We're planning to develop a web based Healthcare Practice Management System. Due to HIPAA we're requested to deploy the app in our own premises. Our company is relatively small currently we have only software engineers and no devops engineers but still we want to develop the application to support horizontal scaling(adding more servers).
Planned to use:
Python3 (Django)
PostgreSQL
I'm looking for something like AppScale but with the freedom of choosing our own runtime, database and frameworks.
In other words from the software engineer's perspective:
Should provide an easy way to deploy django application
Should have web based dashboard to monitor and control(like AppScale)
Should make load balancing simple (app and database)
AppScale implements the Google App Engine APIs which, IMHO, make it super easy to develop web apps quickly and efficiently.
On top of that, you get auto-scaling, load balancing, and the ability to deploy on-premises and plug in any third-party library you need.
AppScale already comes with a dashboard and will soon be launching a new management service for your AppScale deployment(s).
If you're not particularly hung up on Python3 and PostgreSQL, all of the above seem to cover your requirements.
It's worth noting that opting for the GAE model means you opt for NoSQL and, so, postgres is probably not the best option.
Disclaimer: I'm part of the AppScale team and we're already helping companies develop and deliver their apps in the HIPAA compliance realm.
I chose Kubernetes which is a container orchestration technology specifically designed for Docker and also found that scaling is not just the responsibility of platform that the app is deployed on but also its depends on how the app is designed and coded. For that The Twelve-Factor App methodology is really helpful.
But I can't deploy database on Kubernetes because its not recommended by Kelsey Hightower(author of Kubernetes Up and Running) in his talk. So, for now I chose to deploy my database on a VM.
Related
I am building a UWP app that targets both x86, x64 and ARM platforms. I want to replace the current implementation that uses Azure for the backed (an App Service and an SQL Server) because of the high price and because my Pay-As-You-Go subscription does not allow me to set a spending limit.
I thought about using a local database but I don't know if that could be a solution since I want the user to be able to have his data synced on both PC and phone for example. I am also ok with renouncing the idea of a structured database in favor of structured files (like xml) if I can find a way to keep them somewhere in the cloud (and then I can read/write them from the client app - no need for App Service).
Are there any free, non-trial alternatives to Azure? Or should I look more into the file storage implementation? Thanks in advance.
Instead of Azure you could use another web hosting solution to publish you API. Azure also offers small free plans that might be sufficient.
An alternative would be to request access and store/sync data to user's OneDrive. Each logged in user with Microsoft Account should have OneDrive storage available so this is a good middle-ground, which is still free for you. A nice introduction to this can be found in this article.
UWP also offers RoamingFolder where you can store small files that are synced across the devices that you use. Unfortunately this is less reliable because you are not able to control when the sync happens and cannot resolve conflicts.
I have successfully migrated to another cloud platform: Heroku. In my opinion, at least for small apps, Heroku offers the best solution both technology-wise and price-wise.
I am now able to have a webservice hosted for free in the cloud, without worring about traffic and number of requests. Of course you can scale up if you want better performance, but you can start with a free plan. Also, I have a postgressql db hosted also in the cloud, also for free (up until 10 000 records, and it will be just 9$/month if I want to upgrade to 10 milion). One can never found an offer like this free on Azure.
I had to learn a bit of Node.js (there are a lot of languages Heroku supports for backend services, but .Net is not one of them) but it was totally worth it!
Another option that is now starting to gain more and more popularity is FireBase. I will certantly also check that out for my future apps.
I am in a development team which have just about finished developing a system for a client which involves a MVC4 Web, a WCF service platform and a Windows Store App which communicates with the web that the service.
We are running Continuous Integration practices for the Web & Service solutions which include automated deployment to dev, test, acctest and production environments. Building, testing, configuring and deploying to production is one click and five minutes away.
The one huge pitfall that we've had in this project was the fact that we chose to develop the app as a Windows Store App without investigating deployment possibilities which do not involve publishing the application to Windows Store. This is a process called sideloading, and i will not go deep into the technical requirements which Microsoft impends to enable this.
Our client will be using the application on 20~ Surface Pro tablets, and we are investigating into an automated release/deploy process for the application. As of this moment, we are using OneDrive to manage build artifacts and let the customer IT admin download the artifact from there to manually install the app on all clients. In the future, however, it is very possible that the organization who ordered the system will deploy this worldwide and there will be a requirement to deploy the application to hundreds, if not thousands of clients.
We spent entire weeks investigating whether Windows Intune can be a good platform for automated deployment of the application. If an organization installs the Intune platform, it's clients get the Company Portal which is like a private Store, where we could upload the app and updates to it in the future. There was, however, one big minus with the Company Portal - it has NO update management for Store Apps. That is, releasing a new version of our application to the Company Portal does not work like releasing a patch or update of your app to the Windows Store - there's no notification that there is a new version, and the application does not update itself. It's basically a new application that needs to be downloaded and installed after the previous version has been uninstalled.
Has anyone developed Windows Store Line-Of-Business applications which you had to sideload to multiple clients, and if so - which solution did you choose for update/patch management?
I am experiencing the exact same problem. Intune is indeed limited and too complex for many scenarios at the same time. Another option to "deploy" LOB Windows Store apps is described here: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/apps/jj657971.aspx. This covers the well known powershell deployment which is not very practical.
However, I have found an early stage, unofficial POC project on codeplex which I am currently investigating. You might want to take look at this: https://bootybay.codeplex.com/
Apologies if what I am going to ask is too generic and please feel free to mark it as community wiki or even close it but after getting a good answer please.. Here goes nothing.
I had a heated debate over the term application infrastructure with a consultant from a BIG company and hence I am here to see what the experts think as I myself need a good understanding as well. I am a puny software developer and was trying to have a chat about software architecture and stuff and then we kinda got stuck up at the term application infrastructure.
As per my rival's understanding, this is solely used re the back-end hardware components and whereas I thought he is mixing the contexts and from the context of software eng it should refer to stuff that supports the application such as logging, ORM, or even framework (.net) etc.
To what extent am I wrong and if I am please shed some light on the definition...it's really gonna help a lot.
Thanks
Here are a few links with a little description about the term Application Infrastructure extracted from them:
Application Infrastructure -- f5.com
Application infrastructure, comprised of application servers, web servers, and often database servers, is a core component in most network architectures. This part of the network infrastructure delivers high performance application services to the LAN as well as to employees, partners and customers on the WAN.
Some of the key functionality of application infrastructure includes transaction management, clustering, reliable application-to-application messaging, system management, advanced application development tools, proprietary access, and interoperability with legacy technologies.
Application Infrastructure -- networkmagazineindia.com
A (common/standard) platform is required to make different applications in an enterprise work across geographies or multiple locations, and to manage a large number of users and transactions taking place within an enterprise. This platform which ensures that different applications work with each other, is known as an application infrastructure.
Application Infrastructure -- bitpipe.com
A high performance, reliable, and secure integrated technology infrastructure for managing multiple hosted applications by Application Service Providers.
What he seem to be describing is the platform for software (I'll leave it open if that is the same thing as the software platform. I do include software service in the Application Infrastructure definition and also include connectivity/networking along with hardware and software as the three foundation corner stones of Infrastructure. Infrastructure is the general purpose commodity components as opposed to the domain specific components which will typically always be Software; (A possible exception would be an organisation uses custom hardware). AIH; IBM pitch WebSphere as Appliction Infrastructure and Microsoft Consider their Windows Server to the Application Infrasture both agree with you and I.
From what I can see it speaks to HW and SW (middleware and API management).
Gertner definition : Application infrastructure is software platforms for the delivery of business applications, including development and runtime enablers.
Interesting info from Gartner:
http://wso2.com/resources/analyst-reports/comparing-vendors-of-comprehensive-application-infrastructure-suites/
I have a question about whether cloud vendors have an inter-operable mechanism. For example, I am developing a WCF service and hosting in Azure successfully. After a pro-long time using Azure, can I use the same code for deploying it in AWS? Will it be possible? Does the API of both matches the same for deploying? If not, what are all the extra care needed for hosting the same service when switching over other Cloud Vendors like Salesforce.com, OpenStack, etc.,
In general, you can't just take what you develop for one Cloud platform and put it on another: they have different functionality sets and expose different APIs. However, the more low-level you make your code, the more likely it is that you'll find another vendor with a very similar API, since virtualizing infrastructure is simpler (and closer to standardized) than virtualizing a CMS application.
If you're using just IaaS, you can probably port fairly rapidly but you have to do more work to make your application. If you're using PaaS (or SaaS!) then you're more locked-in but you get more support for developing rapidly: it's that support platform which is both the value-add and the lock-in, and you won't get one without the other.
If you're using an Azure web role for hosting your WCF service then from deployment point of view you will not have many problems with AWS. You'll simply use facilities offered by AWS SDK for .NET (aka Publish to AWS CloudFormation). For sure you'll have to change the logging part if you've used Azure Diagnostic and alla Azure services with related AWS services. We did this multiple times in the last year and it works.
For worker role it's not so simple because in Azure they are easily deployed like web role, but in AWS you haven't direct deployment from Visual Studio so you have to do some manual work using Windows Services or something else
We are a very small mobile company (building an application for the iphone) and we are currently considering hosting services. We are currently leaning towards Amazon's hosting/web services. Accordingly, I have some questions:
1) Can I create an admin account on AWS and assign user accounts to developers that should have access to most (but not all) features.
2) Do we need to learn / use AWS APIs in the development of our product? I don't like the
idea of having to create hooks into a hosting service.
3) It looks like the pricing for AWS scales with usage. So, since we are in development and have only developers accessing the server right now, am I right that the cost will be quite low if anything?
4) How does AWS do version management? We have several developers scattered throughout the country. Each will need to checkout the the recent build from the server for development
on his local box. Basically, something like SVN. Is this possible?
5) I am guessing we need something like a dev, svn, and production server? Is this right? If so, how do I set this up and find out the associated costs?
6) We are considering a few database options, among them NoSQL and Neo4j - will we be able to do this using AWS? The server language will be Java.
Thanks for your time.
To answer your questions:
Yes, kind of. There is Identity and Access Management offered by AWS, but it's not the easiest solution to use. Having said that, it can allow you to lock down some of the access activities on an account so that you have some control over your users. I would say that AWS is still very much a single-user environment for server administrators.
You could get away using only the management console. Your use of scripting may only be required if you want to run batch or periodic activities (eg. take a snapshot of all machines at 2am every night).
Costs for EC2 are low, especially for the Micro machine sizes. But keep in mind that the idea of cloud computing is the availability of on-demand resources for short term use. If you run dev machines needlessly over night then you will still be paying! And if someone launches an Extra Large machine (or 30 machine instances) then you will suddenly find yourself with bigger bills than expected.
(5. and 6. as well) Amazon EC2 is really about issuing you the boxes. What you do thereafter is fully up to you. You can create snapshots daily of your machines, you can deploy SVN and noSQL etc. etc.
I've been seriously into EC2 for a while now, and lots of companies are starting to look at the idea you propose. There are benefits to giving staff on-demand compute power, without having to manage any infrastructure in-house. But I will re-iterate my first point that EC2 is very much a single-user, server administration environment, which doesn't lend itself to being used as a dev playground without additional tools. (Or at least it becomes a challenging task if you have several devs spread around in your company).
I own a business that helps companies use EC2 for dev/lab/playground type of environments. I won't directly flog it here, but will show a quick demo we just put on DropBox: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/16347737/RequestEC2Machines.html Feel free to request a machine to see how adding process to EC2 can help meet your goals.
I run/develop a website using Amazon EC2 & SimpleDB and I have some comments for you on your questions
Hi.
We are a very small mobile company (building an application for the iphone) and we are currently considering hosting services. We are currently leaning towards Amazon's hosting/web services. Accordingly, I have some questions:
1) Can I create an admin account on
AWS and assign user accounts to
developers that should have access to
most (but not all) features.
In my experience, there doesn't seem to be a direct correspondence between Amazon users and users on a single instance. An instance's root account is connected to the amazon account indirectly through a key pair. Although, I must say that I haven't explored this question in detail.
2) Do we need to learn / use AWS APIs in the development of our product? I don't like the > idea of having to create hooks into a hosting service.
I manage everything through their web console and Eclipse IDE plugins. I've never had to touch the API yet for development and deployment.
3) It looks like the pricing for AWS scales with usage. So, since we are in
development and have only developers accessing the server right now, am
I right that the cost will be quite low if anything?
Micro instances cost the lowest and the cost is pretty good if you're just starting an instance for a couple of hours and then stopping it. I never think twice about starting a micro instance to try out something new
4) How does AWS do version management? We have several developers
scattered throughout the country. Each will need to checkout the the recent
build from the server for development on his local box. Basically, something like SVN.
Is this possible?
I haven't seen this feature being offered directly by Amazon. You can of course keep an instance always on for your repository with backups
5) I am guessing we need something like a dev, svn, and production server?
Is this right? If so, how do I set this up and find out the associated costs?
EC Pricing - http://aws.amazon.com/ec2/pricing/
Amazon Simple Monthly Calculator - http://calculator.s3.amazonaws.com/calc5.html
6) We are considering a few database options, among them NoSQL and Neo4j -
will we be able to do this using AWS? The server language will be Java.
Amazon instances can be what you want them to be, hence you can either use a pre-configured ami to launch an instance or start off with a bare bones Ubuntu Server or Windows Server e.g. and build a system with what you want. You can then save the snapshot of that system to launch more in the future or to re-launch if your instance crashes