We’re all having the same problem with rails hosting
I think the biggest problem with ruby apps is the hosting.
PHP is so easy to host, you can upload it almost everywhere since mod_php is usually deployed by default with apache and php is deployed with every server now days.
Problem with Ruby is that it *can* be memory hungry and there’s ‘installing’ to do on the server side to get it up and running.
On top of that, web hosts either don’t support it, don’t support it well, or charge a lot to support it.
You can pick up an average ruby hosting plan with a plesk or cpanel control panel etc etc, but it’s going to be slow, not only because you’re on a virtual hosts - shared environment but because it’s not setup right, not load balanced and what not.
Just because it says FastCGI doesn’t mean its fast, Lighttpd isn’t all that light, and using a VPS and still using a control panel like plesk to handle your rails isn’t going to solve any issues.
This is where I think Slicehost is *almost* the perfect host for rails projects.
You can easily setup a couple of different slices (virtual servers) in a few minutes, and install SQL on one, and litespeed on the other.
Only downside is that there’s a lot of manual work to get it all 100%, not only on the server side, but on the client side.
Setting up your Capistrano, and other local tasks take time.
If Slicehost dedicated a side of their business to rails deployments, providing Capistrano recipes, deploying servers with litespeed and rails etc pre-installed, you know, like 5-6 different deployment configurations to choose from to get up and running, that should cover the most of what people are after.
Right now most non linux technical people are stuck either learning how to do all these things in linux which is time consuming, and frustrating at times, or people are stuck paying large sums for overrated hosting.
Mediatemple charge like $20 for 64mb of memory, mosso charge $25 for 128mb of memory and engine yard are off the scale with $990 per month + $690 setup… Not to mention engine yard’s $125 per month for 1gb of backup space!
‘Grid’ hosting, load balancing and what not isn’t all that hard to do, and it’s not terribly expensive, I think engine yard are overcharging a bit, but that’s my opinion.
If I ever got into hosting, I’d do the same as slice host but dedicated to ‘LAMP’ deployments on virtual servers, setup a grid over at cari.net and use 3tera to manage the virtual servers.
April 1st, 2008 at 1:43 pm
Hello there!
Thanks for mentioning Engine Yard.
We noticed that there’s a misconception about our pricing, however.
The “minimum” pricing you mentioned is approximately correct for our recommended configuration, which includes a staging slice and two redundant productions slices. The actual minimum price is $349/month with a $249 setup fee.
Slices run only your application, with the database resources being entirely outside your slices.
Additionally, your slices are entirely SAN based, so disk space is virtually unlimited and can grow as you do. Load balancing, redundant hardware, etc. are all included as well.
But, the vast majority of our pricing is to support the largest and best qualified Ruby on Rails support team in the world. We have around 30 support people, from Rails application developers turned deployment support, to seasoned Linux sysadmins, to DBAs. These folks are available 24×7x365 and are located in all US time zones, several European time zones, and a couple of Asia/Pacific time zones. This means that whenever you call, or join us on IRC (#engineyard on irc.freenode.net), it’s daylight somewhere and skilled technicians are ready to help you with whatever you need.
As an example of this support, we deploy new Rails applications for our customers. You send us your SVN URL and credentials, and we do everything required to get your application up and running. This includes configuring all services, installing gems, importing DBs, *anything* you need done.
From this experience, we create Capistrano deployment scripts that make future deployments painless and simple.
Another example is DB analysis work that happens regularly. We communicate with customers when we add index to make queries faster, or even suggest equivalent queries that perform better than inefficient queries we run into.
We *never* charge any money at all, including setup fees, until your application is up and running and you’re satisfied.
Engine Yard does cost more than some hosting services, but we cost less than others. At the end of the day, however, our rapidly growing customer base doesn’t consider us expensive hosting, instead, they consider us inexpensive IT support.
April 1st, 2008 at 2:49 pm
Hi Tom, you were the guy i spoke to about the digitalni.com.au site that had copied engineyard… !
I’m defiantly not putting engineyard in a negative light; I actually plan on blogging about the ‘point’ or reason to use a service like engineyard in the future, however, for people like me who have 20+ apps under management, engineyard isn’t an affordable solution, but for a dev team deploying a single app it’s a different story.
For me I need a staging environment where I can throw apps up and take them down on a regular basis and having 10 slices for 10 apps is a killer bill ($3,490? If I’m not wrong?), whereas a vps with 2gb of ram can handle a 10 apps with no great dramas and the outlay there is something like $140, big difference.
Most of the apps we develop are low traffic B2B, not high traffic general public B2C or massive B2B sites, some are event built for intranet-extranet, so again not high traffic. For developers building small to mid end solutions, the price for engine yard hosting I think is way too much – but engineyard are delivering a different product to a different market – which is not my market.
Yes your paying for the support and what not, which is great for some people, but we get by ok, we can manage servers with no great dramas, and once it’s all setup, it’s not hard to do new deployments.
Personally I’d prefer to have the skills in house to know what to do rather than relying on a 3rd party to make our app or server work. Throughout the years I’ve moved through a few server hosts, if I relied on one host to know everything about our server and application deployment etc, and we were fed up with their service or something, having to move to a new host and do it all ourselves may not be an option or more likely a disastrous option since we would have no idea what to do, or decisions to make.
But that’s me, I like having the knowledge and knowing what’s going on, why we’re using certain technologies and not others, I like to be able to make an educated decision not a guess on what to do.
Again, Engineyard isn’t in our market, we consult, design and develop solutions, people pay me for my knowledge and my recommendations, yes engineyard can host their app, and probably every kind of ruby app around, but it’s not a business requirement, sure a Ferrari will get you from home to work, but a scooter will get you through the traffic faster. Biggest and best isn’t always ideal.
End of the day it really depends on the team, and the app. I have a good team in here, we like the flexibility of slicehost, it suits what we need to do sure we have small issues here and there, but that’s a learning curve, and by learning about the environments we’re able to provide better solutions.
If we built an app that is getting pounded with traffic and needs super fast DB’s and load balancing beyond what we can handle then yeah, of course engineyard would be the place to be, if managing servers started costing more than would it would to use engineyard, then yeah, we’d move, but right now, it’s not.
I do like what engineyard has to offer and the way a few of my clients are going I have plans to move them there in the future, but for now it’s not a justifiable expense to them while the current still has available capacity.
Thanks for visiting and commenting Tom! appreciate the input, like I said at the beginning, I do plan to do some posting about engineyard soon, I’ll try to make sure there’s no misconceptions about the pricing and what not when I do.
April 1st, 2008 at 3:00 pm
Hey Todd.
I’m clear that Engine Yard isn’t for everyone, and know that many people prefer to “do it yourself.”
One thing I should make clear, however, is that Engine Yard is transparent. You wouldn’t learn less by hosting with us, you’d likely learn MORE, as you can rely upon the combined wisdom and experience of our entire team.
Many of our customers are former do-it-yourself types who have chosen this time to let someone else do it.
Also, with respect to making Ruby hosting easier and more efficient, please keep a couple of things in mind:
1) Engine Yard sponsors Rubinius development
2) Engine Yard sponsors the mod_rubinius plugin for Apache
Combined, this should provide *much* better low-end deployment than current situations.
Also, keep your ear to the ground for new options from Engine Yard. The future is bright for Ruby hosting.
Also, thank you very much for helping us straighten out the digitalni.com.au situation. They were very honorable and fixed it up very promptly, so kudos to them for doing the right thing in the end.
April 1st, 2008 at 3:26 pm
Yeah defiantly, I’d like nothing more than to no longer deal with servers, but, my only issue is the multiple apps, at any one time we would have 10 up in staging just for clients to test and provide feedback, or to bug find before they go live and that $350 a month hit for each just isn’t feasible for my customers, it’s tough enough trying to explain why it can’t run on a $5 a month shared host like other sites…
I think I’m in a slightly different boat too; I have a fulltime systems administrator on staff, he does do other things then manage servers, but, he does manage our servers, setup, patches etc.
For most developers or small business that’s a very expensive hit, but for me it’s roughly $320 a month USD (I’m in Thailand).
I am looking forward to deploying some apps with Engineyard, I’m very interested in what you guys do and how you do it, I’ve heard of Rubinius but I’ve not explored it yet.
I think if you can deliver a strong solution to the low to mid end, that’s able to be rolled out by web hosts with no real dramas you could corner the market.
I think that’s the biggest problem with ruby at the moment, it’s obscure to most developers because it’s not really a case of just upload and it works like php. You need environments, Capistrano and special webserver setups. On top of that there’s no 1 solution that every host is using for ruby like there is for php. Developers have to many options that they know nothing about.
First people to simplify that will be in a great position, I think fiveruns are trying for that angle – or at least they were with their end-to-end deployment and management solutions, but it looks like they are almost stuck on monitoring and not doing much development on the rest of the apps.
If I was engineyard, I’d be acquiring fiveruns, or going head to head with them right now, with more developers before they hit the market with the rest of their apps.
June 3rd, 2008 at 8:33 am
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