Ask HN: How would you set up a new B2B SaaS?

[tpfour]

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!

[Jugurtha]

Could you elaborate on what you are actually trying to do using a more direct language? Specifically, what would your question be without using the following: "shipping appliances", "connector", "on-prem data queries", "site-to-site VPN", "pass relevant queries through them"?

[tpfour]

I "ship appliances" by sending fully provisioned virtual machines to clients. A connector (or gateway) is an on-premise piece of software that allows a machine on another network to access internal resources. The interesting data resides on-premises, most of the time. Not all application data is stored on-premise. I'm not sure what you find unclear about "site-to-site VPN".

[Jugurtha]

We have helped clients in several industries and sectors where these words either mean different things, or people who use them are thinking of different things. An appliance has meant a physical thing before it has also meant a VM, and I have worked on projects where we used both.

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/

- [0]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/XY_problem

[tpfour]

Thank you for the references.

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.

[Jugurtha]

This is what I thought I understood from your original post, I just wanted to increase the chances to get it right.

Also, take a look at Wireguard for VPN.

[tpfour]

Clients do not support wireguard, but I wish. I use it for my own uses but there's practically no chance it gets approved by clients!

[kubanczyk]

Why site-to-site VPNs and not a single client-to-cloud TLS connection? Real customers that want a site-to-site VPN to the cloud (and are able to set it up), somehow tend to often use hundreds of resources in that cloud, not only your service.

[tpfour]

I could ask for a TLS connection to internal databases. I'm evaluating options. Depending on clients, either solution can be too complicated...

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