cardmagic

Most people don't know how much disk space an email takes, it didn't stop Gmail from just giving 2gb free disk space.

This is why http://AppFog.com/ is investing in multiple IaaS and is not being hit nearly as hard. You can still sign up and even create apps.

Right now any single app can be deployed from any one of a bunch of infrastructures, AppFog is working on the ability to run one app in multiple infrastructures simultaneously too.

AppFog supports Python!

Throw money at http://appfog.com/ they have multi datacenters already

This is why http://AppFog.com/ is investing in multiple IaaS and is not being hit nearly as hard. You can still sign up and even create apps.

This is why http://AppFog.com/ is investing in multiple IaaS and is not being hit nearly as hard.

My advice is to try them both and see which one is a better fit for your style. With a modern PaaS like https://console.appfog.com/ you can deploy apps in many languages easily without the hassle of setting up entire stacks.

http://AppFog.com has ruby, python and node, multiple regions today: Ireland, Singapore and US, adding Rackspace and HP soon. All free and backed by CloudFoundry

http://AppFog.com has multiple regions today: Ireland, Singapore and US, addin Rackspace and HP soon. All free and backed by CloudFoundry

Note my bias: I am the founder of AppFog.com which deploys CloudFoundry to public clouds as a service.

"Heroku is Just Unix"

No. Heroku is not "Just Unix". This statement is completely 100% wrong. To claim that what Heroku or any other PaaS does is "just VPS" or "just Unix" is so far off. People vastly underestimate how difficult it is to run a PaaS and how much technology it takes to pull it off at scale.

I speak from experience, having built one PaaS from scratch and having used CloudFoundry to build a second one. The technology to get "just unix" into a fully managed, n-tier, scalable system is incredibly complex.

I have heard people complain that CloudFoundry is overly complex, but these people judge a piece of open source code that does something that for so long has been hidden behind the curtains. Heroku is at least as complex if not more so, you just never see that part of the equation because you don't have to.

Your opinions make no sense at all. What are you comparing them to? Heroku? How can you evaluate Heroku in this context?

Heroku is completely closed source, you can't evaluate for complexity or design, you could never test or contribute to Heroku source code.

AppFog supports Python and even has a flask jumpstart, you can have the same flask hello world in 30s at appfog.com

Vendor lock-in is a real issue in terms of pricing and downtime: http://gigaom.com/2011/09/24/5-ways-to-protect-against-vendo...

Lock-in is a function of the time and effort it takes to move to an alternative solution, not just the data but the entire system.

Think of beanstalk, think of the dependence on proprietary queuing systems. The more services you use, the more locked-in and the harder it is to decouple your systems from AWS.

The lock-in is not visible if you think of AWS as EC2, the lock-in is how hard it is to build your apps dependent on all the AWS services and try to move anywhere else.

I have clarified a lot of the great questions that have come out of the infographic we created here: http://blog.appfog.com/what-is-noops-anyhow/

I was mainly responding to the "Connecting the Dots, What is a PaaS?" section which I thought was the weakest part of your article. Otherwise well done.

This is a great article exploring what some technology behind PaaS might do, and also a great start, but falls short of true PaaS functionality.

* Many PaaS offerings (like AppFog) are not like shared hosting at all, only the free offering hosts people multi-tenant, when you pay you get dedicated VMs

* The platform in platform-as-a-service means it connects you to fully managed services (on Heroku there are all the add-ons as well as Postgres, on AppFog there are add-ons and MySQL).

* One of the most compelling parts of PaaS is that it is managed by someone else so that you don't get a call at 3am when it is broken

Moreover, if you were to run a PaaS on your own, it would make more sense to try Cloud Foundry which has specifically addressed at least the services aspect of the above comments.

Done

Two Portland startups in slots #1 and #3, AppFog and Cloudability. Go Portland!

But why not templetize the power into an open source system like Cloud Foundry, do it once and then forget about it? Why not design it once, use forever? You still get the power, you just have the time to think about other things, like actually getting shit done.

What do you think of Cloud Foundry that is a PaaS which is open source and you can control all the aspects of if you don't like them?

Why are people still doing this kind of stuff instead of using a PaaS?

Totally seamless upgrade process. PHP Fog is N-tier, so app servers are on a separate tier, we deploy a virtual machine for you, deploy your code, add it to the load balancer, and then remove the shared cloud.

No downtime.

Crazier things have happened, but it is hard to go bust with $10M in the bank - http://blog.phpfog.com/2011/08/11/what-php-fog-will-do-with-...

Good point!

Yes, we will update it shortly!

None of PHP Fog's paid plans share the same app servers as the free plan.

Touche

Full disclosure: I am founder and CEO of PHP Fog

Joe hit it right on the nail here. We examined our costs very carefully and found some room to give back to our community.

The right blend that we were going for was give enough to do dev/test for free, and be reasonably priced (https://phpfog.com/pricing) when you are ready for production.

When Linode gives away more RAM or AWS makes inbound traffic free, it is not a sign these companies are less trustworthy, but that they love their users. We love developers and are trying to do right by them.