8 ms·

Announcing AWS Elastic Beanstalk for Node.js

88 points by subsection1h 14y ago

scanr 14y ago
Even though it's relatively primitive compared to some of the other PaaS providers out there, I really like AWS Elastic Beanstalk. Here are some of the reasons why: * You only pay for the underlying AWS services * ELB + EC2 + RDS is a good stack for a lot of web applications * They support environments and promoting releases from one environment to the other (e.g. qa -> production) * Git integration There are a bunch of downsides but it's a cheap MVP for a certain category of database driving webapp for me.
- adamnemecek 14y ago
  What are some of the downsides?
  - idunno246 14y ago
    You have to use their base AMI. Which was really bad because for a while it suffered from a kernel deadlock on disk write bug(this should be fixed by now). There's very little configuration options - when I was using it you couldn't setup logrotate for instance. It worked pretty well, for java at least, until the server started locking up every couple hours. When it integrates with opsworks, I'll be excited about it.
    - dazzla 14y ago
      You can now use configuration files to customize your instance. You can install packages, download files, run shell scripts etc. Works well. http://docs.aws.amazon.com/elasticbeanstalk/latest/dg/customize-containers.html http://docs.aws.amazon.com/elasticbeanstalk/latest/dg/custom...
    - fosk 14y ago
      You can customize the AMI and do whatever you want with it.
    - nkvoll 14y ago
      Hmm... this sounds vaguely familiar to something I might have ran into.. Do you happen to have an url to a bug report for this?
  - NathanKP 14y ago
    One of the major downsides is that the documentation is horrific. I've spent the last 14 hours trying to get my company's app deployed on Elastic Beanstalk, about six of which have been trying to get an Elasticache Cluster configured as part of the environment and connected to the code within it. The documentation shows a few limited pieces of the process but is greatly lacking in essential details, leaving me with an extremely slow trial and error process which involves a 4-5 minute wait each time I deploy a new attempt to get it working. Additionally since it is still new there is very little crowd created documentation out there on StackOverflow, etc to help you out where the official documentation is lacking. My experience with Elastic Beanstalk makes me feel like a pioneer breaking new ground on an very early beta, not the user of a robust, finished system. There are other issues I have with the system besides the documentation, such as logging into an instance that was created by Elastic Beanstalk for my app and seeing that it has 30 security updates that need to be installed. Why Elastic Beanstalk didn't just install these when creating the instance is beyond me. Instead I'm trying to figure out how to modify the configuration to get it to fix these security problems as part of the deployment process, but having no luck. (2 hours wasted on this so far.) Elastic Beanstalk has the potential to be incredible, but it is still very rough in my opinion.
  - philfreo 14y ago
    It's not brain-dead to get started with, like Heroku is. Anyone can do it when the docs are this clear: https://devcenter.heroku.com/articles/python https://devcenter.heroku.com/articles/python https://devcenter.heroku.com/articles/nodejs https://devcenter.heroku.com/articles/nodejs I'd love to see Beanstalk be this easy, but judging from all of the AWS documentation I've read, they won't get there anytime soon. Note: I understand Heroku is solving the problem at a different level. I'm happy to work with the building blocks AWS provides (EC2 + ELBS + RDS etc.) but it's just the nice getting started guides / overall developer friendliness that's lacking.
  - scanr 14y ago
    * Docs are pretty bad * I invariably need to log onto the instance itself to find deployment bugs during development (that said, it's great that I can do that) * Using their AMIs is the easiest but you may find that they don't support the combination of software you need * If you're deploying a python app, you'll want to install celery, rails resque, php gearman etc. Beanstalk doesn't really have an answer for the 'deploy an asynchronous job server'
quahada 14y ago
Does it support websockets? Pretty important feature for node.js.
- jonpaul 14y ago
  Presumably so, since the press release explicitly mentions websockets, and you can use Nginx (which now supports websockets) or choose to not use any reverse proxy.
- mathrawka 14y ago
  You need to use TCP forwarding on the ELB, not HTTP. The disadvantages are: * You cannot enable stickiness on the ELB * You will not get the client IP forwarded to your instances
  - miles932 14y ago
    you do get the client IP, but it comes as a request header: x-forwarded-for http://docs.aws.amazon.com/ElasticLoadBalancing/latest/DeveloperGuide/TerminologyandKeyConcepts.html#x-forwarded-for http://docs.aws.amazon.com/ElasticLoadBalancing/latest/Devel...
    - lucian1900 14y ago
      How would that work for a protocol that isn't HTTP?
    - mathrawka 14y ago
      There are no HTTP headers in pure TCP.
- pornel 14y ago
  You can use Server-Sent Events (HTTP-compatible server->client websocket).
apapli 14y ago
How does this compare with Heroku for RoR hosting? Do they compete or is Heroku solving a different problem?
- niclupien 14y ago
  IMHO Heroku is way more easy to do deploy and makes it more accessible to non-sysadmins. heroku create git push heroku master With Amazon, you need to spend some time understanding how it works and what do you want. It's also not very clear for a beginner to define what kind of bill you will get today, in a month, in a year. I think Amazon is trying very hard but I always end up reading tons of documents and finally not really understand what they means in the end.
- jonpaul 14y ago
  To my knowledge, Heroku still does not support Websockets. However, if you use, Socket.IO, then you can use long-polling with Heroku.
joeblau 14y ago
I just added Elastic Beanstalk's dot directory to http://gitignore.io http://gitignore.io http://gitignore.io/api/elasticbeanstalk http://gitignore.io/api/elasticbeanstalk
- yannis 14y ago
  Thanks, nice application. Love the color scheme.
- vicky_rockstar 14y ago
  Thanks :)
crindy 14y ago
I'm working on a meteor application, and one of the things I'm scared of is that no one knows how to make one run on multiple machines. Would this solve that problem, by providing an essentially infinite sized machine?
- JoshGlazebrook 14y ago
  This is essentially what these PaaS services do. Appfog for example gives you 2GB of ram to deploy your app with for free. You can deploy an app to 8 separate instances with 256MB of ram, or you can adjust it differently. With heroku you get 1 "dyno" for free, and for each additional dyno it's another charge, etc. etc. They do all the work of load balancing and making it "just work"
jedschmidt 14y ago
Does anyone know how often they update their containers for other platforms? The maximum node.js version on Beanstalk is 0.8.21, but the current stable is now 0.10.0.
- mminer 14y ago
  Their Python container, which became available last August, has yet to be updated to support version 2.7 (released 2010) or 3.x. This may not be indicative of how often they'll update the node.js container, but their effort to keep up with the latest and greatest doesn't seem too aggressive.
- fosk 14y ago
  You can create a custom AMI with any version of node.js, and use it in your envs.
outside1234 14y ago
what is the best node.js PaaS solution out there? This doesn't look as nice as Azure's offering that I've been using. Who do people like the most?
- JoshGlazebrook 14y ago
  There is appfog, heroku, nodejitsu, and a few others. Afaik, nodejitsu is the only one with full websockets support at the moment.
  - shykes 14y ago
    dotCloud has full websockets support. Http://dotcloud.com
    - vicky_rockstar 14y ago
      And I am using it...!
- T-A 14y ago
  OpenShift also does Node + WebSockets now: https://openshift.redhat.com/community/blogs/paas-websockets https://openshift.redhat.com/community/blogs/paas-websockets
- taude 14y ago
  I setup an Python Flask server on Azure last week. I was pretty impressed by the polish on a lot of the MSFT Azure management tools. I had also tried AppFrog, Heroku, and AWS Beanstalk in the past.
- intelekshual 14y ago
  Modulus looks pretty good: https://modulus.io/ https://modulus.io/ I haven't tried them out yet, but their support team has been very responsive answering my questions.
weitzj 14y ago
Even better: default VPC without extra cost
kumar303 14y ago
Prior to this, Mozilla has been using AWSBox as a similar deploy environment for node.js https://github.com/mozilla/awsbox https://github.com/mozilla/awsbox

88 points by subsection1h 14y ago

scanr 14y ago

Even though it's relatively primitive compared to some of the other PaaS providers out there, I really like AWS Elastic Beanstalk. Here are some of the reasons why: * You only pay for the underlying AWS services * ELB + EC2 + RDS is a good stack for a lot of web applications * They support environments and promoting releases from one environment to the other (e.g. qa -> production) * Git integration There are a bunch of downsides but it's a cheap MVP for a certain category of database driving webapp for me.

adamnemecek 14y ago
What are some of the downsides?
- idunno246 14y ago
  You have to use their base AMI. Which was really bad because for a while it suffered from a kernel deadlock on disk write bug(this should be fixed by now). There's very little configuration options - when I was using it you couldn't setup logrotate for instance. It worked pretty well, for java at least, until the server started locking up every couple hours. When it integrates with opsworks, I'll be excited about it.
  - dazzla 14y ago
    You can now use configuration files to customize your instance. You can install packages, download files, run shell scripts etc. Works well. http://docs.aws.amazon.com/elasticbeanstalk/latest/dg/customize-containers.html http://docs.aws.amazon.com/elasticbeanstalk/latest/dg/custom...
  - fosk 14y ago
    You can customize the AMI and do whatever you want with it.
  - nkvoll 14y ago
    Hmm... this sounds vaguely familiar to something I might have ran into.. Do you happen to have an url to a bug report for this?
- NathanKP 14y ago
  One of the major downsides is that the documentation is horrific. I've spent the last 14 hours trying to get my company's app deployed on Elastic Beanstalk, about six of which have been trying to get an Elasticache Cluster configured as part of the environment and connected to the code within it. The documentation shows a few limited pieces of the process but is greatly lacking in essential details, leaving me with an extremely slow trial and error process which involves a 4-5 minute wait each time I deploy a new attempt to get it working. Additionally since it is still new there is very little crowd created documentation out there on StackOverflow, etc to help you out where the official documentation is lacking. My experience with Elastic Beanstalk makes me feel like a pioneer breaking new ground on an very early beta, not the user of a robust, finished system. There are other issues I have with the system besides the documentation, such as logging into an instance that was created by Elastic Beanstalk for my app and seeing that it has 30 security updates that need to be installed. Why Elastic Beanstalk didn't just install these when creating the instance is beyond me. Instead I'm trying to figure out how to modify the configuration to get it to fix these security problems as part of the deployment process, but having no luck. (2 hours wasted on this so far.) Elastic Beanstalk has the potential to be incredible, but it is still very rough in my opinion.
- philfreo 14y ago
  It's not brain-dead to get started with, like Heroku is. Anyone can do it when the docs are this clear: https://devcenter.heroku.com/articles/python https://devcenter.heroku.com/articles/python https://devcenter.heroku.com/articles/nodejs https://devcenter.heroku.com/articles/nodejs I'd love to see Beanstalk be this easy, but judging from all of the AWS documentation I've read, they won't get there anytime soon. Note: I understand Heroku is solving the problem at a different level. I'm happy to work with the building blocks AWS provides (EC2 + ELBS + RDS etc.) but it's just the nice getting started guides / overall developer friendliness that's lacking.
- scanr 14y ago
  * Docs are pretty bad * I invariably need to log onto the instance itself to find deployment bugs during development (that said, it's great that I can do that) * Using their AMIs is the easiest but you may find that they don't support the combination of software you need * If you're deploying a python app, you'll want to install celery, rails resque, php gearman etc. Beanstalk doesn't really have an answer for the 'deploy an asynchronous job server'

quahada 14y ago

Does it support websockets? Pretty important feature for node.js.

jonpaul 14y ago
Presumably so, since the press release explicitly mentions websockets, and you can use Nginx (which now supports websockets) or choose to not use any reverse proxy.
mathrawka 14y ago
You need to use TCP forwarding on the ELB, not HTTP. The disadvantages are: * You cannot enable stickiness on the ELB * You will not get the client IP forwarded to your instances
- miles932 14y ago
  you do get the client IP, but it comes as a request header: x-forwarded-for http://docs.aws.amazon.com/ElasticLoadBalancing/latest/DeveloperGuide/TerminologyandKeyConcepts.html#x-forwarded-for http://docs.aws.amazon.com/ElasticLoadBalancing/latest/Devel...
  - lucian1900 14y ago
    How would that work for a protocol that isn't HTTP?
  - mathrawka 14y ago
    There are no HTTP headers in pure TCP.
pornel 14y ago
You can use Server-Sent Events (HTTP-compatible server->client websocket).

apapli 14y ago

How does this compare with Heroku for RoR hosting? Do they compete or is Heroku solving a different problem?

niclupien 14y ago
IMHO Heroku is way more easy to do deploy and makes it more accessible to non-sysadmins. heroku create git push heroku master With Amazon, you need to spend some time understanding how it works and what do you want. It's also not very clear for a beginner to define what kind of bill you will get today, in a month, in a year. I think Amazon is trying very hard but I always end up reading tons of documents and finally not really understand what they means in the end.
jonpaul 14y ago
To my knowledge, Heroku still does not support Websockets. However, if you use, Socket.IO, then you can use long-polling with Heroku.

joeblau 14y ago

I just added Elastic Beanstalk's dot directory to http://gitignore.io http://gitignore.io http://gitignore.io/api/elasticbeanstalk http://gitignore.io/api/elasticbeanstalk

yannis 14y ago
Thanks, nice application. Love the color scheme.
vicky_rockstar 14y ago
Thanks :)

crindy 14y ago

I'm working on a meteor application, and one of the things I'm scared of is that no one knows how to make one run on multiple machines. Would this solve that problem, by providing an essentially infinite sized machine?

JoshGlazebrook 14y ago
This is essentially what these PaaS services do. Appfog for example gives you 2GB of ram to deploy your app with for free. You can deploy an app to 8 separate instances with 256MB of ram, or you can adjust it differently. With heroku you get 1 "dyno" for free, and for each additional dyno it's another charge, etc. etc. They do all the work of load balancing and making it "just work"

jedschmidt 14y ago

Does anyone know how often they update their containers for other platforms? The maximum node.js version on Beanstalk is 0.8.21, but the current stable is now 0.10.0.

mminer 14y ago
Their Python container, which became available last August, has yet to be updated to support version 2.7 (released 2010) or 3.x. This may not be indicative of how often they'll update the node.js container, but their effort to keep up with the latest and greatest doesn't seem too aggressive.
fosk 14y ago
You can create a custom AMI with any version of node.js, and use it in your envs.

outside1234 14y ago

what is the best node.js PaaS solution out there? This doesn't look as nice as Azure's offering that I've been using. Who do people like the most?

JoshGlazebrook 14y ago
There is appfog, heroku, nodejitsu, and a few others. Afaik, nodejitsu is the only one with full websockets support at the moment.
- shykes 14y ago
  dotCloud has full websockets support. Http://dotcloud.com
  - vicky_rockstar 14y ago
    And I am using it...!
T-A 14y ago
OpenShift also does Node + WebSockets now: https://openshift.redhat.com/community/blogs/paas-websockets https://openshift.redhat.com/community/blogs/paas-websockets
taude 14y ago
I setup an Python Flask server on Azure last week. I was pretty impressed by the polish on a lot of the MSFT Azure management tools. I had also tried AppFrog, Heroku, and AWS Beanstalk in the past.
intelekshual 14y ago
Modulus looks pretty good: https://modulus.io/ https://modulus.io/ I haven't tried them out yet, but their support team has been very responsive answering my questions.

weitzj 14y ago

Even better: default VPC without extra cost

kumar303 14y ago

Prior to this, Mozilla has been using AWSBox as a similar deploy environment for node.js https://github.com/mozilla/awsbox https://github.com/mozilla/awsbox