Ask HN: How a non dev ops host things to the world?

7 points by llll_lllllll_l 3 years ago | 22 comments

I've been a dev for a while, mostly working in already setup companies where my merge trigger something that deploys the code on AWS and end of story.

But I'm highly interest now in building my own stuff, maybe a simple web app with nest + next + postgress or whatever that I can capitalize (a Saas??), maybe a game for icebreakers (like wikitrivia, wordle, etc) just for fun.

How do people host this things? How do I even start learning this? Should I really try my lucky on AWS stuff and pray to not wake up with a bill in my credit card?

Sounds so easy to deploy a static thing in GitHub pages but so scary to deploy any API on AWS.

shoo 3 years ago |

You could get a physical computer to use as a server, and deploy your app onto it. This will have bounded costs, will require a fair bit of your time, will not teach you how to deploy to a PaaS, but may help you build more intuition and experience.

Get a cheap second hand machine to use as a server - 2 cpu cores and 2gb ram should suffice. Install debian onto it. Set it up so you can administer it remotely over ssh. Learn how to install and start your app as a service using systemd - get that working manually. Write yourself a list of all the steps you took to install your app. Format the disk, reinstall debian, see if you can follow your steps to get your app working again. Learn ansible, rewrite your manual install and deploy steps as an ansible playbook that can be executed over ssh. Format the disk, reinstall Debian, see if you can execute your ansible playbook to install your app without any manual steps. Get another second hand machine, install debian on it as well, set it up so it can also be administered by ansible. Now see if you can deploy your app to both machines at the same time, with your one playbook.

Congratulations, now you're deploying like it's 2012!

moomoo11 3 years ago |

If you’re new you should keep it simple.

You don’t need AWS. Do you have hundreds of thousands of daily active users? Do you need auto scaling and layers of compliance? Do you need specific offerings like GPU time etc? If not the read ahead.

I’d recommend firebase for auth, hosting (your static web assets like ur web app), and storage (uploads). It’s cheap af and most importantly easy.

For your backend application you can use gcloud to deploy it to app engine. Takes one command and it’s live.

When you’re building a company you want to move fast af with reasonable tech choices.

All of these can be hotswapped easily depending on how you build your actual software. Making it “work right” (hint: it never will) is for the engineers who come on board when you’re spinning on the flywheel to spend hours bike shedding. At that time you can afford to waste time because you’ve already made it.

fabianholzer 3 years ago |

A small VPS costs less than 5 dollars a month, and can sustain a lot of experiments. So unless your motive is to specifically learn them, there's no need to worry too much about vendor-specific technologies or suprises on your credit card bil.

When you get services running on your local machine, you can get them running on a remote machine as well.

llll_lllllll_l 3 years ago | |

That's a good point! I don't know, but I always have that small fear of messing up my own costs

KomoD 3 years ago | | |

A VPS is not usage based costs, you rent a fixed amount of resources.

leros 3 years ago |

I'm a big fan of services like Heroku and Netlify.

Heroku is basically "here is a repository with my server app, run it".

Netlfiy is basically "here is a repository with my web app, host it".

I really don't have to think about much. Heroku is pretty cheap and Netlify is free for small sites. To me it's a no brainer as it saves me a ton of time.

If a project every blows up, I can pay more money to scale these solutions up. And since my apps are still simple (i.e. no cloud vendor specific solutions), it's still easy to move my app somewhere else or redesign it with a new architecture if needed. (There are numerous alternatives to both Heroku and Netlify).

BorisMelnik 3 years ago |

If you already deploy your code in AWS, I would stay there. Even if you get moderately proficient you will expand your resume.

If you want something a bit easier, Vultr or Digital Ocean are both ridiculously easy to spin up a server and has all the stacks you mentioned as well as hundreds of ready made images / apps. Less worry there with over-spending.

Very easy to spin up a server and deploy a CMS or host files etc. They also make a newb friendly product called Lightsail.

If you are worried about waking up to a crazy bill, 2 solutions for that. 1. setup a billing alarm for 1, and 2 use a credit card with a low limit or even use a prepaid Visa card.

llll_lllllll_l 3 years ago | |

Yah the tips are simple and sound smart!

AWS seems scary, but I might be worry cause of the size of work (companies I worked had dozens of services), maybe it's easier for small things.

Gonna definitely take a look at these other suggestions!

jensneuse 3 years ago |

Have you tried WunderGraph for APIs? (I'm the founder)

We abstract away all the complexity of CI, Serverless, generating an OpenAPI specification etc...

Follow this guide and you've got an API deployed in a few minutes, with OIDC integration and everything you need: https://wundergraph.com/blog/never_write_openapi_specificati...

danielmakestech 3 years ago |

1) heroku, netlify, vercel are - afaik - the main solutions for your problem right now.

2) there are also some smaller projects like https://github.com/outblocks

3) finally there are also services that can be described as "backend as a service" where you don't have to care about dev ops - firebase, supabase, appwrite, nhost, parseplatform

solumunus 3 years ago |

Render.com is incredibly easy. It will feel just like your professional environment really. Push code and it deploys live.

llll_lllllll_l 3 years ago | |

Wow! This one seems perfect, I'll definitely take a look. The pricing sounds really easy to understand and they have some cool free limits

simantel 3 years ago | | |

A couple other similar options are Vercel (https://vercel.com) and Fly (https://fly.io), but there are several of these.

Vercel might be the best choice if you're building with Next, though.

llll_lllllll_l 3 years ago |

Some really cool ideas here! In my understand, I should start simple, and most of these apps (even setup AWS by myself) would work at least in the beginning!

In any chance of one of my draft apps become viral I'll find a DevOps specialist to help

jamesfinlayson 3 years ago |

> How do I even start learning this?

Do you have access to the code that does this at your employer? Or do you know the people that work on it? I didn't know most of this when I started work but my understanding came from how it was done at work.

EliRivers 3 years ago | |

Hello jamesfinlayson.

Apologies for hijacking this thread; the comment of yours I want to reply to is closed. I found what looks like a CounterStrike alpha exe file, and two betas. The CD it's written on seems readable so far.

You suggested that I put it somewhere for posterity; any particular recommendation of where? Is there a CounterStrike Historical Society somewhere who are looking for it?

jamesfinlayson 3 years ago | | |

All good - I think valvearchive.com is the go-to place for this sort of stuff. There's an about page with some emails but also links to a Discord channel so hopefully one of them is responsive. I've never tried to submit myself. If that doesn't work, betaarchive.com is also a good place to post links to it - they have a dedicated Gaming subforum.

llll_lllllll_l 3 years ago | |

I don't have the access, but I definitely can talk with the owners. That's a good idea!

yuppie_scum 3 years ago |

https://roadmap.sh/devops

Or just go to Heroku.

llll_lllllll_l 3 years ago | |

The roadmap seems like a overkill now, but I totally agree that this should be a way (the best way) to learn everything.

Also, Heroku seems cool, it's sad they don't have that free option anymore, but still, I'll think about!

Thanks!

wyclif 3 years ago |

Sounds like a case for BlueHost or Linode

llll_lllllll_l 3 years ago | |

Going to check this options!