Ask HN: Any interest in chef/puppet hosting?

10 points by coderforhire 13 years ago | 11 comments

My biggest strength technically is chef/puppet, automation, and configuration management. I have a 9-5, focusing solely on puppet/automation etc, but my real goal is self employment. The market for someone in this area is fairly lucrative, but most of the job opps are either W-2's or 6-12 month contracts, at least in my experience (am I wrong in this?). Are there any products anyone in the HN community would like to see/use having to do with config mgmt? Is there a need for chef/puppet server hosting? I was considering a site with the basic premise:

1. migrates a user from heroku to a cloud provider of their choice (amazon or rackspace to start)

2. sets them up a git repo, that includes all the default code that set the machine up (passenger installation, postgres etc); they can customize that code, push to git, and it will automatically apply the updates of the code.

3. allows them to utilize chef or puppet to manage their machines, and offers consulting services, the dashboard would also allow 1-click deployment of various stacks, spin up machines etc

4. 5-10$/mo per server?

feel free to contact me anthony@coderindustries.com

foxhop 13 years ago |

I've had a similar idea in the past. Not to sure how to monetize it. This would work for generic stacks provisioning but the real power of chef/puppet/saltstack is configuration management. Maybe offer base boxes at $5-10 one time fee or maintained and custom boxes for additional monthly fee. Like I said I've given this lots of thought, and would be interesting in talking about this idea further if you are interested in building something together.

coderforhire 13 years ago | |

ya, there is something here, but I can't put my finger on it. That's why I was thinking, offer the default code that we use to provision a box, and allow the user to customize it; then push it to git, let us take over and apply everything appropriately.

PS- Id love to chat anthony@coderindustries.com skype: coder_for_hire

roderick3427 13 years ago |

I think you should monetize your knowledge and package it in the form of videos, ebooks, and consulting.

sfkamath 13 years ago |

As someone who is just about to launch a startup, and hoping to do as much with puppet as I can, would you be willing to provide part time "free" consultancy in return for sweat equity?

coderforhire 13 years ago | |

What's your track record, what is the startup etc? Feel free to email me if you do not want to post the details here.

mrgreenfur 13 years ago |

I think its a good idea. Is there a way you can offer stock recipes / deployments? I know nothign abotu deployments and automation and don't have the time to learn it...

coderforhire 13 years ago | |

Yes, that would be the default

1. sign up for site

2. click "deploy rails app"

3. select enviroment (amazon or rackspace)

4. select VM size

5. the VM would deploy, and apply the recipes, it would then kick you back a git repo to pull of all the recipes that ran to get your stack up and running (postgres, passenger, ruby installation etc etc).

6. You can then alter anything you want via that repo; then with a simple git push, the changes would be applied to your VM

e1ven 13 years ago |

How could you possibly manage security? Wouldn't this require you to have root on these systems?

coderforhire 13 years ago | |

I haven't fleshed it out completely, but yes, I think at worst it would require, temporary, in memory only storage of the VMs root password to bootstrap the software, with a user specified password applied at the end of the run.

rtcoms 13 years ago |

what about mentoring someone new with chef/puppet?

coderforhire 13 years ago | |

Im always happy to help out with that stuff for fun, I learn more by teaching, shoot me an email