Cloud Computing and Startups
Case Study: PriceChirp.com
Steven Evatt
Blog: http://www.evatt.com/blog
Web: http://PriceChirp.com
Twitter: @sevatt
NOLA Barcamp 2009

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  CMS
 Ruby on Rails (Ruby)  Drupal (PHP)
 Sinatra (Ruby)  Joomla (PHP)
 Django (Python)  Wordpress (PHP)
 Zend (PHP)  MovableType (Perl)
 Cake (PHP)
 Catalyst (Perl)
 CodeIgniter (PHP)
 Symphony (PHP)
 Plone (Zope)
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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, photo
galleries, 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
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