The future is DotCloud | Hacker News Reader

The future is DotCloud

nodroidsallowed.com

57 pointsrobspychala19 comments

Been developing on DotCloud for a month or two now, and minus a couple very minor hiccups it's been fantastic. Some things I'm really looking forward to though:

* Pre-install hooks in addition to their post-install ones (to, for example, move file x, push update, move it back)

* Some kind of admin panel with usage monitoring

* Pricing announcement (would help to plan for the future, since I plan on deploying with DotCloud too obviously)

* An API for accessing the DotCloud commands programmatically from a service, to do things like 'dotcloud alias' within an app

Actually, that's about it. It'll be nice to see some additional service types stabilize (particularly mongo & memcache), but other than the above it's really been an amazing platform to work with, and the functionality/simplicity balance is very well thought out.

pricing is my major concern and the only reason i'm not throwing sites onto dotcloud. i don't want to migrate stuff to dotcloud and then have to migrate it back again if pricing doesn't work for me.

We're taking pricing very seriously. The status quo of platform pricing is not good enough, and we want to fix that.

Expect an announcement soon.

Slightly OT

Is there an open source platform similar to DotCloud/Heroku? We really need something just like this for our private/internal use.

Or alternatively, does anyone license such a thing? I'm sure I could find the $ for the right product.

VMWare's Cloud Foundry is open source and most similar to Heroku/DotCloud.

Very cool. Thanks!

Here's a funny story. DotCloud's early prototypes were in fact very similar to Cloud Foundry's "paas-in-a-box" project. We even open-sourced large chunks of it.

We eventually had to drop that design because, beyond a certain scale, it gets in the way of the user experience - in a major way. I think all major PaaS providers will agree with me.

You have to chose your priorities. Ours is to make developer's lives easier. We axe everything else.

I don't understand, what exactly got in the way of user experience?

Lack of focus.

Who's your customer, the guy using your service, or the guy installing your appliance?

Think of the difference between Google.com and the Google search appliance. One profoundly changed how people interact with the Internet. The other is an extra feature which came years later. What would the World look like today if Sergei and Larry had started with the search appliance?

I don't think that's a choice VMware needs to make, they're not a cash-strapped startup anymore.

Their customers are both developers and admins, and they seem to be able to focus on both so far IMO.

The developer highly benefits from a good (and not to mention free) admin experience anyhow, it allows for private development systems, scale/attack experiments, more portability, etc.

:D DotCloud FTW, the point is it takes so long to get approved for an account.

Here's a little help: http://www.dotcloud.com/account/create

  ZBWGFX   F2OQgg
  tTNdfA   0GjuwZ
  RYC40X   1h9oUs
  VloaKt   r4o8H5
  Cwm0sR   mREz36
  7VBnQ5   E3nt4a
  DVA5qe   jcG9as
  rL4pu2   fLRYzO
  AGx29j   cXuQ4X
  PoHOEe   gPhyLx

Remember: we love feedback!

all invalid :(

Wow, guys. Here's a few more:

  tcgyJc    Z24X3X    oGI6gD    eeRvDT
  apcxH0    KksfOy    ciIzBN    9DC8TF
  kzjHzf    KZQRt6    lMP64Z    iW3Al3
  DP8fot    wMNDdT    gDBFo7    2I8pTG
  k7W6rQ    VfO3XF    DDBBjn    O8RP7a
  MHcnr9    ezCF0f    qz9onY    jBm5NR
  Gl6bZ9    xKlITV    jvWa3Z    kOuTXZ
  VclokJ    RQoyZv    TKCoGC    36JCIF
  V7g9T1    8XqSEu    Cx9UEu    hkj3xV
  EWexbx    yiJjwX    imogNG    HhM72o
  sErcnX    t7iDZr    6gFATJ    lE80X9
  dhyFGx    jDPc5J    7QURyH    nrb2rP

tcgyJc «- Just used this one. Didn't expect the first on the list to be free.

imogNG «- Someone else used this one.

And Thanks! Looks like an awesome service - taking it for a spin…

Here's a quick "complaint" feedback about the signup process, then: don't erase my strong password I took 15s to type in (twice) if you reject my invitation code and I have to find another one. It's a strong incitation to use a weak but easy-to-type password instead.

(not really a problem to me just yet, but it resonates wrong with the password strength warning on the same page)

I got an invite from dotcloud way faster than any of the other hosting services that're in beta.

The problem with PaaS and cloud hosting in general is price. Most experienced hackers are used to managing hardware, so why not stick with dedicated or colo and retain affordable scalability?

Because in return, they reduce mental load and time costs.

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