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0 pointsjiggy201113y ago0 comments

I see, sounds mostly similar to just renting a VPS from one of a variety of providers then in that it doesn't dispense with ops stuff.

I did evaluate S3 for backups for one project , but concluded that an rsync script would be simpler and more portable.

In the case of things like heroku, how are software updates handled? Do you contact them and say "I want to update to rails version x.x , do it and run these automated tests" or do they just do everything on a schedule?

In other words, if you want an extra feature that is only present in a newer version is this possible? Also what I would worry about it them doing a random upgrade at an inconvenient time (like during a launch of something) and it breaking something subtle.

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2 comments · 2 top-level

jd00713y ago

Yeah EC2 is basically a VPS rental, but with a number of services surrounding it to help with ops. So it is more convenient than a pure VPS service, but by no means "takes care" of ops for you.

With Heroku you use files to specify your dyno configurations, and in the runtime file you can explicitly set the version of software to use. Heroku will read the file and take care of everything for you. Whether the version switch breaks your application code or not you have to test out on a dev dyno first, there is no way Heroku can help you with that. They will not touch installed software versions without your explicit consent. They might change the default runtime software versions though, so you should always explicitly state the version you want.

eropple13y ago

> I see, sounds mostly similar to just renting a VPS from one of a variety of providers then in that it doesn't dispense with ops stuff.

At this level, it pretty much is. I steer clear of AWS because it's relatively expensive for what you get unless you need the ability to rapidly scale (and you're paying in advance for that flexibility).

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