Show HN: Burst – start a cloud server, run your code, turn it off
burstable.ai
burstable.ai
Using our burst CLI, you can provision a cloud VM (or restart an existing one), sync your code and data, run the task, re-sync the data back, and have the VM stop automatically once the task is done.
We've also added support for running JupyterLab in the cloud, with automatic timeout so you don't accidentally leave expensive machines running overnight (or worse).
burst is an open-source project with a permissive licensing model. We do intend to build a PaaS business leveraging burst (the so-called "open core" business model). However, we are committed to the development of burst itself as a viable FOSS project. Our vision is to make simple cloud devops as transparent as possible for data scientists, ML / AI researchers and the like. With the support of users and contributors, this vision can extend to other domains such as 3D production, video analytics and more.
One of our beta testers, an Astrophysicist/Data Scientist, put it succinctly: when it comes to devops "I treasure my ignorance". Developers who are not pursuing an IT/devops career should have an easy way to provision compute resources---one that is predictable, and consistent across platforms. burst is our first step toward that vision. We’re excited to share it with you.
Maybe it's a bad habit and breaks the rules of encapsulation, but it sure makes it easy to go in there in the first person, to see what's installed, to look at the input and output and log files, to diagnose what's going wrong, and to hack and debug it with emacs the "old school way", which is a lot easier for me than the typical "hands off" approach to docker development.
It's expensive to rent the big GPUs, so it's useful to go in there and interactively hack the code in real time while it's still running, instead of waiting for yet another docker container rebuild for a tiny little tweak. Then burst syncs my changes back. It also saves money to shut off the server when it's not being used.
I don't know if I'm more disgusted by this unholy accumulation of complexity, or amazed that it actually works well. In any case, we live in awesome times.
I checked into a hotel yesterday, and will check out this morning. I don’t consider it bad customer service that they want to get paid for that room.
What if you forgot to check out, and the hotel kept charging you for the room until you got a bill at the end of the month? (ie you got a bill for 20 nights).
I know that’s not how hotels work, but it’s how these cloud services work.
But the hotel is the same thing, right? If you don't check out, and they keep the room empty because they think you're using it, you're still monopolizing the resource.
How can they make the difference between someone who will be back but just happened to spend a few nights away (say using the hotel as a base for trips) and someone who won't be back but forgot to check out?
But I guess, in the case of hotels, you can usually tell them "I'll be here for X days" upfront. Then again, if you change your mind, they won't always reimburse you the cost you've paid.
Sure but how easy is it to accidentally book an open-ended hotel room stay?
I'd imagine "not very" because there'd certainly be a huge deposit required and/or proof of finances, etc.
i assume AWS learned to target businesses with this shady strategy, which do waste huge amounts of money this way, instead of burning bridges with hobbyist developers over pennies that later will avoid using AWS at the workplace if given the choice.
Perhaps it is a feature of Azure Lab Services, and you were using that?
And there are no policies set up by someone else that I don't know about, we don't usually use Azure for VMs.
E.g. Lambda ("run your code" without "start a cloud server" and "turn it off"), ECS (runs containers, can run a standalone task too), Fargate, Batch... The "running JupyterLab in the cloud, with automatic timeout" use case is supported by AWS Sagemaker.
Disclaimer: I'm a former AWS employee.
I would not even need data syncing since it talks to the main server and does not have state. But it would need to be reachable on a public IP
I really only need to cover burst usage since an average VRWorkout session is only ~10-20 minutes anyway and with players being distributed around the world there is usually no need to boost the available resources.
That's a problem I would like to have down the road when we have millions of people doing VR fitness though :)
Looks convenient otherwise.
You know, it's like association with something that is positive, a peak experience, as well as connoting maybe something a little fun and naughty, but nevertheless something we all share. Like poop, but with a good valence.
I would have definitely used a service like yours if it supported solidworks simulations. Especially if it auto timed out.
If somebody wants to do some coding and testing of non-Python languages, we would certainly support the effort as best we can.
And anyone else who's interested please contact us