I have been using pythonanywhere last few days (Free account for testing purposes) Deployment is easy - They have a big "deploy web2py app" button :) They give you access to bash/mysql console via browser - Very nice. Paid accounts get native ssh access too. Their response time for support queries also has been decent.
Only problem - it seems slow. I say "seems" because I have no benchmark numbers. Since I'm new to web2py - it maybe problem with how i've coded my app. Anyone else using pythonanywhere ? Especially "paid" account ? Would you recommend it for "long term" and/or production deployment ? -Mandar On Sunday, August 5, 2012 11:26:00 PM UTC+5:30, curiouslearn wrote: > > Thanks for sharing that Spiffytech. > > I think it would be helpful to new users like me if on web2py page we > collect information on which are good hosts and easy instructions on > how to deploy web2py on these hosts. > > > > On Sun, Jul 29, 2012 at 12:04 AM, spiffytech > <spiff...@gmail.com<javascript:>> > wrote: > > Tonight I threw up a copy of my personal site, just to see if AppFog is > > worth looking into. Perhaps my experience would have been better if I > tried > > during business hours while their live chat support was open, but I > don't > > plan to use AppFog after this experience. > > > > The highlights: > > > > They advertise unlimited apps, but you're limited by how many apps you > can > > squeeze into the RAM your account gets. Sure, you don't have the hard > cap of > > 10 apps like App Engine (still?) gives you, but "unlimited" isn't really > > true > > AppFog's founder wants you to believe they're proving PaaS doesn't have > to > > be slow and expensive, but I found AppFog to be slow, and their pricing > gets > > nutty-expensive very fast > > Getting my app working at all was a trying experience, and AppFog > doesn't > > offer much in the way of documentation or debug output to help you > > No sign of a cron system, so you'll be relying on web2py's built-in cron > > (didn't check if it works there, but I assume so) > > All apps have a 100MB disk limit, and I don't see a way to buy more. > Better > > hope you're apps don't get very big! > > You do have a writable filesystem, for what that's worth with the 100MB > disk > > use limit. I didn't check whether all instances access the same FS > (that's > > kind of an important way so design the service) > > > > My conclusion: If you want a free place to host something that (really, > > really) doesn't need to be performant, AppFog is a decent choice > because: > > > > It has a writable filesystem, which sets it apart from App Engine > > It has MySQL, which sets it apart from App Engine > > It looks more likely to stick around than some of the other free web > host > > services that I've seen mentioned here > > > > However, to get that free hosting you'll have to put up with terrible > > performance (or highly variable performance if it magically speeds up by > > tomorrow morning), poor documentation, and a tricky and opaque setup > > procedure. > > > > On to doing stuff, and statistics! > > > > First off, I could not find any links on their site instructing me on > how to > > configure a Python app to work on AppFog. I eventually gave up and > resorted > > to Googling for a tutorial, which led me to this section in AppFog's > docs. > > Not sure how you are supposed to find that. > > > > That link isn't too helpful, though- it shows how to make a Flask site > that > > works on AppFog, and links to working Bottle and Django sites, but > doesn't > > spell out how to make a generic WSGI site work. To make my simple web2py > > site work, I had to do the following: > > > > mv wsgihandler.py wsgi.py # AppFog needs wsgi.py. I tried a symlink > instead > > of a move, but couldn't make AppFog work in that arrangement > > ln -s wsgi.py wsgihandler.py # This ensures updates to web2py affect > your > > wsgi.py > > gem install af > > af login > > af push <appname> # This gives you an Amazon East app. I can't figure > out > > how to use `af` to deploy to a different infrastructure > > > > I tried creating an app on the Rackspace infrastructure through AppFog's > web > > admin `af update <appname>`, but couldn't get my app to start. It didn't > > start automatically, and `af start <appname> --debug` tells me I don't > have > > the "run" mode available. So no Rackspace for me. > > > > Once I got my app running on AppFog's Amazon EC2 infrastructure (after a > > number of false starts related to not having wsgi.py) I noticed my app > ran > > very slowly. The front page of my app doesn't really do anything; it > could > > almost be a static HTML file, yet it was unbearably slow on AppFog. > > > > I fired up Apache Benchmark and got some very disappointing results. > With a > > concurrency of 50, run for 30 seconds: > > > > 1 instance, 128MB RAM: 139 requests completed, mean average of 10.5 > seconds > > to fulfill a request > > 1 instance, 2GB RAM: 140 requests, 10.8 seconds mean > > 15 instances, 128MB RAM each: 163 requests, 9.2 seconds mean > > > > For comparison, my site hosted on its usual low-end rackmount server > (RHEL > > 6.2, 3.1GHz quad-core Xeon, 8GB RAM, Apache with mod_wsgi) completed > 3061 > > requests with a mean 0.490 seconds per request. Beefier than what AppFog > > gave me? Sure, but not enough to explain handling 22x the requests, with > > 1/22nd the response time. > > > > * The AppFog mean request fulfillment numbers varied by as much as two > > seconds over the several times I ran the tests. That sort of > > unpredictability worries me. > > > > > > > > On Thursday, July 26, 2012 9:50:01 PM UTC-4, Joel Carrier wrote: > >> > >> Has anyone tried running web2py on appfog ( www.appfog.com ) and cares > to > >> comment on their experience? > > > > -- > > > > > > > --
