Ask HN: How would you set up a new B2B SaaS? Hi, I'm looking to transition from shipping appliances to a cloud offering with some sort of connector for on-prem data queries. An obvious method would be to use site-to-site VPNs and pass relevant queries through them. Does HN have suggestions on how to properly do this, starting from scratch, in 2021? In a way I'm not looking for the latest, shiniest piece of tech, rather the most easily manageable and simple setup possible. Thanks! |
The question you have asked includes solutions, which introduces a bias. Many client meetings start with that. This is what's called an XY problem[0], where the client says they want want Y, but that's their implementation of a solution to solve X. That may or may not be the only solution, but finding out the actual problem to be solved has never hurt me and saved a lot of time and money.
This is why we spend time defining the problem and stripping away every word of jargon we can, because that jargon can create a bias towards a solution that may not be optimal. For example, site-to-site VPN. Why? Gateway ? Why ? These are solutions. What's the job to be done.
Anyway... Have a look at https://www.replicated.com/ and https://kots.io/
I don't think I can explain it more succinctly than this: I ship fully provisioned VMs which contain all of the application code (web frontend and backend) which accesses internal databases. My provisioning workflow is already automated.
It would be desirable for me to move from managing on-prem VMs to managing cloud instances with on-prem connectivity. I am just interested in reading about how others do it.
Also, take a look at Wireguard for VPN.