[Twisted-Python] Twisted Hosting and Twisted in the Cloud
Hey everyone, Divmod's been talking to various hosting companies about potential Twisted deals (and maybe even support). I wanted to get a gauge of people's level of interest in the services we've been discussing. We're currently looking at the following options: * Dedicated hosts, with Twisted libs pre-installed on them * Virtual hosts/"slices" with Twisted libs pre-installed on them * Clouds that support uploading and running Twisted apps * Potential support contracts where Divmod engineers provide high-level assistance for paying customers * Becoming a reseller and offering these services directly through Divmod I've been approached privately by a few developers who use Twisted in their projects at home and at work with questions about Twisted hosting. They've been interested to know if 1) Divmod does Twisted hosting, 2) anyone provides "out of the box" support for Twisted, and 3) who we recommend. I know that as the years pass, I have less and less time to manage my own systems responsibly. After 6 years, I'm closing down my colocated boxes. When Twisted makes it to the cloud, I'll close down my virtual hosts, too. I just don't have the time any more. All I need is reliable uptime for my apps (most of them are just sites with dynamic content). How many others on these lists feel that they would benefit from the ease of pre-installed Twisted and/or support for Twisted apps in the cloud? If you do, what kinds of apps (that you are currently running) do you want to be able to run in such environments? Simple web sites? DNS servers? Game servers? Chat applications? Web/data services apps? And lastly, what hosting companies are your favorites? Where would you be happiest, if they supported Twisted? Would you consider switching to a hosting provider that *did* support Twisted? Looking forward to hearing the people speak, d
My primary use of Twisted is as a web application server behind a reverse proxy. Personally, I would love to see some Amazon EC2 images with Twisted pre-installed. If there were some *paid* EC2 images availble right now that had an Nginx -> HAProxy -> Twisted app server (meaning Twisted pre-installed and ready to go) stack on it, I would definitely use it, simply because I'm going to have to set that up for myself pretty soon and I am neither a Linux nor an EC2 expert (I have so far only used existing vanilla AMIs for testing/development). I probably wouldn't pay much for it, maybe 1 or 2 cents per hour -- but that's still about $7.20 or $14.40 per month, per server, in perpetuity, for whoever set up that kind of AMI. If someone created some slick managament tools/UI, or if some organization wanted to provide professional support not only for Twisted but for the whole stack/virtual box, I'd pay considerably more. Aside from EC2, I don't have any interest, i.e., unless something changes I don't intend to ever run a web application on anything other than EC2 infrastructure ever again. The mere pre-installation of Twisted, even with ongoing professional support, on some other hosting provider's infrastructure wouldn't come close to tempting me to use that provider instead of EC2.
Cloud support would be nice. I have a twisted app(a web service to implement a game server for Second Life) that is likely to have a rough scaling curve with bursty usage. Atm I'm running it on a dedicated virtual box with plans to go to EC2 and then multiple EC2s, but a single cloud instance would be better. I've already got a decoupled permanent datastore which interfaces to SDB for a cloud should work from that angle too. What would twisted look like on a cloud? Would the main reactor still be single threaded with threads being distributed or would we have to rearchitect for multiple main reactors by port or path? Andy Fundinger On Mon, Jun 30, 2008 at 8:11 AM, Curt <curtferguson@cfl.rr.com> wrote:
Duncan McGreggor wrote:
How many others on these lists feel that they would benefit from the ease of pre-installed Twisted and/or support for Twisted apps in the cloud?
Might be great for some folks, twisted is really easy to install, cloud support would be very nice.
If you do, what kinds of apps (that you are currently running) do you want to be able to run in such environments? Simple web sites? DNS servers? Game servers? Chat applications? Web/data services apps?
The main project I'm working on is a bit of all of the above. A game with chat, web interfaces for various things, also a custom client is in the works. Still in very early development right now so I'm hosting it privately, when it goes public I'll definitely be looking for something.
And lastly, what hosting companies are your favorites? Where would you be happiest, if they supported Twisted? Would you consider switching to a hosting provider that *did* support Twisted?
Personally I *really* like Slicehost. www.slicehost.com I'm sure everyone has their favorite though.
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On Wed, Jul 2, 2008 at 10:50 AM, Andy Fundinger <Andy@newworldelectric.com> wrote:
Cloud support would be nice. I have a twisted app(a web service to implement a game server for Second Life) that is likely to have a rough scaling curve with bursty usage. Atm I'm running it on a dedicated virtual box with plans to go to EC2 and then multiple EC2s, but a single cloud instance would be better. I've already got a decoupled permanent datastore which interfaces to SDB for a cloud should work from that angle too.
What would twisted look like on a cloud? Would the main reactor still be single threaded with threads being distributed or would we have to rearchitect for multiple main reactors by port or path?
Hey Andy, I never replied to your question. We've been discussing several ways in which this would be done, and so far none of them would require application developers to do anything too radical. By definition, if you are moving to a new architecture, something needs to be re-architected :-) One solution that we've prototyped simply involves creating a small "model" object and passing it to a new service. In that instance there is very little that a developer would have to do. With support for things like auto-discovery and messaging, even that step might (in many cases) go away and you'd just have to instantiate a particular service. d
So the model's base or metaclass would handle synchronization and the rest of the app would have to be effectively stateless with the cloud handling routing and instantiation inherently? That would work but be a big step form the way I'm working today where my model handles permanent storage and my resource instances handle non-persistent game data internally. Do you have a mailing list or wiki where you're laying out ideas? I'd be interested to join in on that. - Andy On Tue, Jul 8, 2008 at 2:35 PM, Duncan McGreggor <duncan.mcgreggor@gmail.com> wrote:
On Wed, Jul 2, 2008 at 10:50 AM, Andy Fundinger <Andy@newworldelectric.com> wrote:
Cloud support would be nice. I have a twisted app(a web service to implement a game server for Second Life) that is likely to have a rough scaling curve with bursty usage. Atm I'm running it on a dedicated virtual box with plans to go to EC2 and then multiple EC2s, but a single cloud instance would be better. I've already got a decoupled permanent datastore which interfaces to SDB for a cloud should work from that angle too.
What would twisted look like on a cloud? Would the main reactor still be single threaded with threads being distributed or would we have to rearchitect for multiple main reactors by port or path?
Hey Andy, I never replied to your question.
We've been discussing several ways in which this would be done, and so far none of them would require application developers to do anything too radical. By definition, if you are moving to a new architecture, something needs to be re-architected :-) One solution that we've prototyped simply involves creating a small "model" object and passing it to a new service. In that instance there is very little that a developer would have to do. With support for things like auto-discovery and messaging, even that step might (in many cases) go away and you'd just have to instantiate a particular service.
d
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* Dedicated hosts, with Twisted libs pre-installed on them * Virtual hosts/"slices" with Twisted libs pre-installed on them
Installing Twisted is easy enough ;-) If I manage dedicated host or VPS, then installing twisted is a simple command, be it easy_install, apt-get install, or yum something.... So I do not think there is much to be gained here. Maybe cheap shared hosting with ability to run twisted apps could make some sense, but ... VPS are cheap nowadays. Supported installation may be different story, but it can be uneasy to draw a line where the support really ends.... Just my 2 cents. PS I love VPS-s ;-) -- ---------------------------------------------------------------------- | Marcin Kasperski | If we are to be successful, we must still have | http://mekk.waw.pl | the courage to put our faith in people as | | opposed to a process. (Booch,Martin,Newkirk) ----------------------------------------------------------------------
On Tue, Jul 8, 2008 at 12:02 PM, Marcin Kasperski <Marcin.Kasperski@softax.com.pl> wrote:
* Dedicated hosts, with Twisted libs pre-installed on them * Virtual hosts/"slices" with Twisted libs pre-installed on them
Installing Twisted is easy enough ;-) If I manage dedicated host or VPS, then installing twisted is a simple command, be it easy_install, apt-get install, or yum something....
So I do not think there is much to be gained here. Maybe cheap shared hosting with ability to run twisted apps could make some sense, but ... VPS are cheap nowadays.
There are two things to consider here: 1) We've had conversations with application developers who use Twisted and do a lot of repeated setup. They'd like it if they didn't have to do that every time... but not only the work itself, the mental convenience factor: they don't want to even have to think about it. They'd like to consider it simply part of their OS. I don't know about you, but I like the idea of a Twisted OS ;-) 2) Perception and exposure. This one's a biggie. If hosting providers start offering explicit support for Twisted, we get an arguably significant increase in exposure to potential users. The more people who are aware that Twisted exists, the more that use it. The many and obvious benefits that come as a result of this (including more potential funding for the TSF!) are an excellent motivation.
Supported installation may be different story, but it can be uneasy to draw a line where the support really ends....
That's definitely a dark art ;-) d
Duncan McGreggor wrote:
If hosting providers start offering explicit support for Twisted,
Some already did: http://unbit.it/listino_application_server/ (bottom) Twisted's even on the homeopage: http://unbit.it/ (lower left) I'm just a customer, no stock options nor anything else. :-) -- Nicola Larosa - http://www.tekNico.net/ Microsoft has managed to besmirch the entire ISO process, which is now effectively worthless. [...] ISO has turned from being a kind of gold standard, into a worthless rubber stamp wielded at the behest of the rich and ruthless. - Glyn Moody, Marzo 2008
On Thu, Jul 10, 2008 at 1:42 AM, Nicola Larosa <nico@teknico.net> wrote:
Duncan McGreggor wrote:
If hosting providers start offering explicit support for Twisted,
Some already did:
http://unbit.it/listino_application_server/ (bottom)
Twisted's even on the homeopage:
http://unbit.it/ (lower left)
I'm just a customer, no stock options nor anything else. :-)
Nicola, that's awesome! Thanks for the link... this is *definitely* going in the next "Twiisted in the News" port ;-) d
On Monday 14 July 2008, Tristan Seligmann wrote:
* Duncan McGreggor <duncan.mcgreggor@gmail.com> [2008-07-14 09:59:27 -0500]:
"Twiisted in the News" port ;-)
^^^
Whoa, Twisted runs on the Wii now?
It is possible to run Debian on the Wii nowadays, so Twisted should only be an apt-get away... http://www.gc-linux.org/wiki/WL:whiite-linux Bye, Maarten
participants (8)
-
Andy Fundinger -
Curt -
Duncan McGreggor -
Maarten ter Huurne -
Marcin Kasperski -
Nicola Larosa -
Tristan Seligmann -
Walter Purvis