[HN Gopher] MRSK vs. Fly.io
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       MRSK vs. Fly.io
        
       Author : tortilla
       Score  : 128 points
       Date   : 2023-03-22 16:56 UTC (6 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (fly.io)
 (TXT) w3m dump (fly.io)
        
       | ofrzeta wrote:
       | I'd really like something like platform.sh as open source. I'd be
       | willing to contribute as well :)
        
         | hankmh wrote:
         | Have you checked out Dokku [0] or others like it?
         | 
         | If so, what do you perceive as the gaps between Dokku and
         | Platform.sh? I ask as an employee of a PaaS (not Platform.sh).
         | So I'm curious for discovery and learning.
         | 
         | [0] https://dokku.com/
        
           | ofrzeta wrote:
           | I tried it once and concluded it wasn't good enough but I
           | don't remember the specific gaps. Now that I browse the docs
           | it actually looks quite powerful, so I guess I will have to
           | take another look.
           | 
           | Other contenders are CapRover and Coolify that I just
           | recently got to know here.
           | 
           | I guess it would make more sense to contribute to one of
           | these projects than start a new project.
           | 
           | What PaaS are you working at?
        
             | hankmh wrote:
             | I work at Aptible. We've been around for about 10 years,
             | have about 300 customers, all companies that prioritize
             | reliability, scalability, and security. Many are late stage
             | startups/recently minted unicorns....but nobody has really
             | heard of us.
             | 
             | If you want I can hook you up with an extended trial,
             | beyond what's offered on the website. I'd love your
             | feedback. We aren't open source, though we have considered
             | it. Maybe your feedback can help push us over the edge. My
             | email is henry AT aptible.com.
             | 
             | Same offer goes to anyone here. Feedback would be really
             | valuable to me personally.
        
       | chrisweekly wrote:
       | "vs." (versus) is misleading; TLDR Fly.io likes and claims
       | alignment with MRSK, which is 37signals/DHH's new mechanism for
       | managing dockerized apps with a strong "get off the cloud, run it
       | locally" story.
        
         | dcre wrote:
         | Second half is a comparison!
        
         | stingraycharles wrote:
         | Yeah they're completely and totally different things. Fly.io is
         | actually hosting servers / services, while MRSK is basically a
         | bunch of scripts to deploy things using Docker containers.
         | 
         | It's like comparing AWS with Chef. Maybe there's some overlap
         | in philosophy, but that's about it. Maybe fly.io is just using
         | it as a way to do a bit of marketing.
        
           | [deleted]
        
         | sergiotapia wrote:
         | Seems like Fly is trying to borrow some thunder here haha
        
       | 1ba9115454 wrote:
       | I'm surprised 37signals built MSRK as an alternative to
       | Kubernetes.
       | 
       | They stated 2 reasons.
       | 
       | Deployments to K8s are slow.
       | 
       | K8s is hard to setup on bare metal.
        
         | Thaxll wrote:
         | Such a terrible idea, let's build something that everyone else
         | has a solution for, we're on our own with our custom solutions
         | that no one else know or use.
         | 
         | We'll see how many years it will take them to come back to
         | Kubernetes or equivalent.
         | 
         | And the argument k8s is too complicated so build our own looks
         | really bad from an engineering perspective.
         | 
         | When you look at the issues:
         | https://github.com/mrsked/mrsk/issues/44 you can some see
         | trivial shortcoming that has been solved for years by other
         | solutions.
        
           | throwaway110535 wrote:
           | Same could've been said for Rails...
        
             | mbreese wrote:
             | Honestly, the same could have been said about K8s when it
             | was started too.
             | 
             | There's nothing wrong with multiple projects in a space.
             | It's a big market with different niches.
        
           | firemelt wrote:
           | As an engineer reading this makes me feel ashamed
        
           | davedx wrote:
           | Kubernetes is terrible, I hate it with a passion, and welcome
           | any alternatives that reduce the complexity (as it the stated
           | vision of MRSK)
        
             | growse wrote:
             | Which bit, the APIs or the implementation?
        
           | datadeft wrote:
           | And use IP addresses like it was 1999 again. Your IP
           | addresses belong to exactly one location, the DNS server's
           | config. Using a non-type safe configuration language is also
           | meh. I am not sure why most people are unaware of Dhall...
        
             | nine_k wrote:
             | Dhall lacks a killer app that would use it. (Write one!)
        
         | datadeft wrote:
         | After they argued that k8s is better than AWS.
         | 
         | -\\_(tsu)_/-
        
           | pc86 wrote:
           | Just because something is hard to use and slow doesn't mean
           | it's worse than AWS.
        
           | lobstrosity420 wrote:
           | How would you say that both statements can't be true at the
           | same time?
        
             | datadeft wrote:
             | Sure they can.
             | 
             | I was just watching the video DHH put online about this new
             | project and it was quite good seeing copy pasting IP
             | addresses to YAML files still excites some people or think
             | that this is somehow on par with a serverless offering to
             | any cloud company.
        
         | akvadrako wrote:
         | Deploys with k8s are faster than most of the competition. When
         | your process is optimized you can expect to go from code change
         | to updated UI in about 5 seconds.
        
         | maxmcd wrote:
         | I believe 37Signals is replacing their Capistrano-based deploy
         | for Basecamp with MSRK. It seems they're keeping their k8s
         | deploy setup for Hey. (Just what I'm inferring from the first
         | two paragraphs here: https://world.hey.com/dhh/introducing-
         | mrsk-9330a267)
        
           | mdasen wrote:
           | The third paragraph ends: "With MRSK, we can deploy a new
           | version of HEY in as little as 20 seconds."
           | 
           | They didn't say that they're replacing their k8s setup for
           | Hey explicitly, but they go on to say the reason they wrote
           | MRSK is that they like the advantages of containers while
           | getting lower complexity and being able to use their bare
           | metal hardware. It seems like they want to go in that
           | direction.
        
             | davedx wrote:
             | He said it in the YouTube video he made. They explicitly
             | estimate they're going to save 7M/year moving Hey to MRSK
        
             | FridgeSeal wrote:
             | Azure, AWS (and I therefore assume GCP) now have K8s
             | products where can BYO own compute, and they'll manage
             | everything else. Best of both worlds, no?
        
       | bkazez wrote:
       | I recently migrated a small Rails project (16,000 monthly users)
       | from Heroku to Helm/Kubernetes, after having tried Fly.io and
       | everything else. It was easy, and I like the peace of mind of
       | zero-downtime deploys and non-beta infrastructure. Cost is
       | comparable to Heroku.
       | 
       | My writeup, in case it helps others:
       | https://www.vmii.org/blog/2023/03/12/kubernetes/
        
         | number6 wrote:
         | Thanks for your writeup I am thinking of moving our Django Apps
         | to kubernetes
        
       | rozenmd wrote:
       | I wish there was something like MRSK for deploying generic
       | Dockerfiles onto VMs from scratch, without the mess of Kubernetes
       | or needing to use Rails.
       | 
       | Like, provision Hetzner -> pass the IP address to the tool + a
       | Dockerfile -> your image Just Works on the server and restarts if
       | it crashes.
        
         | jordemort wrote:
         | I think this is what MRSK is? There's no Kubernetes. It even
         | installs Docker for you.
        
         | andrewmutz wrote:
         | I don't think you need to use rails to use MRSK
        
         | nwienert wrote:
         | Docker Swarm is very underrated, more for multiple apps but you
         | can of course just have one.
        
         | jahsome wrote:
         | I may be ignorant but doesn't that scenario you described
         | encapsulate how MRSK functions?
         | 
         | From the MRSK readme[1]:                   Connect to the
         | servers over SSH (using root by default, authenticated by your
         | ssh key)         Install Docker on any server that might be
         | missing it (using apt-get)         Log into the registry both
         | locally and remotely         Build the image using the standard
         | Dockerfile in the root of the application.         Push the
         | image to the registry.         Pull the image from the registry
         | onto the servers.         Ensure Traefik is running and
         | accepting traffic on port 80.         Ensure your app responds
         | with 200 OK to GET /up.         Start a new container with the
         | version of the app that matches the current git version hash.
         | Stop the old container running the previous version of the app.
         | Prune unused images and stopped containers to ensure servers
         | don't fill up.
         | 
         | ---
         | 
         | 1. https://github.com/mrsked/mrsk#readme
        
       | ofrzeta wrote:
       | Wow, the MRSK homepage is truly Web 1.0: https://mrsk.dev/
        
         | paxys wrote:
         | I don't care about the lack of design frills on a webpage (in
         | most cases it is preferable), but having to make sense of a
         | wall of text stretching from edge to edge of a 4K screen is
         | where I draw the line. Adding one line of CSS to set more
         | readable column widths should be the bare minimum.
        
           | jrockway wrote:
           | Why should the designer pick how wide you want the text? You
           | are the one who knows what you like, and you can resize the
           | browser window.
        
             | quest88 wrote:
             | Why should the designer design. Brilliant.
        
         | steve1977 wrote:
         | I haven't seen a website load so fast in a while.
        
       | kungfufrog wrote:
       | Couldn't something like this be a few hundred lines of Ansible?
       | Not trying to be intentionally negative but I don't really get
       | the use case as I feel this is a pretty well established process
       | by existing tools for server automation and provisioning.
        
         | intelVISA wrote:
         | Yeah not sure I see the value prop here it's just run of the
         | mill Docker glue?
        
         | nine_k wrote:
         | Ansible is Python, and MRSK is Ruby. Each appeals to their own
         | ecosystem; switching between the two is a noticeable cognitive
         | load.
         | 
         | Also, it _could_ be implemented using Ansible, but it _has
         | been_ implemented in MRSK. A serious difference if you plan to
         | count on someone to keep it updated and supported.
        
       | dzonga wrote:
       | something to note DHH is a beast. MSRK seems most of MSRK was
       | written by him alone -
       | https://github.com/mrsked/mrsk/commits/main?after=83dc82661b...
       | 
       | his output is crazy. that's why he gets the big bucks
        
         | [deleted]
        
         | tiffanyh wrote:
         | I think what's more shocking is they were still using
         | Capistrano for the past ~17 years.
         | 
         | https://world.hey.com/dhh/introducing-mrsk-9330a267
        
       | nathants wrote:
       | (movie trailer voice)
       | 
       | in a world where backend is a single binary and frontend is a
       | single html file...
       | 
       | who needs containers or complicated devops?
        
       | pictur wrote:
       | Marketing is truly an art. Although there are thousands of
       | projects on this subject, the man can share wonderfully as if he
       | has discovered something new. I appreciate.
        
         | chuankl wrote:
         | I am new to these kinds of lightweight low-complexity
         | deployment systems. Can you point me to a few other good
         | projects? Thanks!
        
           | endisneigh wrote:
           | Docker swarm, nomad
        
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       (page generated 2023-03-22 23:00 UTC)