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by purvis 3250 days ago
> Terraform is basically this tool, but I want an even easier interface, terraform still feels somewhat too specific to me -- I don't want to even have to write config or specify some "aws" adapter that will make my config work on some provider. I want instant, multi-cloud (possibly) heroku, using only the network, hard-drive-space, ram, and lxc "primitives".

This sounds very similar to some ideas I've been stewing on over the past few months. One of them being a multi-cloud terraform-like tool which abstracts away the low level details of which provider an instance is provisioned onto (whichever is currently cheapest). It could also automatically determine how firewall/security groups/networking should be configured.

If you happen to create two instances in two different providers that need to communicate privately over say port 443, the security groups would be updated automatically to account for this, bridging the two providers.

One major thing to consider in doing this is the bandwidth. If you look at the fine print in these providers, the outgoing bandwidth is where they really get you. So if your backup server is in a different provider than your database, you might see some hefty data transfer fees while performing a daily backup.

Just curious, what's your background? Are you an infrastructure type, or are you a general developer who just wants a tool like you've described? Sometimes I can't tell if this is something people really want or if I've just drank too much of the infrastructure automation koolaid.

1 comments

tl;dr - "Fullstack" developer who does my own ops for my own projects which are very varied (I've done small-time deploys/management for projects in/with python, node, go, haskell, ruby, postgres, rethinkdb). I try to iterate my infra as well as my technology stacks to find the best way to do things.

Sorry for the delay -- I've definitely had this at the back of my mind too, but with every advance made by cloud providers, I wonder if I could ever possibly get into that fight, especially since I'm not an expert at any of the cloud computing platforms -- Hashicorp seems to be doing amazing work in this area also, field seems to be full.

My background is basically that I really enjoy computers/programming and like to be self sufficient so I prefer a shallow (working) knowledge of all parts of the stack. I maintain a few VPSes and use them to host n-tier (where n is usually 2) projects. I'm always interested in the best way to do stuff and I use new projects to try stuff out.

Ops is particularly interesting to me because I've gone through a lot of iterations of how I did ops for my apps -- from SSH-in-and-do-stuff -> use-fabric-to-ssh-in-and-do-stuff -> dockerize & ship containers -> dockerized + systemd -> dockerize & registry (thanks to gitlab) + systemd + ansible. I've also used dokku and of course it blew my mind (I never used/wanted to pay for heroku), so while I stayed relatively low level, I was cognizant of what was happening a few levels up.

I saw kubernetes a few years ago and wasn't sure whether I wanted to go with it, but I've taken a fresh look over the last week and think it might be time to give it a try.

Side (controversial?) note - I think the time where it's acceptable for junior/mid-level developers to only know one part of the stack is dead. The only thing keeping these roles possible are the fungibility requirements for large corporations. Smaller, hungrier (almost literally) corporations can't afford to have some developer that is only an expert at writing python but never works on frontend code or deals with the database.

Your story sounds so familiar, someone could read what you wrote above and think it's me.. though I like to think of myself as a generalist rather than "fullstack". I tend to believe "fullstack" is a marketing term for acquiring slave labor. You're right though, it's required at this point for smaller startups.

> I wonder if I could ever possibly get into that fight

I wonder this too. I've been using AWS for 4+ years at my day job(s). The main pain point for almost all users, including myself is the cost. I think a product/tool that helps companies save on cloud costs would be invaluable. The difficulty is convincing crusty old ops people that the product is something worth trying.

Anyway, after my current employer runs out of money, I'm going to do a startup of some sort. While one of my many idea was like the one we outlined above, I'm actually starting to shy away from the infra/op verticals lately.

My email's in my profile, if you ever want to bounce ideas.

Agree -- "Generalist" is the word I'm going to use now instead of fullstack -- that's the way better term, I put "fullstack" in terms because I dislike the term.

Email incoming!