you could be better" before we start taking money, at which point it's "you guys suck and you're taking our money, give me my money back". I'm trying to build the service I would use, and the intent as mhicks said up above is to always have a free tier so that folks get a chance to try it out before they commit.
        bgilroy26 14y ago
        Best of luck with this project. Its encouraging to see a large organization that is so committed to open source taking a stake in PaaS!
- 14y ago
bergie 14y ago
Very interesting, though documentation doesn't seem to be very comprehensive yet. There is little information about process management, like https://devcenter.heroku.com/articles/process-model https://devcenter.heroku.com/articles/process-model Not to mention how to create custom Cartridges, like you can do with Heroku buildpacks: https://gist.github.com/fe7f04abbd9538b656c5 https://gist.github.com/fe7f04abbd9538b656c5
- TheSteve0 14y ago
  We actually do have custom cartridge: https://openshift.redhat.com/community/blogs/a-paas-that-runs-anything-http-getting-started-with-diy-applications-on-openshift https://openshift.redhat.com/community/blogs/a-paas-that-run...
diminish 14y ago
Do we have any major computing player remaining without an app cloud offering or plan?
- Kudos 14y ago
  Apple?
  - deleted 14y ago
    [deleted]
  - pmjordan 14y ago
    iCloud has developer APIs - all your code just happens to run on the OS X and iOS clients (which are distributed via the App Store, which sits in the cloud).
T-A 14y ago
From the ToS ( https://openshift.redhat.com/app/legal/site_terms https://openshift.redhat.com/app/legal/site_terms ): "you give Red Hat a perpetual, irrevocable, worldwide, royalty-free, and non-exclusive license to reproduce, adapt, modify, translate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display and distribute any Content which you submit, post or display on or through the web site" That makes me a little nervous.
- azundo 14y ago
  Here is the clause from the OpenShift Preview Services ToS (not the site terms): https://openshift.redhat.com/app/legal/services_agreement https://openshift.redhat.com/app/legal/services_agreement 3.3. Your License to Red Hat. You hereby grant to Red Hat a non-exclusive, non-transferable, royalty free license to use Your trademarks, trade names and logos in connection with publicizing the Preview Services and communicating with analysts, customers or the press about the Preview Services. Your further grant to Red Hat, and any third party service provider on whose services Red Hat may depend to provide the Preview Services, a perpetual, worldwide, non-exclusive, non-transferable, royalty-free license to make, use, reproduce, prepare derivative works, distribute, perform and display Content for the purpose of providing the Preview Services. Except as set forth in this Section, Red Hat obtains no rights in Content under this Agreement.
  - vsarathy 14y ago
    Thanks for posting the entire clause. Let me just comment as a Red Hat/OpenShift employee with some insight into the business intent behind the legal language. As you can see from the complete clause that includes "...for the purpose of providing the Preview Services", the license to your content that you grant to Red Hat is really to allow Red Hat to provide the Service. Also the last sentence i.e. "Except as set forth in this Section, Red Hat obtains no rights in Content under this Agreement." should make it clear that there is no other interest in the users content.
    - farazmasoodkhan 14y ago
      I am really confusing by following term and conditions Rights in Content: By displaying, publishing and making available for download and use by others any content, messages, text, files, images, photos, video, sounds, profiles, works of authorship, or any other materials ("Content") you give Red Hat a perpetual, irrevocable, worldwide, royalty-free, and non-exclusive license to reproduce, adapt, modify, translate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display and distribute any Content which you submit, post or display on or through the web site. You agree that this license includes a right for Red Hat to make such Content available to other companies, organizations or individuals with whom Red Hat has relationships for the provision of services, and to use such Content in connection with the provision of those services. You understand that Red Hat may (a) transmit or distribute your Content over various public networks and in various media; and (b) make such changes to your Content as are necessary to conform and adapt that Content to the technical requirements of connecting networks, devices, services or media. You agree that this license shall permit Red Hat to take these actions. You confirm and warrant to Red Hat that you have all the rights, power and authority necessary to grant the above license.
Ryan_Shmotkin 14y ago
Tsk tsk.. ruby 1.8.7 by default
- dagw 14y ago
  and python 2.6 and PostgreSQL 8.4 and Perl 5.10. They definitely don't seem to be aiming for the "cutting edge" crowd.
  - 286c8cb04bda 14y ago
    Redhat stopped targeting the "cutting edge" demographic about 10 years ago. They enlist them as QA for their real customers now.
  - mhurron 14y ago
    It is obviously running RHEL 6.2 default packages. Probably a better idea than a full OS upgrade every 6 months.
- mhicks 14y ago
  Yeah, defaults are always tough to choose and we tend to default to what is in RHEL. That said, Ruby comes up a lot and we are actively working on a slick 1.9.x experience out of the box. In the meantime (I know it's a hassle) but we've built the underlying foundation to let you do what you want. For example: http://bit.ly/HHp9aR http://bit.ly/HHp9aR Also... if you wouldn't mind helping vote it up, that would help: https://openshift.redhat.com/community/content/support-for-ruby-192 https://openshift.redhat.com/community/content/support-for-r...
  - lhm 14y ago
    FWIW, here is a description how different ruby versions are handled with rbenv by 37signals: https://github.com/sstephenson/rbenv/issues/101#issuecomment-2258506 https://github.com/sstephenson/rbenv/issues/101#issuecomment...
bobsy 14y ago
I don't like this "Free" business. It doesn't make sense and the complete lack of pricing info really puts me off. So I play around with this, like it and choose to stick with it. They then introduce uncompetitive pricing.. I just wasted my time. They do not need to give exact pricing - they might not know at the moment - but they should at least give an overview of what they plan to do. > We will keep this free plan for the foreseeable future. The free plan allows... > This free plan will exist while we develop and test the service. As the service becomes stable we will be introducing paid plans and you will be asked to upgrade. These 2 statements make sense to me. The fact they mention nothing about pricing on their site confuses and annoys me.
- sgdesign 14y ago
  The problem with free stuff is the lack of support. If I mess something up and my site crashes after hitting the HN front page, I want someone to throw money at until things work again.
  - prplhaz4 14y ago
    That is likely where the introduction of pricing plans comes in. Redhat is still in business (ie, making money) because they support the enterprise usage of their products, and do it well.
  - thefotios 14y ago
    While OpenShift doesn't have a paid support model per say, there is a very active community (which includes developers constantly monitoring forums, IRC, and Bugzilla, as well as Twitter). Chances are, if you hit a problem, you'll have a bunch of people jumping on it very quickly. There forums are here: https://openshift.redhat.com/community/ https://openshift.redhat.com/community/ as well as a very active IRC channel (#openshift on FreeNode)
  - sabat 14y ago
    I want someone to throw money at until things work In that case, although you can certainly pay for support (as others have pointed out)—but you're probably not the intended audience for this service.
ryancutter 14y ago
I wrote a Python web app on OpenShift (Tornado not Django) and really liked it. While I don't have experience with Heroku, I was really impressed with OpenShift. However, be aware that not everything is enabled yet. I ran into problems when I discovered the multiprocessing package doesn't work (https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=814991 https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=814991).
Kilimanjaro 14y ago
I tried the service a couple of months ago and it is really easy to use. Got a blog up and running in no time just to test the waters using bottle, jinja and mongo. No sweat. http://blog-georgenava.rhcloud.com http://blog-georgenava.rhcloud.com
peterwwillis 14y ago
If you don't like the idea of relying on RedHat to play with this tech, remember that it is Open Source. Download it, use it, heck make a business that builds on it. https://github.com/openshift/crankcase https://github.com/openshift/os-client-tools https://openshift.redhat.com/community/wiki/build-your-own (I will say though: they make it extremely easy to get started and I really like using OpenShift so far. I've never used Heroku, but if it's this user friendly i'd definitely have used it before... Why don't they have a free offering for people to test out the service?)
- jvanenk 14y ago
  last I checked, Heroku does have a free offering.
- scottostler 14y ago
  FWIW, heroku does. The first heroku slice for a project is free, with the caveat that it'll be spun down during periods of inactivity. I imagine that most hobby users of heroku (say for a weekend hackathon) aren't paying anything.
  - peterwwillis 14y ago
    Ah, I hadn't seen that. Thanks!
  - petercooper 14y ago
    I know of people who deployed prototypes and even production work for clients to Heroku (I did once too ;-)). Quite a few people run Jekyll blogs on there long term for free as well. It's pretty amazing what you can get out of a single dyno for something that's not high traffic (i.e. most apps).
jefe78 14y ago
I wish they'd list pricing in the event you grow beyond the free plan. Reluctant to even bother trying without knowing that type of information.
will_work4tears 14y ago
Couldn't get their client software to work on Ubuntu. Even followed a few tutorials. I think I'm missing something, but haven't a bunch of time to invest.
- nduong 14y ago
  I like these instructions: http://www.stylesen.org/openshift_client_tools_installation_debianubuntu http://www.stylesen.org/openshift_client_tools_installation_...
  - will_work4tears 14y ago
    Looks promising, I'll give it a go the first chance I get some spare time! (new baby in the house, so spare time is in short spurts) Thanks!
  - geuis 14y ago
    Thats not really a tutorial, just an introduction on how to install the CLI tools. What's missing is a tutorial on how to use them.
robotomir 14y ago
How does it compare to CloudFoundry? Aside from having official PHP support, that is.
- michael37 14y ago
  For Java folks: JBoss.
- TheSteve0 14y ago
  And official Python support and having a custom cartridge system
- jvoorhis 14y ago
  CloudFoundry's PHP support is also official. While it's not yet available through cloudfoundry.com, you can use it now with AppFog (http://appfog.com http://appfog.com). Disclaimer: I work at AppFog and contributed to the initial version of PHP support for the CloudFoundry open source project at https://github.com/cloudfoundry https://github.com/cloudfoundry.
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
mythz 14y ago
I'm generally a fan of RedHat, but not having details on the most important point of OpenShift that will decide whether it will fail or succeed in the market (i.e. the price) is a scummy play - that I only expected from enterprises. I hope these "enterprise marketing" tactics aren't a trend for RedHat.
- TheSteve0 14y ago
  This is not a bait and switch. We are trying to make sure we get the pricing right. That said - we plan to make the current free tier free even when we announce pricing. We are also committed to being competitive in terms of pricing. We will be announcing pricing this summer.
  - mythz 14y ago
    But you've "announced" your cloud platform, yet I can't justify any time learning or becoming familiar with it since there is no idea on price - it's frustrating.
    - TheSteve0 14y ago
      Does the other cloud providers seem reasonable to you? If so then you might want to spend time investigating. As a dev evangelist for OpenShift, I can say it doesn't take much time to get a simple app up and running. Come by #openshift on freenode and we can help you if you get stuck
      - mythz 14y ago
        No they don't - that's my point (Only AppEngine did before they increased their prices). Because of the high cost of available clouds I don't use any clouds and just run my own dedicated server.
nosh 14y ago
If you're interested in checking out how to get mongo running on openshift, here are some things to get started - Good list of resources: https://openshift.redhat.com/community/developers/mongodb https://openshift.redhat.com/community/developers/mongodb - Lots of goodies in here: https://github.com/openshift https://github.com/openshift - Part 1 of a 4-part series on building mobile apps with titanium, mongodb and openshift: http://blog.10gen.com/post/23089705899/mobilize-your-mongodb-building-mongodb-mobile-apps http://blog.10gen.com/post/23089705899/mobilize-your-mongodb... - Upcoming webinar on node.js and mongodb with OpenShift: http://www.10gen.com/events/building-web-services http://www.10gen.com/events/building-web-services Disclaimer: I work at 10gen
edtechdev 14y ago
Yeah I'm excited about it and it's getting me to finally take the step from traditional web app development (vps, php, etc.) to more easily scalable app development - and it's all open source, no vendor lock-in, and hopefully affordable pricing in the future. Look forward to seeing more tutorials & code samples online and on their site. For example has anyone tried out meteor (w/node.js & mongodb) with it yet. Also, hopefully it will integrate with some of the browser-based IDEs out there like cloud9.
- TheSteve0 14y ago
  Did you ask for integration with cloud9? Funny you should mention that: https://openshift.redhat.com/community/blogs/look-ma-no-hands-developing-for-the-cloud-in-the-cloud-with-cloud9-ide https://openshift.redhat.com/community/blogs/look-ma-no-hand...
gary4gar 14y ago
the rubyist in me is happy to report that openshift is written largely in ruby. so all ruby programmers should try running openshift in their own machinea
nivertech 14y ago
Why all PaaS providers (Heroku, CF, OpenShift) building their CLI tools using Ruby? Are they copying Heroku? Maybe because Python used for OS itself? What dotCloud uses?
- shykes 14y ago
  dotCloud's cli is written in Python. In the long run I don't think it matters which language it's written in - as long as it's easy to install on every computer.
geuis 14y ago
The documentation is frankly awful. For example, when getting the status: rhc domain status -l <myemailhere> I get an error about ~/.ssh/config not existing. I added my ssh key via the web interface and have no idea what's going on here. In looking at the User Guide, I find it gets me no where. http://docs.redhat.com/docs/en-US/OpenShift/2.0/html/User_Guide/chap-User_Guide-OpenShift_Web_Interface.html#sect-User_Guide-Configuring_Your_Local_Machine http://docs.redhat.com/docs/en-US/OpenShift/2.0/html/User_Gu... The relevant message here is: "If your system fails any of the tests, make a note of the error message and consult the relevant section of the OpenShift User Guide for further information." Nothing like a circular reference that leads to nowhere.
- TheSteve0 14y ago
  You probably created your domain and application through the web interface. This is an issue we are working through now - sorry we haven't gotten to it yet - it will be fixed in the next couple of sprints. The problem is that your SSH env has not been set up to work with the RHC tools yet. They expect a configure file in the .ssh directory to specify which key talks to the *.rhcloud.com domain. This KB article may help you get started: https://openshift.redhat.com/community/kb/kb-e1034-ssh-facts-to-be-aware-of https://openshift.redhat.com/community/kb/kb-e1034-ssh-facts... Again, my apologies and we are actively working on that story right now.
thomasfl 14y ago
This is cool!
twqqis 14y ago
just a quick compliment to RH; loving how the employees are giving constructive feedback on the comments here :)

329 points by kragniz 14y ago

japhyr 14y ago

Has anyone chosen openshift over heroku for django? I didn't see any pricing info; is openshift still in beta?

bpp198 14y ago
OpenShift is free.
- ralphsaunders 14y ago
  But what's the catch?
  - halfasleep 14y ago
    It's Free Software, you can run it yourself or switch providers at will. The catch may be in the lack of features compared to a proprietary option (like Heroku)
  - pawmar 14y ago
    From their faq page: To get more information on the pricing and timing of a paid version of OpenShift please send an email to openshift@redhat.com
  - ttt_ 14y ago
    Yeah, is it free as in beer? For life? No matter how much it has to scale to? If it is, I would like to understand the reasoning behind that? Is it to gain traction and visibility for Red Hate as a PaaS? And then...
  - deleted 14y ago
    [deleted]
  - stonemetal 14y ago
    It is in open beta and has big warning labels to not use in production.
  - BHSPitMonkey 14y ago
    The free tier is limited in resources; When you want more, you'll be expected to pay for more (once they begin to offer paid plans).
- _delirium 14y ago
  There are hints that it's free only for a preview period. From http://www.redhat.com/products/cloud-computing/openshift/ http://www.redhat.com/products/cloud-computing/openshift/, under the "How To Buy" tab, it calls it a "free developer preview" and says, "OpenShift is currently in developer preview and free to use. Stay tuned—pricing is coming soon."
obtu 14y ago
Beta: yes and no. The implementation has existed for some time and was liberated recently. But the pricing beyond a free slot hasn't been published yet: https://openshift.redhat.com/community/faq#t2n9495 https://openshift.redhat.com/community/faq#t2n9495 Being entirely open-source, if you outgrow it you can self host or move to an IAAS cloud.

amalag 14y ago

I tried openshift a few months ago for Rails. A real pain in the butt. They dont have simple deploy like Heroku. Even heroku can be time consuming in the beginning to get right, openshift was even more complicated. It may work better for Java I don't know, looks like they are right on the bleeding edge with support for Ruby 1.8.7.

jwarzech 14y ago
Thank you for posting your experience trying it with rails, I agree deployment of a non-trivial app to heroku can be a pain the first time but once you get everything working its a breeze for subsequent deployments.
TheSteve0 14y ago
Our roadmap has more support for newer versions of Ruby coming soon. We started with the base packages in RHEL but are now working to also bring newer versions as standard cartridges. That said, you can also use a DIY cartridge to get Ruby 1.9.x
- sabat 14y ago
  Good to know; I just came here to complain. :-) On the other hand, though, I think you should have probably started with the 1.9.2/1.9.3 series rather than the ancient 1.8.7.
TheSteve0 14y ago
Our roadmap has more support for newer versions of Ruby coming soon. We started with the base packages in RHEL but are now working to also bring newer versions as standard cartridges. That said, you can also use a DIY cartridge to get Ruby 1.9.x

dabeeeenster 14y ago

No mention of pricing anywhere on their site. What?

r080 14y ago
FAQ has something: "To get more information on the pricing and timing of a paid version of OpenShift please send an email to openshift@redhat.com"
rplnt 14y ago
It's in some sort of beta and only limited free tier is available. You can still get it running on your server(s) though.

ique 14y ago

How can this be free? If I host a massive application here, will they shut it down or rate limit or how can this work?

tikhonj 14y ago
I think they mean free as in speech more than free as in beer. Of course, it is currently in a developer preview and so also free as in beer, but I think that's incidental--this is Red Hat after all; they actually care about users' freedom and they aren't afraid of offering paid plans and support. Happily, since it's open source, you can just host it yourself if you aren't happy with Red Hat's potential future pricing.
wnm 14y ago
the preview is free and has a limit: "The developer preview supports up to 3 gears per user. You have a quota of 40,000 files, 1GB of storage, and 512MB Memory per gear. It is free to use and you can run your application indefinitely. If you need to increase this quota, please mailto:openshift@redhat.com with your username, domain and Application URL." from: https://openshift.redhat.com/community/faq/how-many-applications-can-i-deploy-and-how-long-can-i-run-them-for https://openshift.redhat.com/community/faq/how-many-applicat...
- noveltyaccount 14y ago
  https://openshift.redhat.com/community/faq#t2n9495 https://openshift.redhat.com/community/faq#t2n9495 Where can I get more information on Pricing ? To get more information on the pricing and timing of a paid version of OpenShift please send an email to openshift@redhat.com
wmf 14y ago
The software is free for you to use to build your own cloud. If you're not a cloud provider you're still going to pay (for production at least).

ctrlaltesc 14y ago

Interesting that the install instructions for Red Hat Linux distributions is far more complicated than that of other Linux distributions. But seriously, if they are offering a free platform to anyone with an email address then what sort of precautions are they taking to prevent abuse?

Wickk 14y ago
Are we talking content abuse? It's in their ToS if we are. Not entirely sure how effective they're going to be at monitoring malicious content, but it's there.
ijroth 14y ago
Here's Matt describing what is done to create security and prevent abuse: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=yRbRyLWAfBo# http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=y...!

nathell 14y ago

I made a mental typo when reading the name and omitted the "f."

claytonc 14y ago
I do that about 3 times a day. I also got rejected for an openshift license plate because of that significant f...

jamesu 14y ago

I have yet to find a service as straightforward as Heroku. Cloudfront comes close... but i get the feeling especially when looking at the documentation that Heroku have really put in a lot of effort into making a simple to use application platform.

MatthewPhillips 14y ago
Dotcloud does it for me. I'd love to support RedHat though.
- jwarzech 14y ago
  Never heard of Dotcloud before, anyone have experience hosting a decent size app with them?
  - deleted 14y ago
    [deleted]
  - shykes 14y ago
    Wunderkit (http://wunderkit.com http://wunderkit.com) runs on dotCloud. So doe Punchtab (http://punchtab.com http://punchtab.com). Both serve many millions of monthly uniques.
- andypants 14y ago
  I didn't really like dotcloud when they released their pricing info. It didn't really encourage apps that use a lot of services. But their new beta pricing of pay per hour per unit of memory is a lot nicer.
  - emperorcezar 14y ago
    I find the memory amounts way to fine grained. It encourages me to have as little buffer as possible. Why pay for 128megs when I can pay for 96?
- mhicks 14y ago

jballanc 14y ago

If you're not paying, you're the product.

diminish 14y ago
moreover, paying also does not mean you are not the product.
bgilroy26 14y ago
It's in developer preview, they're hoping you tell your friends and generate buzz.
- jballanc 14y ago
  Right. You're the product. In this case, you are the marketing product. It's not always bad to be the product. Cows eat for free, right? Just a good thing to keep in mind.
  - bgilroy26 14y ago
    Absolutely.
    - claytonc 14y ago
      Honestly the buzz I want to hear is "you guys suck, here's 10 ways you could be better" before we start taking money, at which point it's "you guys suck and you're taking our money, give me my money back". I'm trying to build the service I would use, and the intent as mhicks said up above is to always have a free tier so that folks get a chance to try it out before they commit.
      - bgilroy26 14y ago
        Best of luck with this project. Its encouraging to see a large organization that is so committed to open source taking a stake in PaaS!
14y ago

bergie 14y ago

Very interesting, though documentation doesn't seem to be very comprehensive yet. There is little information about process management, like https://devcenter.heroku.com/articles/process-model https://devcenter.heroku.com/articles/process-model Not to mention how to create custom Cartridges, like you can do with Heroku buildpacks: https://gist.github.com/fe7f04abbd9538b656c5 https://gist.github.com/fe7f04abbd9538b656c5

TheSteve0 14y ago
We actually do have custom cartridge: https://openshift.redhat.com/community/blogs/a-paas-that-runs-anything-http-getting-started-with-diy-applications-on-openshift https://openshift.redhat.com/community/blogs/a-paas-that-run...

diminish 14y ago

Do we have any major computing player remaining without an app cloud offering or plan?

Kudos 14y ago
Apple?
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
- pmjordan 14y ago
  iCloud has developer APIs - all your code just happens to run on the OS X and iOS clients (which are distributed via the App Store, which sits in the cloud).

T-A 14y ago

From the ToS ( https://openshift.redhat.com/app/legal/site_terms https://openshift.redhat.com/app/legal/site_terms ): "you give Red Hat a perpetual, irrevocable, worldwide, royalty-free, and non-exclusive license to reproduce, adapt, modify, translate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display and distribute any Content which you submit, post or display on or through the web site" That makes me a little nervous.

azundo 14y ago
Here is the clause from the OpenShift Preview Services ToS (not the site terms): https://openshift.redhat.com/app/legal/services_agreement https://openshift.redhat.com/app/legal/services_agreement 3.3. Your License to Red Hat. You hereby grant to Red Hat a non-exclusive, non-transferable, royalty free license to use Your trademarks, trade names and logos in connection with publicizing the Preview Services and communicating with analysts, customers or the press about the Preview Services. Your further grant to Red Hat, and any third party service provider on whose services Red Hat may depend to provide the Preview Services, a perpetual, worldwide, non-exclusive, non-transferable, royalty-free license to make, use, reproduce, prepare derivative works, distribute, perform and display Content for the purpose of providing the Preview Services. Except as set forth in this Section, Red Hat obtains no rights in Content under this Agreement.
- vsarathy 14y ago
  Thanks for posting the entire clause. Let me just comment as a Red Hat/OpenShift employee with some insight into the business intent behind the legal language. As you can see from the complete clause that includes "...for the purpose of providing the Preview Services", the license to your content that you grant to Red Hat is really to allow Red Hat to provide the Service. Also the last sentence i.e. "Except as set forth in this Section, Red Hat obtains no rights in Content under this Agreement." should make it clear that there is no other interest in the users content.
  - farazmasoodkhan 14y ago
    I am really confusing by following term and conditions Rights in Content: By displaying, publishing and making available for download and use by others any content, messages, text, files, images, photos, video, sounds, profiles, works of authorship, or any other materials ("Content") you give Red Hat a perpetual, irrevocable, worldwide, royalty-free, and non-exclusive license to reproduce, adapt, modify, translate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display and distribute any Content which you submit, post or display on or through the web site. You agree that this license includes a right for Red Hat to make such Content available to other companies, organizations or individuals with whom Red Hat has relationships for the provision of services, and to use such Content in connection with the provision of those services. You understand that Red Hat may (a) transmit or distribute your Content over various public networks and in various media; and (b) make such changes to your Content as are necessary to conform and adapt that Content to the technical requirements of connecting networks, devices, services or media. You agree that this license shall permit Red Hat to take these actions. You confirm and warrant to Red Hat that you have all the rights, power and authority necessary to grant the above license.

Ryan_Shmotkin 14y ago

Tsk tsk.. ruby 1.8.7 by default

dagw 14y ago
and python 2.6 and PostgreSQL 8.4 and Perl 5.10. They definitely don't seem to be aiming for the "cutting edge" crowd.
- 286c8cb04bda 14y ago
  Redhat stopped targeting the "cutting edge" demographic about 10 years ago. They enlist them as QA for their real customers now.
- mhurron 14y ago
  It is obviously running RHEL 6.2 default packages. Probably a better idea than a full OS upgrade every 6 months.
mhicks 14y ago
Yeah, defaults are always tough to choose and we tend to default to what is in RHEL. That said, Ruby comes up a lot and we are actively working on a slick 1.9.x experience out of the box. In the meantime (I know it's a hassle) but we've built the underlying foundation to let you do what you want. For example: http://bit.ly/HHp9aR http://bit.ly/HHp9aR Also... if you wouldn't mind helping vote it up, that would help: https://openshift.redhat.com/community/content/support-for-ruby-192 https://openshift.redhat.com/community/content/support-for-r...
- lhm 14y ago
  FWIW, here is a description how different ruby versions are handled with rbenv by 37signals: https://github.com/sstephenson/rbenv/issues/101#issuecomment-2258506 https://github.com/sstephenson/rbenv/issues/101#issuecomment...

bobsy 14y ago

I don't like this "Free" business. It doesn't make sense and the complete lack of pricing info really puts me off. So I play around with this, like it and choose to stick with it. They then introduce uncompetitive pricing.. I just wasted my time. They do not need to give exact pricing - they might not know at the moment - but they should at least give an overview of what they plan to do. > We will keep this free plan for the foreseeable future. The free plan allows... > This free plan will exist while we develop and test the service. As the service becomes stable we will be introducing paid plans and you will be asked to upgrade. These 2 statements make sense to me. The fact they mention nothing about pricing on their site confuses and annoys me.

sgdesign 14y ago
The problem with free stuff is the lack of support. If I mess something up and my site crashes after hitting the HN front page, I want someone to throw money at until things work again.
- prplhaz4 14y ago
  That is likely where the introduction of pricing plans comes in. Redhat is still in business (ie, making money) because they support the enterprise usage of their products, and do it well.
- thefotios 14y ago
  While OpenShift doesn't have a paid support model per say, there is a very active community (which includes developers constantly monitoring forums, IRC, and Bugzilla, as well as Twitter). Chances are, if you hit a problem, you'll have a bunch of people jumping on it very quickly. There forums are here: https://openshift.redhat.com/community/ https://openshift.redhat.com/community/ as well as a very active IRC channel (#openshift on FreeNode)
- sabat 14y ago
  I want someone to throw money at until things work In that case, although you can certainly pay for support (as others have pointed out)—but you're probably not the intended audience for this service.

ryancutter 14y ago

I wrote a Python web app on OpenShift (Tornado not Django) and really liked it. While I don't have experience with Heroku, I was really impressed with OpenShift. However, be aware that not everything is enabled yet. I ran into problems when I discovered the multiprocessing package doesn't work (https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=814991 https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=814991).

Kilimanjaro 14y ago

I tried the service a couple of months ago and it is really easy to use. Got a blog up and running in no time just to test the waters using bottle, jinja and mongo. No sweat. http://blog-georgenava.rhcloud.com http://blog-georgenava.rhcloud.com

peterwwillis 14y ago

If you don't like the idea of relying on RedHat to play with this tech, remember that it is Open Source. Download it, use it, heck make a business that builds on it. https://github.com/openshift/crankcase https://github.com/openshift/os-client-tools https://openshift.redhat.com/community/wiki/build-your-own (I will say though: they make it extremely easy to get started and I really like using OpenShift so far. I've never used Heroku, but if it's this user friendly i'd definitely have used it before... Why don't they have a free offering for people to test out the service?)

jvanenk 14y ago
last I checked, Heroku does have a free offering.
scottostler 14y ago
FWIW, heroku does. The first heroku slice for a project is free, with the caveat that it'll be spun down during periods of inactivity. I imagine that most hobby users of heroku (say for a weekend hackathon) aren't paying anything.
- peterwwillis 14y ago
  Ah, I hadn't seen that. Thanks!
- petercooper 14y ago
  I know of people who deployed prototypes and even production work for clients to Heroku (I did once too ;-)). Quite a few people run Jekyll blogs on there long term for free as well. It's pretty amazing what you can get out of a single dyno for something that's not high traffic (i.e. most apps).

jefe78 14y ago

I wish they'd list pricing in the event you grow beyond the free plan. Reluctant to even bother trying without knowing that type of information.

will_work4tears 14y ago

Couldn't get their client software to work on Ubuntu. Even followed a few tutorials. I think I'm missing something, but haven't a bunch of time to invest.

nduong 14y ago
I like these instructions: http://www.stylesen.org/openshift_client_tools_installation_debianubuntu http://www.stylesen.org/openshift_client_tools_installation_...
- will_work4tears 14y ago
  Looks promising, I'll give it a go the first chance I get some spare time! (new baby in the house, so spare time is in short spurts) Thanks!
- geuis 14y ago
  Thats not really a tutorial, just an introduction on how to install the CLI tools. What's missing is a tutorial on how to use them.

robotomir 14y ago

How does it compare to CloudFoundry? Aside from having official PHP support, that is.

michael37 14y ago
For Java folks: JBoss.
TheSteve0 14y ago
And official Python support and having a custom cartridge system
jvoorhis 14y ago
CloudFoundry's PHP support is also official. While it's not yet available through cloudfoundry.com, you can use it now with AppFog (http://appfog.com http://appfog.com). Disclaimer: I work at AppFog and contributed to the initial version of PHP support for the CloudFoundry open source project at https://github.com/cloudfoundry https://github.com/cloudfoundry.
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]

mythz 14y ago

I'm generally a fan of RedHat, but not having details on the most important point of OpenShift that will decide whether it will fail or succeed in the market (i.e. the price) is a scummy play - that I only expected from enterprises. I hope these "enterprise marketing" tactics aren't a trend for RedHat.

TheSteve0 14y ago
This is not a bait and switch. We are trying to make sure we get the pricing right. That said - we plan to make the current free tier free even when we announce pricing. We are also committed to being competitive in terms of pricing. We will be announcing pricing this summer.
- mythz 14y ago
  But you've "announced" your cloud platform, yet I can't justify any time learning or becoming familiar with it since there is no idea on price - it's frustrating.
  - TheSteve0 14y ago
    Does the other cloud providers seem reasonable to you? If so then you might want to spend time investigating. As a dev evangelist for OpenShift, I can say it doesn't take much time to get a simple app up and running. Come by #openshift on freenode and we can help you if you get stuck
    - mythz 14y ago
      No they don't - that's my point (Only AppEngine did before they increased their prices). Because of the high cost of available clouds I don't use any clouds and just run my own dedicated server.

nosh 14y ago

If you're interested in checking out how to get mongo running on openshift, here are some things to get started - Good list of resources: https://openshift.redhat.com/community/developers/mongodb https://openshift.redhat.com/community/developers/mongodb - Lots of goodies in here: https://github.com/openshift https://github.com/openshift - Part 1 of a 4-part series on building mobile apps with titanium, mongodb and openshift: http://blog.10gen.com/post/23089705899/mobilize-your-mongodb-building-mongodb-mobile-apps http://blog.10gen.com/post/23089705899/mobilize-your-mongodb... - Upcoming webinar on node.js and mongodb with OpenShift: http://www.10gen.com/events/building-web-services http://www.10gen.com/events/building-web-services Disclaimer: I work at 10gen

edtechdev 14y ago

Yeah I'm excited about it and it's getting me to finally take the step from traditional web app development (vps, php, etc.) to more easily scalable app development - and it's all open source, no vendor lock-in, and hopefully affordable pricing in the future. Look forward to seeing more tutorials & code samples online and on their site. For example has anyone tried out meteor (w/node.js & mongodb) with it yet. Also, hopefully it will integrate with some of the browser-based IDEs out there like cloud9.

TheSteve0 14y ago
Did you ask for integration with cloud9? Funny you should mention that: https://openshift.redhat.com/community/blogs/look-ma-no-hands-developing-for-the-cloud-in-the-cloud-with-cloud9-ide https://openshift.redhat.com/community/blogs/look-ma-no-hand...

gary4gar 14y ago

the rubyist in me is happy to report that openshift is written largely in ruby. so all ruby programmers should try running openshift in their own machinea

nivertech 14y ago

Why all PaaS providers (Heroku, CF, OpenShift) building their CLI tools using Ruby? Are they copying Heroku? Maybe because Python used for OS itself? What dotCloud uses?

shykes 14y ago
dotCloud's cli is written in Python. In the long run I don't think it matters which language it's written in - as long as it's easy to install on every computer.

geuis 14y ago

The documentation is frankly awful. For example, when getting the status: rhc domain status -l <myemailhere> I get an error about ~/.ssh/config not existing. I added my ssh key via the web interface and have no idea what's going on here. In looking at the User Guide, I find it gets me no where. http://docs.redhat.com/docs/en-US/OpenShift/2.0/html/User_Guide/chap-User_Guide-OpenShift_Web_Interface.html#sect-User_Guide-Configuring_Your_Local_Machine http://docs.redhat.com/docs/en-US/OpenShift/2.0/html/User_Gu... The relevant message here is: "If your system fails any of the tests, make a note of the error message and consult the relevant section of the OpenShift User Guide for further information." Nothing like a circular reference that leads to nowhere.

TheSteve0 14y ago
You probably created your domain and application through the web interface. This is an issue we are working through now - sorry we haven't gotten to it yet - it will be fixed in the next couple of sprints. The problem is that your SSH env has not been set up to work with the RHC tools yet. They expect a configure file in the .ssh directory to specify which key talks to the *.rhcloud.com domain. This KB article may help you get started: https://openshift.redhat.com/community/kb/kb-e1034-ssh-facts-to-be-aware-of https://openshift.redhat.com/community/kb/kb-e1034-ssh-facts... Again, my apologies and we are actively working on that story right now.

thomasfl 14y ago

This is cool!

twqqis 14y ago

just a quick compliment to RH; loving how the employees are giving constructive feedback on the comments here :)