Stories

Show HN: Elestio – Managed platform for over 150 open-source software stacks

Article news.ycombinator.com

Show HN: Elestio – Managed platform for over 150 open-source software stacks

Hello Hacker News! We're Joseph, Kieran and David from elestio (https://elest.io/). We've built a platform that offers open-source software as a managed service - we take care of the OS and app updates, security, SSL, networking, backups, the whole deal.

In 2009, we started deploying open-source software for websites and web apps we built, many for SMB and enterprise customers. Our process was basically: spin up VM's from a hosting provider, install the software we needed, then update it manually / when it was needed / critical, etc.

Once we hit > 100 servers/services needing updates, backups, capacity monitoring and alerting, etc. we saw that it was getting totally unmanageable… so we built what would eventually become elestio.

We've put a lot, a lot, a lot of work into building something that allows us (and now you) to deploy a new service in just a few minutes, with zero ongoing maintenance / devops overhead. We basically turned open-source software into a SaaS experience.

We update all the apps, respecting SemVer on the branch you select, issue and renew SSL certs automatically (even for your own domains, for free), automatically implement a 3-2-1 backup strategy, caching is handled and we put your service behind a configurable firewall and rate limiter with sane defaults. We have implemented Nebula to connect your services hosted in different datacenters across regions and providers as if they were on the same network and Borg backups to do deduplicated incremental backups in a remote datacenter.

There were many challenges in building it… VM providers don't have homogenous or feature-complete APIs for provisioning servers, we tested 6 different mesh networking/VPN solutions to enable services running in different datacenters, regions, or providers to connect to each other securely, and we did a lot of work to create a sane templating system that covers setup, security, backups, upgrade, migrations and monitoring, lots of work to test the safest ways to update OS and apps without breaking things… but we got there and it works really well (we think)! Deployments are based on Docker, which helped a lot to standardize everything.

We've been using it to deploy and maintain over 12,000 services for our own enterprise clients and we've spent the last year making it user-friendly (and even more bulletproof for end-user configs). Elestio can currently deploy any one of over 150 open-source software stacks like Postgres, MySQL, OpenSearch, Redis, Wordpress, NodeBB, Jitsi, Uptime-kuma, Plausible, GitLab,, Strapi, Ghost, or even PowerDns, Grafana, ClickHouse, etc. in about 3 minutes, flat.

We currently support AWS Lightsail, Linode, Hetzner, Vultr and Digital Ocean, and BringYourOwnVM, if you want to run on your own provider account or even on-premise but have all the features of managed services. We are offering 1 BYOVM service per customer for free forever.

Something we really wanted to do was make sure we were part of a healthy open-source ecosystem. To that end, elestio will donate part of all revenue to the open-source projects our customers are using. We will review this annually and if it's possible to increase it, we will. This is a win-win-win to us. Open-source developers and communities get more resources to improve their software while our customers, our staff and other stakeholders know that they are helping to support the open-source community.

For this launch we made a partnership with DigitalOcean, they are offering $250 of free credits on Elestio if you go through this link: https://try.digitalocean.com/elestio/

Alternatively you can also register here and get $20 of free credits but not limited to DO infrastructure: https://dash.elest.io/signup

All your questions and comments are welcome and if you want to share any devops horror stories, please do! We're giving out free credits for the best ones!!

Joseph, Kieran and David

Discussion 51 comments · 108 points · js4ever · 2022-02-23
Open on HN
Loading the discussion…

Domain filters

Stories from these domains are hidden from every list. Subdomains match too: blocking substack.com also hides danluu.substack.com. Type a domain, or paste a link to block its site, and press Enter.

New collection

Delete this collection?

About YAVCHN

YAVCHN is a reader for Hacker News and Lobsters, with articles and discussions in separate windows or Classic pages.

Created by Paul Parks and built with PUDL.

YAVCHN source code on GitHub

Privacy policy · Terms of use

Help

Keyboard

j / k
Move down and up the story list. The arrow keys scroll whatever has focus.
Enter
Read the marked story in the article reader.
[ / ]
Read the story above or below in the list, in the same article reader. Back returns to the story you came from.
p
Pin or unpin the marked story, which keeps it in Pinned.
n / N
Move to the next or previous top-level comment in the window in front.
c
Collapse or expand that comment.
f
Hide or show the story list.
Esc
Close a menu or this help.
Access key m
Go to the menu bar. Most browsers take it with Alt on Windows and Linux, and Safari with Control and Option.
?
Show this help.

Windows

Each story opens in a window holding its article above its discussion; drag the bar between them to share the room differently. A window can be moved by its title bar, resized from any edge, snapped to a half or a corner by dragging it there, maximised, or minimised to the bar at the foot of the page. Use Window > New reader window to open an empty reader, or Story > Open in new reader window to open another reader for the current article. Docked readers keep their articles when you select another story from the sidebar. Minimized readers can be restored and reused for their site. A window's Previous and Next buttons read up and down the list in the same window.

A link in a comment or an article to another Hacker News or Lobsters thread opens that thread in a window too. A link to a single HN comment opens the comment above its replies.

While a story's window is in front, the Story and Discussion menus in the menu bar hold its commands: pinning, Previous and Next story, sorting, collapsing every thread, jumping to the first new comment. Each window also remembers where you were in its article and discussion, so a reload, or Back to a story that Next took you past, finds your place again. Closing a window forgets it.

The whole arrangement lives in the address, so a bookmark or a shared link brings it back, and Back undoes the last change. Moving between Hacker News, Lobsters, their lists, Pinned and Find changes only the list, and leaves the windows open.

The list

The pin at the start of a row keeps the story in Pinned, and the cross at its end hides it. Pinned can be narrowed by words in the title, site or author, by source, and to the stories you haven't opened yet, and ordered by when you pinned them, by points or by comments; the filters are part of the address, so a filtered view can be bookmarked. Scroll past the end of the list to load more. Domain filters, in the View menu, hide every story from a site.

Collections are named lists of stories. Story > Add to collection files the story in front into one or more of them, and the Collections feed shows them all or one at a time; the menu that chooses collections also creates, renames, and deletes them. A note is your own text on a story. Choose Add note in a story's toolbar to write one; it saves as you type. Rows with a note carry the note mark, and the Notes feed lists every noted story and searches the text of your notes.

Browsing view

View > Windowed and View > Classic select the browsing view and save your default in this browser. Window view reuses a reader for each feed. Classic view opens stories and applets as pages. Open as a page is a one-off action that does not change your saved default. Use the Windowed selector to return an article to a window. Direct page links always open as pages.

Applets

The Applets menu in the menu bar holds three tools, each a window of its own. Replies to me takes your Hacker News user name and lists the replies to your last thirty comments and stories, checking again every three minutes while it is open, and marking what is new since you last marked them read. Look up a user opens a profile on Hacker News or Lobsters, with their submissions and recent comments, as a commenter's name in any discussion does; the bar at the top of a profile looks up someone else in the same window, and Back returns to the one before. Who is hiring? filters the posts of HN's monthly hiring threads by the words you type.

They read only what the sites publish to everyone, so none of them asks for a login, and your user name stays in this browser anonymously and is included in retained applet state when signed in.

Find

Find takes any link and lists every time it was submitted to Hacker News and Lobsters, so you can read each discussion of it.

About

YAVCHN never sees your Hacker News or Lobsters login. The discussion is fetched from each site's public API; to vote or reply, follow the link above the discussion, or the arrow beside a comment, to the source's own site. Without a YAVCHN account, your data stays in this browser. When signed in, pins, collections, notes, blocked domains, and retained reading state are stored with your account and synchronized across devices. Hidden stories and layout stay in this browser. The privacy policy has the details.

Open source: github.com/paulmooreparks/yavchn. Built with PUDL.