Cloud Computing for Barcamp NOLA 2009

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 2

Ideas to Make $$ 3

What is Cloud Computing? 4

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 5

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: 6

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. 7

Benefits of the Cloud  Application Building blocks  Stable APIs  Proven Infrastructures  Low cost of entry  No long term commitment 8

Options other than the Cloud  Cheap / Budget host  GoDaddy, HostGator, WebHostGiant, etc...  Dedicated hardware  Colocation  Hosting on your own hardware / internet agreements 9

Discussing Three Clouds  Amazon Web Services  Google App Engine  The Rackspace Cloud / Slicehost  Many More Citrix, Google Apps, IBM, Microsoft, Sun, Zoho 10

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... 11

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 12

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 13

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 14

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 15

Google App Engine  Bonuses  Automatic scaling  Using the same infrastructure Google uses 16

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 17

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 18

Rackspace / Slicehost Rates 19

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 20

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) 21

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 22

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 23

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 24

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 25

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 26

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 27

Thanks for Coming! Steven Evatt Email: steven@evatt.com Site: PriceChirp.com Blog: www.evatt.com/blog Twitter: @sevatt 28

Cloud Computing for Barcamp NOLA 2009

by Steven Evatt

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