This raises a good point from Norbert - what does simple mean? I think we all agree on what is cheap - in my mind sub 10euros (ideally 5) - which seems totally doable from what people are saying (of course this goes up if you want big databases and load balanced stuff etc - although you might squeeze it in from the suggestions so far - but lets take this one as given - I’d like to run some simple apps for me or my family).
So revisiting simple - I started out thinking Docker was overkill and Swarms and Kubernetes made me sick (I’m sure there is a point where you get to these, but then you probably have a bigger team and lots more skills to potentially consider it - although my observation to date was that these things seems to suck up needless time). HOWEVER - I acknowledge that times have moved on, and I was deeply impressed with Pablo’s article on quickly standing up Pharo in a Docker image based on a community container… what struck me about this was that I didn’t really need to know or care about underlying Linux - and apt-get update and friends… nor about sysctrl and restarting things… so for me simplicity is eliminating all the OS, patches and updates and potentially even scaling - and they get handled in a not-Kubernetes way (or at least the K is totally hidden from me). Equally - for persistence, just want a db as a service - with credentials injected into my image so that it can be safely updated/password rotated etc without me caring much. I can just connect to it (and ideally its backed up for me, if I tick a box and pay a bit more money). I think we may be close to this - particularly as Pierce pointed out that you can build your ST image outside of a container (like many do today - and Github/lab have reasonable tooling to let you metacello a clean image and keep logs to see what has happened, as well as cache the right bits for you so its nice and fast) and then you simply ADD it into Docker with a few lines of Dockerfile. So I am wondering if in 2021, whether Docker might actually have got us to a point of simplicity, and for simple workloads if something like dockerize.io <http://dockerize.io/> (or others - but it seems the closest to what I am imagining although I’ve not used it much so far) abstracts you far enough from the Linux/Networking/Secuirty drudgery that makes web development suck. (Don’t get me wrong - I know some of you are wizards at this stuff, and its second nature to jump into bash and do the right things - but I find that while I can get so far, inevitably you get reams of console slush where some package conflicts with another and then you are on stackoverflow or here trying to work out how your distro has cocked something up, or you missed some special switch to keep things sane). But I am curious about what others have experienced - as I know many of you have played with Swarm, Kubernetes etc, and equally maybe native, non Docker has a way of avoiding the OS updates and restart magic in a simpler way? I thought DigitalOcean might do this - but it still seemed that you need to go lower level than I have time for. Tim > On 13 Apr 2021, at 17:48, Christian Haider > <christian.hai...@smalltalked-visuals.com> wrote: > > Yes, this is my camp 😊. > > Every layer or tool adds many cool features (their raison d'être) which you > don’t need for the "easy" setup. > You typically need only a handful of the configuration parameters at most > (imagine PostgreSQL, Apache, Jenkins etc.). > Yet, all the myriad of super-duper feature settings add to confusion and are > nice traps for interesting bugs. > > The complexity of a system is probably exponential to the number of tools or > layers... > And each one of them wants to be updated... > And each has its own documentation (which you have to read when you get > unlucky) with its own conventions... > > No thanks. I try to keep my stack as simple as possible. > That’s also a good reason for Smalltalk, because it makes it much easier to > keep all pieces together. > > Happy hacking, > Christian > >> -----Ursprüngliche Nachricht----- >> Von: jtuc...@objektfabrik.de <jtuc...@objektfabrik.de> >> Gesendet: Dienstag, 13. April 2021 18:15 >> An: pharo-users@lists.pharo.org >> Betreff: [Pharo-users] Re: Whats the easiest/cheapest way to run a Pharo >> web app in 2021? >> >> Norbert, >> >> you nailed it ;-) Easy and cheap and lots of layers of magic infrastructure >> nailed and hammered onto each other don't go well with each other. I am >> still a fan of having some server - virtual or physical >> - that I can reinstall from scratch and as little moving parts as possible >> on top >> of that. I rather have a little collection of sheets on which I wrote down >> each >> single step of installing what's needed and a good backup of ini files and >> whatnot than a pile of "stuff" that makes things "easy". >> >> I know, that's so 90ies, but hey, we're using Smalltalk from the 70ies ;-) >> >> Joachim >> >> >> >> Am 13.04.21 um 18:09 schrieb Norbert Hartl: >>> I read the title which contains „easiest/cheapest“ and then you drop >>> names „docker“, "CI which injects“ and „stages" … this invalidates at >>> least „easiest“ and maybe „cheapest“ as well. I think I missed the >>> intent of this mail. So can you give a few more details otherwise it >>> is hard to meet the „easiest on this level of requirements“ >>> >>> Norbert >>> >>>> Am 12.04.2021 um 10:36 schrieb Tim Mackinnon <tim@testit.works>: >>>> >>>> That is cheap 3e/m is definitely worth considering… but I guess you do >> have to take care of your own patching etc right (which isn’t necessarily >> horrible, but does require a bit of extra effort to track things). I was >> interested in whether the next step up in the food chain using Docker images >> that are hosted for you, might lessen the burden a bit? E.g. if your CI >> injects a >> pharo image into the latest “safe” docker image from the community - then >> hopefully you are insulated from all of this. It does look like this is >> becoming >> a reality if that dockerize.io soln plays out (I got that working, its cheap >> - >> however they haven’t answered any of my email queries… so I do wonder >> how real it actually is). The fallback would definitely be something like >> Hetzner or Digital Ocean I guess. >>>> >>>> Tim >>>> >>>>> On 12 Apr 2021, at 08:47, Norbert Hartl <norb...@hartl.name> wrote: >>>>> >>>>> >>>>> >>>>>> Am 12.04.2021 um 04:02 schrieb Jeff Gray <j...@rogerthedog.com>: >>>>>> >>>>>> Considering easiest and cheapest, there's always self hosting, or >>>>>> are you discounting that idea? >>>>>> Most geeks have a bit of spare hardware laying around and broadband >>>>>> up-speeds aren't too bad. >>>>>> I'm guessing that if we are in the $5 a month ball park then we >>>>>> aren't needing a guaranteed up time. >>>>>> >>>>> My cloud instance is 3€/month. With an additional 20% amount the >> instance has a backup. And setting it up is way simpler then getting dynamic >> DNS updates and all of that configured. Times have changed a bit. >>>>> >>>>> >>>>> Norbert >> >> >> -- >> ----------------------------------------------------------------------- >> Objektfabrik Joachim Tuchel mailto:jtuc...@objektfabrik.de >> Fliederweg 1 http://www.objektfabrik.de >> D-71640 Ludwigsburg http://joachimtuchel.wordpress.com >> Telefon: +49 7141 56 10 86 0 Fax: +49 7141 56 10 86 1 >
