Postfully Yours

We recently switched our deployment from dedicated RHEL Linux servers to Joyent TextDrive Accelerators. In the interest of helping others faced with similar deployment choices, I thought it might be useful to put up a review. For the short attention span crowd: if you are looking to deploy a Ruby on Rails application, go check Joyent out right now. Their deployment environment and support service for Rails apps are the best currently available. For those of you interested in details, read on (then go check them out).

(For the previously mentioned short-attention span crowd, here’s probably the key point from the rest of this: It’s common to make compromises in your initial deployment architecture due to limited resources. Joyent makes it inexpensive and easy to do things right from the start.)

Overview:

Joyent Accelerators are virtualized systems running OpenSolaris on Sun hardware. There are various options in terms of Accelerator size and options. Joyent/TextDrive has long experience both as a Ruby on Rails developer and as one of the key Rails hosting providers (from Twitter to the Rails project pages to the LA Times, many of the largest Rails sites are there).

Hardware/Software:

To start with, for front-end load balancing, we decided to take advantage of the F5 BIG-IP units they offer. Coming from Apache and mod_proxy_balancer, the power of load balancing through dedicated hardware blew me away. Let me point you to Joyent’s early internal tests as well as an external review. Just to toss out some numbers:

• 48,000 SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) transactions per second
• 6 Gigabits per second of compression
• 8 Gigabits per second of Layer 7 throughput
• can handle up to 7.4 million SYN floods per second in a Distributed Denial of Service attack

Suffice it to say that we found these features appealing. But, aside from the technolust, this has the added benefit of simplifying our future scaling plans. All we have to do is add more containers and mongrels. The BIG-IP can trivially load balance across as many mongrels as we can put up.

Having access to this kind of power as a startup is more than just a nice initial speed boost. It’s common to make compromises in your initial deployment architecture due to limited resources. Joyent makes it inexpensive and easy to do things right from the start.

One more example of the way they do this. Joyent provides shared access to a multi-node in-memory mysql cluster. You can build to use this from the start then pay for your own when you start using enough resources to warrant it.

As noted, Accelerators run on OpenSolaris. This worried me at first. I’ve previously deployed on Linux. I wasn’t eager to transition over to a new OS. However, after working with OpenSolaris for a couple of weeks, I am glad we made the switch:

• The transition is very easy. While learning the slight differences in the basic tools, you still have access to the GNU variants (for example, you can use gtar (GNU tar) rather than tar (Solaris tar)).
• Far superior process management and restart support. Rather than working with init scripts, you SMF manifests with start/stop/restart directives (yes, it’s Sun, these are in XML, but trust me, it’s worth it). This system doesn’t just run at startup but also monitors processes during operation. If something goes down, the system tries to restart it with full knowledge of dependencies and required startup order. It’s worth the pain of switching in itself.
• Better software/system management tools
• ZFS file system

Price:

If your only issue is GFLOPS/$, TextDrive is not the best deal out there (go for one of the big server farms). But, if you’re running a Rails app, having a system optimized around you will significantly increase pages-served/$. In our case, the use of the BIG-IP puts Joyent on top of our pages-served/$ chart in itself.

More importantly, the structure of the Accelerators allows your expenses to scale with your growth. Need to kick up the speed of mysql? Upgrade to a faster accelerator. A restart later and your upgrade is complete. That’s extremely powerful and cost effective. Flexibility will save you money (and prevent some ulcers as you deal with growth).

Support:

I’ve worked with both unmanaged servers and various managed hosting plans. Joyent has the most knowledgable staff I’ve ever encountered. Don’t underestimate the value of support from people who really know both their side (hardware, server setup) and your side (application components, deployment details). The combination means that they know what you’re talking about (at times better than you do) and they can work with you effectively.

The only issue has been with response times. They recently rolled out new services which are justifiably receiving a good deal of interest. Unfortunately this has pushed up response times at points.

Even so, I’d like to compare this to my experiences with previous support teams. While previous support teams often replied back to me in minutes, it almost always took a few rounds until I was finally passed to the thin, creamy layer of competence at the top. Even with the current delays, Joyent gets me the right answer faster than previous providers.

One additional note, when I mentioned that we were getting set to launch our public beta in a few days (you heard it first here), I was given a direct cell phone number to call so that there wouldn’t be any support delays in this critical time.  That’s the kind of recognition of what matters to developers and extra attention to our needs that makes me feel very pleased to be working with Joyent.

Once they get response time issues ironed out (or at least add some tools to make the process a little more transparent), a support service that I can already say is the best I’ve experienced will become truly extraordinary.

Conclusion:

Joyent’s Accelerators are a fantastic service. If you’re looking to deploy a Ruby on Rails application, you need to check out their offerings. The value is excellent, their team understands both development and deployment, and the system is powerful and scalable.