I’m currently looking at hosting solutions for my Ruby on Rails SaaS web application, and the biggest issue I see is that if I go with something like Amazon EC2, then I still need to configure my own server and install what I need (e.g. database, programming framework, application server, etc.). Each one of these is an opportunity for something to go wrong. I also have to worry about how my data is getting backed up, how frequently, and a host of other “low-level” details. Being a startup I don’t have the resources for a sysadmin so would have to play one myself. I currently do some work for a startup and my boss is always talking about how great EC2 is because it let’s us “get out of the hardware business” – in reality though, it doesn’t feel that way because we still have to set up the server instances, still have to install software, still have to configure the software properly. It feels like we’re still in the hardware business, just that we don’t really own the server we’re using.
In contrast is a service like Heroku (which actually uses EC2 underneath, I believe) but basically takes care of all the low-level details. They do automatic backups for me, I just specify the frequency. They have a server configuration already set up. They have ways to manage it and keep it running so I don’t have to monitor traffic. I can focus on my application and just deploy the code, and let them worry about administration and making sure the database is properly configured with the web server and the right folders have permissions.
The problem with Heroku is obviously that I don’t have control over these things if I wanted to modify it. Heroku uses nginx as it’s web server; if I want to use Phusion Passenger on Apache to stay on the “cutting edge” of RoR development, I’m SOL. If I need to make a quick patch in production (Root of all evil, I know, but it happens sometimes) I don’t have SSH access to Heroku’s servers. If I need to set up a new database user to allow somebody else to remotely access data, I don’t think I can do this. And worst of all if something does happen with the server, I have no way of doing anything except wait for Heroku to fix it.
Basically at what point, if ever, can we as developers focus on our code and application and not have to play sysadmin with server configuration? As a startup with limited resources and limited knowledge of configuring servers (enough to get by), would I be better off sacrificing some configurability for the ability to let somebody else worry about the hardware/software end of things?
https://stackoverflow.com/questions/162144/what-is-a-good-ruby-on-rails-hosting-service/265646#265646