[HN Gopher] Show HN: I wrote a comprehensive book on web applica...
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Show HN: I wrote a comprehensive book on web application deployment
Author : strzibny
Score : 227 points
Date : 2021-12-13 16:05 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (deploymentfromscratch.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (deploymentfromscratch.com)
| password4321 wrote:
| Does it cover minimum viable Rails deployments?
|
| I want to know how to push only pre-configured dependencies
| without Docker. So no build tools in production, just pre-built
| binaries. (Specifically not building gems on the production
| server.)
| strzibny wrote:
| I cover what most people do which is either using build tools
| on a production server or building containers without them. I
| understand where you are coming from, but I don't talk
| _specifically_ about this.
|
| Basically you need to build your .so files beforehand and then
| copy them over. If you use the same system as your target you
| can just copy gems' files around.
|
| A good approach (which we did at Red Hat) is to repackage gems
| as RPMs and then install them as other system packages. But
| it's a lot of work. Fedora has a whole default Rails stack
| packaged, though.
| u-rate wrote:
| Hi Josef, the book looks super interesting! Do you offer discount
| for broke college students? :)
| strzibny wrote:
| Please DM me on Twitter https://twitter.com/strzibnyj
| vich wrote:
| I am just starting the process of migrating away from Heroku, so
| this is perfect timing. As a full stack dev, I've always done the
| bare minimum with deployment as I never found the process
| particularly enjoyable. In the past, I would always just copy-
| paste build configurations from past projects, or some online
| resources, and wouldn't spend much time digging into the details
| or really understanding the ins and outs of the build & deploy
| process.
|
| Needless to say, I'm looking forward to this book.
| strzibny wrote:
| Thank you! I think that understanding things better makes it
| more enjoyable, actually.
|
| If you'll have any feedback for me or questions down the line,
| just send me a DM.
| notyourday wrote:
| Really? Rails, Python, and co deployment needs a book?! This is a
| perfect illustration of the sad state of basic skills of
| developers.
|
| * Super old school. rsync over ssh. ssh to restart the process.
|
| * Old school. "cap production deploy"
|
| * New school. Build a container. Run it.
| burnished wrote:
| Sorry, the knowledge-pods of those under 40 were defective, we
| just weren't born knowing everything we needed to know (unlike
| previous generations).
| errcorrectcode wrote:
| Responding low with ageism isn't good. ):
|
| However, I will take all of your knowledge-pods. Resistance
| is futile. :)
| copperx wrote:
| I really like the way the book looks. Can you share details about
| how you wrote it / typesetted it?
| strzibny wrote:
| I started with Markdown and gitbook initially (the old version
| of gitbook), and then switched to Pandoc & XeLaTex engine with
| the mixture of Markdown and LaTex. I only did the "cat" and
| "ref" boxes in LaTex, everything else is Markdown.
|
| I also use some Ruby for preprocessing (when building other
| formats), previews, etc. Someone submitted my post on that to
| HN a while ago so there is some discussion here:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28594863
| mcguire wrote:
| Comprehensive?
|
| " _Deploy Ruby, Python, PostgreSQL, and Redis._ "
| strzibny wrote:
| Comprehensive means going from networking to configuring NGINX
| as a load balancer. And everything in-between.
|
| But to provide more value I chose certain language runtimes and
| databases, because writing only in general is not as useful and
| tangible. What it means is that a chapter on application
| servers goes through some options you want to look for, and
| after that discusses configuration of Puma and Gunicorn as
| examples.
|
| So if you are running Node.js, I don't have (currently)
| specific configuration directives listed, but you would know
| what to look for.
|
| I might add more to the current list, but obviously I can never
| cover everything.
| [deleted]
| __blockcipher__ wrote:
| This might just be paranoia but a couple of the early comments on
| this thread feel very astro-turfy. For example:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=vich (hasn't commented
| since aug 2020)
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=matthieuchabert (hasn't
| commented for 10 months)
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=vivty is slightly sketchy
| as well but not super cut and dry
| abc03 wrote:
| I bought the book but I haven't managed to go through it yet.
| What I can tell is that some real work went into the book. I
| don't intend to deploy things myself as I use Heroku and Cloud
| 66 but sometimes one still has to understand how things work.
| cyral wrote:
| I posted a personal project on reddit around a year ago that
| got highly upvoted and someone made a similar post with a bunch
| of "strange" comments that must be evidence of me astroturfing.
| I have to admit they were strange accounts, some who haven't
| commented in over a year, but I wasn't using any alt accounts
| or anything sketchy. Sometimes people just don't comment unless
| it's something they really like or are knowledgeable about, or
| maybe something else, I am not sure and couldn't explain it
| when it happened to me.
| nawgz wrote:
| Show HN has a major problem with that these days. The comments
| that are just like "perfect timing! I have never seen a
| resource for this and I'm just learning it now" are really
| facile, no one actually interacts with people selling you
| things like this, and it's contrasted starkly with the one
| comment giving feedback on the page which is that it has no
| content at all unless you buy it.
|
| I find it very hard to believe the ratio of happy purchasers
| already seeing value vs. questioners about what this really is
| being 5:1 or more. Sad to see.
| jaw wrote:
| > no one actually interacts with people selling you things
| like this
|
| There's a whole successful social network (Goodreads) built
| on people's desire to talk about books, frequently in the
| form of effusive praise. I think being able to trace the
| product to a single individual (e.g. a book's author) helps
| make it particularly appealing to leave that sort of
| feedback: we know it feels great to hear that someone values
| a thing you've created, and we like the idea of giving that
| pleasure to the creators of things we like.
| errcorrectcode wrote:
| I had the impression Goodreads was a link-farming
| book/warez site. Is it something real or apparent
| competing-with-the-Jones', Chef de Claque toxic positivity,
| whether human or bot?
| jaw wrote:
| I and many people I've met irl through book clubs etc use
| it; I find reading my friends' reviews interesting and
| I've gotten good recommendations through it.
|
| If you're just looking at the top reviews for a book it's
| more questionable; they tend toward the extremes:
| enraptured encomiums about how beautiful and important
| and bold the book is, or insult-laden rants where the
| book is a whipping post for the reviewer to show off what
| a biting sense of humor they have.
| strzibny wrote:
| I specifically waited with SHOW HN until I had some customers
| and good feedback hoping some of them hang out on HN as well.
|
| I swear nothing was solicited. I just posted it myself and
| waited. No Twitter, no mailing lists, nada.
| matthieuchabert wrote:
| I'm not a frequent contributor to HN (except when I build a
| product and want to show it on HN). I genuinely commented
| because I like the book and saw this thread on HN.
|
| I never talked to the author, I only follow him on Twitter.
| __blockcipher__ wrote:
| Thanks. I'm glad to know it's not what it appeared at first
| glance. And apologies if I drew any unwanted attention to
| your account.
| d4mi3n wrote:
| Aside: Is HN so fragile that it requires end-users to police
| anomalous activity? Given the age and influence of the platform
| I'd assume dang and co. who moderate and maintain the board are
| old hands at staying on top of manipulation of the platform.
|
| Could any mods comment on this? _Should_ we be keeping an eye
| out and calling out odd activity? It'd be nice to avoid posts
| like __blockcipher__'s; while well intentioned I could see such
| commentary having a chilling effect on discourse.
| __blockcipher__ wrote:
| Not sure if you saw it but another user pointed out that
| there's already a section in the guidelines about it:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29542871
|
| > Please don't post insinuations about astroturfing,
| shilling, brigading, foreign agents and the like. It degrades
| discussion and is usually mistaken. If you're worried about
| abuse, email hn@ycombinator.com and we'll look at the data.
|
| That guideline makes sense to me. I was previously unaware of
| it [the guideline] but the justification is sound, doubly so
| because it turned out the comments were genuine* :) My
| apologies.
|
| * Albeit at least one user presumably found the post via
| Twitter from following the author which is a little bit of a
| grey area
| d4mi3n wrote:
| I was unaware of it as well, thanks for calling it out. I
| don't think you were wrong to call out your suspicions, I
| was just unaware of what controls or processes were in
| place (if any) to prevent the need for users to police
| stuff.
| jmuguy wrote:
| I suppose if the author asked a few folks to leave positive
| comments on the post thats not too crazy. I'd do the same thing
| if I was trying to promote something. I think I'd draw the line
| at something more programmatic, like some gray hat creating
| sock puppet accounts.
| jrochkind1 wrote:
| The HN guidelines[1] say:
|
| > Don't solicit upvotes, comments, or submissions. Users
| should vote and comment when they run across something they
| personally find interesting--not for promotion.
|
| I believe that means that asking people to leave positive
| comments on a post is something the guidelines ask you not to
| do.
|
| But I would agree that, for instance, just posting on your
| social media "I posted this on HN, check out the comments" by
| itself should probably be fine, and might result in the same
| behavior, it's kind of a fuzzy line.
|
| Please don't actually ask people to leave positive comments
| though. Or post something that you hope people read-between-
| the-lines the same way.
|
| [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| powvans wrote:
| The same guidelines that you linked also say:
|
| > Please don't post insinuations about astroturfing,
| shilling, brigading, foreign agents and the like. It
| degrades discussion and is usually mistaken. If you're
| worried about abuse, email hn@ycombinator.com and we'll
| look at the data.
| jrochkind1 wrote:
| true!
| __blockcipher__ wrote:
| They should disclose that, though. Otherwise the feedback is
| indistinguishable from astroturfing.
|
| Pretty much everything about this guy rubs me the wrong way.
| The usual cheesy testimonials / vague promises of content
| which never really gets previewed, the obvious astroturfing,
| which he continues to respond to as if they're organic
| genuine comments, etc. Just leaves a really bad taste in my
| mouth.
| strzibny wrote:
| I am really sorry you feel that way. It's all pure feedback
| from people I don't know. All organic. And I am replying,
| because I promised I will be around for discussion.
|
| Testimonials, podcasts appearances, and comments here were
| _not_ solicited. People just did that on their own.
|
| Jeremy from Software Engineering Radio actually really
| bought the alpha version, and his invitation to the podcast
| was out of the blue. Jason didn't buy my book (I think) but
| wanted to talk about it. Juan sent me his testimonial
| himself. And I wasn't their friend beforehand either.
|
| > never really gets previewed
|
| I linked two previews, one is a full chapter. I also have
| like 8 readable screens of good quality on the book page.
| __blockcipher__ wrote:
| Thanks for the explanation. Sorry for the false alarm. My
| spidey senses started tingling but I should have held
| back a bit.
|
| As you mentioned, I was flat-out wrong about the
| previews. Not sure if I scrolled straight past that
| section or what.
|
| Wishing you the best with your book. And FWIW I like the
| bash-based approach; I agree with the philosophy of
| peeling away the abstraction layers.
| strzibny wrote:
| No problem, I know where you are coming from. I regularly
| get spammed with "we are not PH" and "we are on HN" posts
| from people I don't even know, and the hard truth is that
| for lot of these "marketers" it actually works in the
| end.
|
| Thank you!
| simonebrunozzi wrote:
| Thanks for your straightforward reply.
|
| The comments could have been seen as odd, but your
| openness suggests it was just a coincidence.
|
| Also, congrats on writing a full book!
| strzibny wrote:
| Thank you!
| lmarcos wrote:
| On the other side, I find your comment, and all the other
| comments that originated from yours, very distracting to
| the point that I didn't care anymore about the book itself
| but only about writing this (annoying and distracting)
| comment.
| [deleted]
| alexanderjchun wrote:
| This is why I never look at the comments on ProductHunt.
| strzibny wrote:
| Hi, I haven't asked anybody. But I did wait with SHOW HN
| until I sold something and had good reviews and feedback.
| msie wrote:
| I wished there was coverage of Apache http but otherwise a very
| interesting book!
| strzibny wrote:
| I chose NGINX because it's what I use and have a good
| performance. I am curious, why are you interested in Apache in
| particular? Is that what you run now?
| msie wrote:
| My organization only uses Apache because everyone there knows
| it.
| strzibny wrote:
| Got it, thanks.
| pelagicAustral wrote:
| Looks very promising OP. As a Rails developer I've been looking
| for something like this for a while. I'm getting a copy soon as
| hit my pad later on.
| strzibny wrote:
| Thanks a lot!
| pelagicAustral wrote:
| Done! thank you very much for this resource.
| M4R5H4LL wrote:
| Page red flagged and blocked by BitDefender.
| strzibny wrote:
| Oh shoot. It's just a static page hosted on Netlify, wonder why
| is that.
| nefitty wrote:
| Is that in the book?
| strzibny wrote:
| I don't use Bitdefender. I think it has some issue with how
| Netlify delivers content (sesing other Netlify issue with
| it). Likely a false positive, though.
| nefitty wrote:
| Cool. Hopefully I didn't come off as mocking. I should
| have clarified that I meant that general type of false-
| positive flagging problem. I favorited the post if that
| tells you anything lol
|
| I'm excited to dive in!
| strzibny wrote:
| Actually it was a good joke, I laughed reading it.
|
| And thanks!
| wrycoder wrote:
| I'd be interested in knowing the reason, once you find it.
| Thanks for the book!
| M4R5H4LL wrote:
| No specifics - just got this page
|
| Web Protection by Bitdefender Dangerous page blocked for
| your protection https://deploymentfromscratch.com/
| Dangerous pages attempt to install software that can harm
| the device, gather personal information or operate without
| your consent.
|
| TAKE ME BACK TO SAFETY I understand the risks, take me
| there anyway If you know this page is not dangerous, you
| can add it to your Exceptions list. Be aware that you will
| not be warned about any threats existing on this pag
| jalino23 wrote:
| deployment is always the one Ive struggled with. there so much
| tutorial about building a webapp and almost always all of them
| assumes you can deploy. and I could not find dedicated resources
| for deployment. thank you so much for this!
| strzibny wrote:
| I actually think there are many resources online, but nothing
| that takes you from the beginning to the end. So unless you
| know what to search for, you won't find it.
|
| This is especially true for security. How do you know things
| are secure once your deployment works?
| matthieuchabert wrote:
| I'm currently reading this book and I am very impressed by the
| work done by the author.
|
| It goes in depth on many subjects like provisioning,
| configuration and deployment. For a beginner like me it's
| perfect.
|
| Highly recommend for web developers who wants to understand
| better how a server works under the hood and how to deploy it.
| strzibny wrote:
| Thanks a lot for your kind words :). DM me if you hit any
| roadblocks!
| benburton wrote:
| I'd love to give this a read from someone with a lot of
| experience in the source material, but given a $50 pricetag for a
| book I don't need to read I'm not into it. Who are your editors?
| strzibny wrote:
| Hi fellow readers of HN,
|
| I am Josef, a full-stack developer, a formal Ruby Linux packager
| at Red Hat, and an author of Deployment from Scratch (which is
| this post about!).
|
| After working at Red Hat and technically leading a start-up (of
| which I was the primary production engineer), I decided to write
| down a resource I felt was missing on the market:
|
| A book that gives you the confidence to deploy your first
| application focused on fundamental, transferable, and long-
| lasting skills rather than tools of the day:
|
| * You'll learn about networking, Linux, systemd, deployment
| strategies, web servers, application servers, databases, and
| containers.
|
| * You'll be able to deploy Rails or Django applications (or
| anything really) together with production PostgreSQL and Redis
| databases. All automated with just a few lines of Bash.
|
| What's unique about this book:
|
| * It's a comprehensive book where things are designed to work
| together. I take readers from general networking knowledge to
| databases and containers. It's for beginners, but I am not
| skipping anything, not even SELinux.
|
| * There are no abstractions, just Bash. I believe in learning the
| actual thing rather than an abstraction. Abstractions are great
| once you know what they are abstracting.
|
| * Everything is done on Enterprise Linux with full SELinux
| support. While I have happy readers using Ubuntu, I thought the
| market doesn't have a good CentOS/Rocky/RHEL book.
|
| There are three scripted demonstrations, cheatsheets, and a
| security checklist, apart from the book content. The
| demonstrations include:
|
| * A git-push deployment of a database-backed Ruby on Rails
| application with Encrypted Credentials and Action Cable
|
| * A self-sufficient PostgreSQL cluster with automatic system
| upgrades, log rotation, and TLS
|
| With these demonstrations, you can be up and running quickly and
| also save a lot of money on Heroku :)
|
| Stats so far:
|
| * Took me more than 3 years to write (1+ year of fulltime
| billable time)
|
| * Built a mailing list of more than 600 interested people
|
| * Sold 366 copies
|
| * 22 readers gave the book 5-star rating
|
| The table of contents and the first small chapter:
| https://deploymentfromscratch.com/previews/intro.pdf
|
| A special SHOW HN preview of the Web Servers chapter:
| https://deploymentfromscratch.com/previews/show_hn_preview.p...
|
| Buy on Gumroad: https://gum.co/deploymentfromscratch
|
| I am around to answer any questions.
|
| Josef
|
| p.s. You can use "showhn" discount code at checkout for 20% off
| as a thank you to this community that put my posts several times
| on the HN frontpage ;)
| anonymous532 wrote:
| Not interested in this book, but maybe you find my opinion of
| any value:
|
| Your website comes off as hustle to get money without content:
|
| * The first section where you describe your product, you avoid
| all that the product is, making me think you don't actually
| have content which you want to show off(the book image is
| digital with no mention of it being an ebook, the description
| is about me and tehnologies, no preview, no list of concrete
| things I learn)
|
| * In the next section you continue marketing a dream instead of
| the actual content, then you sell reviews, a story and others'
| opinion. Again, I conclude that you don't want me to form my
| own opinion of potentially bad content.
|
| * "What I'll get" is meta content, things I should see after
| being sold the content. At that point I clicked off the website
| thinking it's a scam.
|
| Before commenting this I went one more time to make sure I
| didn't miss anything and discovered that you actually do have
| chapters content and preview, just past the point where I
| clicked off.
| rmbyrro wrote:
| I happened to have a quite different view.
|
| It was clear to me the content I was supposed to get.
|
| The only reason I didn't purchase is because the value
| proposition "save time managing your own side-project/startup
| deployment" is not smart, to me at least.
|
| I decided to pay and outsource most of these things away in
| order to focus on differentiating software, marketing/sales
| and peace of mind.
|
| Edit: I also think the "start a career in SRE" is quite a
| long stretch.
| strzibny wrote:
| Thanks for your feedback.
|
| > the value proposition "save time managing your own side-
| project/startup deployment" is not smart
|
| I would say it's not right for all. But it's 100% true
| (from my readers) that people learn self-hosting to cut
| costs. That part of the page targets these people.
|
| > I decided to pay and outsource most of these things away
| in order to focus on differentiating software,
| marketing/sales and peace of mind
|
| I want to say that the saving angle is only one of the
| reasons pointed out. If you want to know how things work
| and don't care about saving, it's still worth to learn it.
|
| I think you are not the target audience, though, since you
| want to focus on other aspects of the business which you
| probably enjoy more. :)
|
| > I also think the "start a career in SRE" is quite a long
| stretch
|
| The book shows you lot of Linux content you can find in
| RHCSA and RHCE exams. If you would really learn what's in
| it, you can be hired on spot for a junior role.
| rmbyrro wrote:
| Those are fair points, I agree this is subjective. That's
| why I said _" to me at least"_.
|
| I've done this kind of work in the past and would
| certainly enjoy learning more. Your book was inviting. I
| just won't have the time at this moment. Need to focus
| elsewhere, as I said.
|
| When thinking about business, the initial scale is quite
| small and managed services are cheap (and a variable
| cost) compared to the time I'd spend on self-managed
| (high upfront, fixed cost).
| strzibny wrote:
| Thanks a lot for your feedback. Happy you found the time to
| write it.
|
| I agree I should clarify it's an ebook sooner in text. And I
| want to redo the chapters. But I get a lot of conflicting
| feedback so hard to know what's right.
|
| The page has a good conversion, though. So something is
| working.
| RomanPushkin wrote:
| I'd recommend educative platform for your book (as a course).
|
| I wrote my own book about Ruby for beginners
| https://leanpub.com/rubyisforfun, and converted it to a course,
| which is quite fun https://www.educative.io/courses/handbook-
| ruby-developers
|
| Released 1-2 weeks ago, but it looks to me like a promising
| future - the new format of books that are more interactive.
| Website allows to run snippets, do interactive assessments, and
| so on.
|
| The reading and learning is much more convenient.
| strzibny wrote:
| Thanks for the tip. I am thinking about a course, but spent
| so much time on the book I unsure if I could make it in a
| reasonable time :)
| no_circuit wrote:
| Based on the table of contents and the preview pages it looks
| like it has some pretty good content. Made me think of "the
| missing manual" book series.
|
| I just don't think small startups or side-projects should spend
| so much time getting all the configuration and moving parts
| right compared to just Docker+Terraform+(IaaS of choice). Then
| if one is on a tight budget, then just run Docker Compose on a
| single host, or run on a computer at home being proxied by
| Cloudflare free account. If able to spend more, then use the
| IaaS managed services like for containers and databases.
|
| I guess I feel that setting people up to deploy with bespoke
| Bash scripts is borderline irresponsible since they won't be
| easily, or automatically, updated in case there are any other
| issues, unlike something like Terraform. I can't tell that
| easily however because there is no architectural diagram to
| help understand what the book leads up to as how one should
| deploy things.
|
| However it seems more like it would be a better guide as "Linux
| Servers from Scratch"? That would be something which would be
| good reading for someone new to tech. Before moving onto higher
| abstractions. Or being used as the from scratch guide on how to
| customize container images by more experienced programmers, but
| those missing the Linux admin fundamentals.
| rmbyrro wrote:
| > I just don't think small startups or side-projects should
| spend so much time getting all the configuration and moving
| parts right compared to just Docker+Terraform+(IaaS of
| choice).
|
| Hype aside, I'd add serverless. One can build a lot of stuff
| with very little hassle on top of AWS Lambda, API Gateway,
| DynamoDB and S3.
| strzibny wrote:
| I really believe that what I put into the book should be a
| knowledge a person deploying production application should
| have.
|
| > I just don't think small startups or side-projects should
| spend so much time getting all the configuration and moving
| parts right compared to just Docker+Terraform+(IaaS of
| choice).
|
| It's the opposite actually! I show you how to avoid a lot of
| indirection and have a deploy script in 200 lines of Bash
| that you understand in an afternoon.
|
| If you choose to use Docker, I have a full chapter of
| building containers, doing Docker networking, running
| containers with the Docker engine or with Podman like any
| other systemd service.
|
| You can then write a small Bash script to install Docker and
| deploy your container or write an abstraction in a tool like
| Ansible. That's your choice and I think I present good
| arguments for both.
|
| > deploy with bespoke Bash scripts is borderline
| irresponsible
|
| Only like 5% of the book spends time talking about how to
| glue everything with Bash. Most is networking, permissions,
| configuration. The idea is to see how things are done with
| the most basic building block which is a shell.
|
| The thing is shell code is how you interact with your
| operating system unless you are using C API. It's what most
| deployment tools use under the hood, not to mention that many
| tools are basically Bash (ruby-install, chruby) or based
| around executing it (Dockerfile).
|
| > However it seems more like it would be a better guide as
| "Linux Servers from Scratch"?
|
| I already renamed the book twice :). Not anymore, please ;).
| Most people actually told me they don't care for the name at
| all. Yes, there is a lot of Linux, but I named it after the
| intent. The intent is to deploy at the end. The fact that
| most of the deployment is configuration is implementation
| detail.
| no_circuit wrote:
| Fair enough. :-) Like I said, my impression is that the
| content seems good! What I can't tell, without reading it,
| is what the end state of the dev/ops architecture would be
| along with its maintenance requirements, to understand if
| it would be a good complete resource to refer to beginners
| in tech I can't assist myself.
| pezzana wrote:
| > Took me more than 3 years to write (1+ year of fulltime
| billable time)
|
| It shows - very polished. Have you described your process for
| writing the book anywhere? Given the quality of the landing
| page and samples, I'd also be interested in that.
| padthai wrote:
| I am working through the book right now. It touches a lot of
| things, albeit superficially, to get you up and running. I have
| done plenty of deployments in the past so I do not need half of
| the book, but it has been helpful to put into context holes in my
| education (SELinux, Systemd, firewalls, etc.)
|
| @strzibny, it would be great if you can put some curated links or
| references at the end of the book so the reader know where to go
| if they want to go deeper in that particular topic. It would
| really improve the value that some of us get from the book.
| strzibny wrote:
| Thanks a lot for your review. I'll think about it. Is there a
| topic/chapter specifically you want to dive deeper?
| sireat wrote:
| From the testimonial on the page:
|
| 4 CPU cores, 16 GB of RAM, and automated backups for barely EUR15
| a month.
|
| Where can you get a VPS for so cheap, I do not think even Hetzner
| goes that low?
| juanse wrote:
| I wrote that, and I did it without being paid or having any
| affiliation. Just a happy customer.
|
| This is the service I use: https://www.netcup.eu, and by the
| way I recommended it too.
| dewey wrote:
| OVH/Kimsufi: KS-4 - https://www.kimsufi.com/en/servers.xml
| vivty wrote:
| As someone new to deployment this book was a great read. I learnt
| a breadth of new techniques (ssh, security (e.g. fail2ban,
| selinux, permissions), bash commands, dns and configuration of a
| vps) and i also liked, that the author gave advice on which tools
| could be helpful (e.g. Ansible).
|
| The book however does not go into detail on these tools (ansible,
| terraform), its goal is to teach the basics of deploying an app
| on a linux vps.
| strzibny wrote:
| Thanks for a nice review. The book is already long as it is, so
| I only provide some general ideas behind these tools. The path
| forward might be very different from person to person. Some
| will want to convert the Bash code to Ansible and some are
| already running Kubernetes clusters at work :)
| caffeine wrote:
| Book looks like it would have been very useful when starting out!
| I had to glean this information by watching more experienced devs
| and then bumping through different tutorials, and some of it
| (like security) is still hard to come by.
| kingcharles wrote:
| What is a good alternative to this book for Windows / ASP.NET /
| Azure?
|
| (don't judge me!)
| strzibny wrote:
| Do people actually deploy on Windows?
|
| (It's a joke, but as a Red Hat guy I yet have to see it in real
| life to believe it.)
|
| My last Windows was XP, but I actually use Azure at work right
| now. If you want to mostly do cloudy things (use clouds for
| more than simple VMs), you might want to look into
| certifications[0].
|
| [0] https://docs.microsoft.com/en-
| us/learn/certifications/browse...
| turtlebits wrote:
| For a book on deployment, I feel there is too much content on
| setting up a server. Would have like to see pros and cons of
| differing ways to deploy.
|
| Also, for taking apps to production, there should definitely be a
| part on high availability.
| strzibny wrote:
| I talk about some of it (like push vs pull approach to server
| configuration, containers or not, single server or not), but
| most likely not to the extend you are probably thinking of.
|
| As for high availability I discuss whether it's worth it or not
| in the Scaling chapter. I also show how to use NGINX as a load
| balancer. I currently don't have HA content written for PG and
| Redis, but there are planned (as a free update).
| errcorrectcode wrote:
| Nginx, in 2021, really?
|
| Envoy stomps it.
|
| https://www.loggly.com/blog/benchmarking-5-popular-load-
| bala...
|
| Also, what about caching, a-la at the top varnish,
| redis/memcache in the middle, and database tuning in the BE?
| e12e wrote:
| Interesting about the total requests, but the article does
| not test.. balancing load? In a perfect world, 1 lb in
| front of 4 app servers should be able to serve 4x the
| requests as 1 lb in front of 1 app server.
|
| So I'd imagine 4x nginx back-end servers, and a baseline
| hitting 1 nginx directly?
|
| That, and the fact that the nginx config is shorter, and
| the performance not terrible (though terrible next to envoy
| in this test admittedly) - does mean nginx shouldn't be
| ruled out.
| errcorrectcode wrote:
| Without addressing deployment canaries, exponential
| deployments, exponential rollbacks, traffic steering, API load
| duplication to staging, IaaS/PaaS, 12factor apps, HA, scaling,
| fault injection, hot backups, cold (and tested) backups,
| DR/BCP, configuration management, CI/CD, monitoring,
| troubleshooting the entire stack, and SLAs, it doesn't seem to
| me like a professional-enough treatment to celebrate.
| andkon wrote:
| Also it would be nice if this book could do all the deploying
| for me.
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