Ask HN: Python cloud hosting? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Python cloud hosting?

6 pointsbravura5 comments

I am writing a web application in Python. Forms, authentication, simple stuff. Think of a glorified guest book app, in terms of basic functionality. I want to be able to scale to millions of requests. So the guest book page should be served statically, and updated from the database periodically.

What cloud host should I use? Google AppEngine seems simpler to set up, but AWS seems more flexible.

Within this cloud service, what Python web framework should I use? If I use the AppEngine API, do I get scaling automatically? If I use Pylons or Django, do I have to be careful to get things to scale correctly?

What is the simplest path to a minimum viable product?

Definitely go with Google AppEngine (GAE). I started off with zero Python experience and an interest in checking out GAE as well as learning Python, and rapidly picked up both thanks to the ease of developing and deploying on GAE. Just go through the Getting Start Guide (http://code.google.com/appengine/docs/python/gettingstarted/), which will covers some of the services you get with GAE out of the box. In fact, the Getting Started Guide walks you through building a simple guestbook app. Feel free to contact me if you need more information or have questions.

GAE user authentication assumes that your users have Google accounts.

Is there an existing library to allow user authentication by creating an account for my particular website? i.e. not using a preexisting account.

http://code.google.com/p/google-app-engine-django/

If I use Django on AppEngine, do I get automatic scalability through the Django database ORM?

I prefer AWS/VPS. That way I have root access to a virtual machine and can pick and choose what I install. Personally I prefer Ubuntu environments, apt-get is so convenient. I do my development on a personal system and upload working code for testing / deployment. From my experience GAE imposes constraints which may turn into issues.

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