Cloud Computing and Startups

Steven Evatt

Blog: http://www.evatt.com/blog

Web: http://PriceChirp.com

Twitter: @sevatt

NOLA Barcamp 2009

Case Study: PriceChirp.com

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Today We'll Cover:

Cloud Computing Basics Ruby on Rails Projects Case Study of PriceChirp.com Take Aways

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Ideas to Make $$

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What is Cloud Computing?

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Formal Definition: Cloud Computing

Wikipedia

A style of computing in which dynamically scalable and often virtualized resources are provided as a service over the Internet. Users need not have knowledge of, expertise in, or control over the technology infrastructure in the "cloud" that supports them.

Comparisons Grid Computing Utility Computing Autonomic Computing

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Common Definition: Cloud Computing

No consensus on the definition of “Cloud Computing”. It is a generic marketing term for any computing resources on the internet.

To many, it means:

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My Definition: Cloud Computing

Cloud computing to me:

Using computer resources in the interwebs, without real control over the hardware specifications, it's location, and having the ability to add or remove resources without capital expenses and/or contracts, preferably in an automated fashion.

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Benefits of the Cloud

Application Building blocks Stable APIs Proven Infrastructures Low cost of entry No long term commitment

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Options other than the Cloud

Cheap / Budget host GoDaddy, HostGator, WebHostGiant, etc...

Dedicated hardware Colocation Hosting on your own hardware / internet

agreements

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Discussing Three Clouds

Amazon Web Services Google App Engine The Rackspace Cloud / Slicehost Many More

Citrix, Google Apps, IBM, Microsoft, Sun, Zoho

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Amazon Web Services

Offerings Hardware as a service – AWS-EC2

Red Hat Enterprise, Windows Server 2003, OpenSolaris, Ubuntu, Gentoo, Debian, etc...

IBM DB2, Apache, IIS, Oracle 11g, MS SQL, MySQL Enterprise, Ruby on Rails, Jboss, Java Application Server, Windows Media Server, etc...

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Amazon Web Services

Offerings Storage as a service – AWS-S3 Database as a service – SimpleDB Queuing as a service – SQS CDN as a service – CloudFront

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AWS – Some Use Cases

Startups Low entry point (10 cents an hour for a CPU) Can scale up to Terabytes of storage and

thousands of servers with the same price structure Everything is automated and has programmatic

access (No calls to system admin to configure or restart a server)

Enterprise Performance testing Compatibility testing

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Google App Engine

Exposes the Google Infrastructure The Python Runtime – (webapp, Django, CherryPy, Pylons,

Web.py) Datastore API (BigTable) – Google's Database Images API – Image manipulation service Mail API – Send mail from your app Memcache API – Distributed memory cache URL Fetch API – Access other hosts from your app User API – Integrate Google users with your app

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Google App Engine

Costs Free for 500 MB storage and 5 million page views $0.10 – $0.12 per CPU core-hour $0.15 – $0.18 per GB-month of storage $0.11 – $0.13 per GB outgoing bandwidth $0.09 – $0.11 per GB incoming bandwidth

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Google App Engine

Bonuses Automatic scaling Using the same infrastructure Google uses

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Google App Engine

Issues Python If not starting from scratch, expect a complete

re-write BigTable – must rethink the way you use a DB

Not a relation DB Can only query indexed data

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The Rackspace Cloud / Slicehost

Offerings Hardware as a service – Cloud Servers Storage as a service – Cloud Files

Compared to Amazon AWS Utility Billing Persistent data Only support Linux instances Support smaller instances, so they have

less expensive options Slicehost is the same as The Rackspace

Cloud with flat billing

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Rackspace / Slicehost Rates

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The Choice for PriceChirp

What part of the cloud is right for PriceChirp? Slicehost

Support Linux Static IP included Persistent data Root access Full support for Ruby on Rails Flat billing Only need a 512 MB instance

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Programming Frameworks

Frameworks Ruby on Rails (Ruby) Sinatra (Ruby) Django (Python) Zend (PHP) Cake (PHP) Catalyst (Perl) CodeIgniter (PHP) Symphony (PHP) Plone (Zope)

CMS Drupal (PHP) Joomla (PHP) Wordpress (PHP) MovableType (Perl)

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Kung-Fu?

“Ruby on Rails is astounding. Using it is like watching a kung-fu movie, where a dozen bad-ass frameworks prepare to beat up on the little newcomer only to be handed their asses in a variety of imaginative ways.”– Nathan Torkington, O'Reilly Program Chair for OSCON

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Ruby on Rails

Ruby – fewer lines with more readable code, shorter development times, simple but powerful

Convention over configuration => almost no config files, predefined directory structure, naming conventions => less code, easier maintenance

Best Practices: MVC, DRY, Testing

Almost everything in Rails is Ruby code (SQL and JavaScript are abstracted)

Integrated AJAX support. Web services with REST.

Good community, tools, and documentation

Extracted from a real application

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Rails Frameworks

Bort – Kick start a project

Restful Authentication, OpenID support, Exception Notifier, Will Paginate

Insoshi – Open source Social Networking

Activity feeds, profiles, photo sharing, comment wall, blogs, forums, user messaging, and an admin panel.

Lovd By Less – Open Source Social Networking

Activity feeds, profiles, messaging, blogs, photogalleries, site search for friends, Flickr and YouTube integration

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Other Free Tools

Google Analytics Enterprise-class web analytics Free for up to 5 million page view a month

Google Webmaster Tools Monitor how google spiders your site Sitemaps

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What all this meant for PriceChirp

Low setup / monthly costs Linux environment Powerful tools Quick prototyping and development Reliable service Excellent performance for the end user Low maintenance

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Take Aways

• The cloud provides a low barrier to entry

• Frameworks simplify work required to build a site

• Free tools

• Easier than you expect

• Try one of your ideas,very little to lose

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Thanks for Coming!

Steven Evatt

Email: steven@evatt.com

Site: PriceChirp.com

Blog: www.evatt.com/blog

Twitter: @sevatt