[felipebueno]

I have some questions and, please, don't get me wrong, I'm not being sarcastic. I am really interested in your services.

I got a cheap server on DO I use to deploy some apps just for testing purpose and, sometimes, I think I waste too many time configuring, breaking stuff and fine-tunning my servers (I do like it but it's not very productive). The languages I play with are Python (Django and Flask), PHP (Symfony2 and Wordpress) and Javascript (Node.js/Express).

My questions are: Why would I choose Stackful.io over Digital Ocean? Will it help me with that?

[hdeshev]

One of the Stackful.io devs here.

I'm all for server tweaking and I do it all the time, but sometimes it gets boring. I could probably do something better than configure php5-fpm for the thousandth time.

Right now, Stackful.io takes the pain from that when it comes to Node.js development. You just pick a server size and hit a button. 2 minutes later your machine is ready to rock and you can deploy your app with a simple Git push.

We are planning on doing the same for the other major web technologies. We have some pretty good progress with a Python stack and a PHP one is in our queue.

[ovi256]

I'm amazed something that works like stackful.io or heroku for your own servers has not been written yet. Like you, many tinkerers have a cheap server to use as a lab. It would be great if one could install on it some piece of software that provided heroku-like zero-friction deploy for new apps. Just do "app create", push a git repo and, bam, the app is deployed, with sensible defaults. The defaults are not supposed to make everyone happy, but, like a default heroku deployment, to allow you to start new apps with zero friction, thus encouraging experimentation and hacking.

[michaelbuckbee]

You should check out Cloud66.com they are _almost_ there with what you are describing. I'm really hoping to be using them in a month or two.

They'll read in your Github repo and then based on that configure VPS's for you according to your specs (shared db server, standalone, etc.), it's very slick.

Right now, they're lacking in documentation and don't handle some aspects of admin (most notably server security updates) very well.

[drbawb]

Not exactly what you're talking about (I think the linked `juju` is probably closer), but I came across Docker[0] recently.

It's more of a framework for managing deployments locally. -- It seems really cool but I haven't had a chance to play with it yet.

[0]: http://docs.docker.io/en/latest/examples/python_web_app/

[jcastro]

We're working on it: http://juju.ubuntu.com

Here's a simple example with rails, you can do the same with node or django apps: http://www.jorgecastro.org/2012/11/16/deploying-your-rails-a...

[hdeshev]

Our Chef-based stack(s) are open source and hosted on github. We are thinking of packaging them in a form that is convenient to run in a local Vagrant box or something of that sort, so that you can easily test your app without wrecking your production environment first.

[sciurus]

What about Red Hat's Openshift or VMware's Cloud Foundry?

http://openshift.github.io/

http://cloudfoundry.github.io/