One thing that doesn’t make a lot of sense here is if it is not production ready, what is the point of buying multiple containers. In what case would someone need 5 containers if they are just beta testing their app? With the apps that I currently host and plan on hosting in the near future, I would save a lot by purchasing 5 or so containers compared to my current pricing, but can’t switch because of this non-production recommendation.
Would it be possible to add an option for production-ready deployment for more containers (even if that comes with a slight surcharge)? I think the support is enough to still differentiate it from the Enterprise plans. I don’t mind paying for the service, but many apps are quite serious and in need of production before reaching the $500 tier.
Galaxy is certainly production-ready and Developer Edition allows our community to experience many of the core features of Galaxy at a very low initial price. We will gradually relax the 5 container limit but you’re certainly not required to use 5 to get started. The main difference with Developer Edition (other than container size - 512MB vs. 1GB) is that you won’t receive the mission-critical support and analytics features that our current Team/Business/Enterprise customers receive. As we mentioned in the announcement, we will also introduce metered pricing for all Galaxy plans in 2016 which will allow customers even more flexibility vs. current pricing.
Hey Mark / MDG, thanks much for you input. Can you shed some needed light on the concerns raised by @maxhodges regarding spot instances. Are they diversified? For example via spot fleet:
Is it possible to have one stable on-demand container coupled with spot instances to insure at least one server is out there talking to anyones request?
If coupling one on-demand with a few Developer / spot instances isn’t a turn-key solution right now, no worries, I can appreciate that. Perhaps there can be some simple instruction on how to best combine an existing on-demand EC2 instance with the Galaxy service to increase availability. I’m feel the community at large would benefit from this.
Babak - I can’t really share the technical details about how we’re specifically implementing Galaxy instances but there isn’t a way for a customer to mix Galaxy container types from different Editions for the same Meteor app if that’s what you’re asking. If you have a mission-critical app that require the highest levels of stability, responsive support, or simply need more ECU/RAM from larger containers, Developer Edition shouldn’t be your first choice when compared to the current Team/Business/Enterprise editions of Galaxy. But Developer Edition does contain the core features that has made Galaxy popular among developers who want to focus building their Meteor app vs. their devops stacks. Once we begin rolling out Developer Edition to users in the coming weeks, the best evidence of how it performs and meets your various requirements/budgets will come from the developer community vs. speculating on what we’ve shared in the announcement. It will be our/MDG’s burden to deliver a solid experience for all of our paying customers and to improve the service based on your feedback.
Mixing and matching to create what AWS would call an “auto-scaling” solution where spot-instances compliment on-demand instances is generally how spot instances are used (and documented).
It would nice if Galaxy could auto-scale without any hassle and it “just worked”, 100% uptime.
Consider going in to do a private app demo (deployed to Galaxy) to raise capital, it wouldn’t be wise to rely on just a spot instance that will “probably be there”.
I look forward to seeing what we can do with Galaxy and for it to be a compelling solution.
Yesterday I posted here asking Mark Trang why he told me MDG doesn’t recommend Developer Edition for production applications when here on this forum he says it’s “production-ready”.
Instead of answering my question, MDG removed my posts!
Mark send me an email saying as a user of Galaxy it’s “inappropriate and unprofessional” of me to share anything communicated to me privately citing the confidentiality clause in their terms of service.
WTF
It seems like Mark and Matt are either deceiving me, or they are trying to deceive this community. And before you have your moderators delete this post you should read your own confidentiality clause (7.2). The full contents of the email I quoted here was already public information at the time of my disclosure.
I don’t like the way you are treating me. I was a very early adopter of Meteor, and I’ve been a vocal promoter of Meteor for years. Keep this up and your going make me a very vocal detractor. You may control these forums but you don’t control Disqus, Github, Quora, Medium, and hosts of other blogs. I want a public apology, and you owe us all an explanation. Then I’ll consider removing this post entirely.
but yes, after they did that I deleted a few posts on my own such as this one. because I don’t want to promote Galaxy anymore if they are going to engage in this kind of dubious behavior.
Max - You’ve been a great contributor to the community and your feedback as a customer is valued. Your one specific post earlier today was flagged/removed because it contained a screenshot of a direct email detailing guidance I sent to you as a commercial customer. You never gave me the courtesy of a heads up to post the email nor did you ever try ask me directly for clarification. In fact, you replied to that exact email on Monday congratulating us on the launch and asking a Galaxy support question which I helped resolve. Instead, you chose to post an excerpt publicly in an attempt to create public controversy and imply that there was some nefarious scheme. After your post was flagged, I immediately sent you a private email explaining why and also scheduled time to speak with you 1:1.
But you’ve insisted on reposting excerpts from our email conversation and are now directly accusing MDG of deception and threatening to become a vocal detractor if you aren’t treated to your satisfaction? It also appears you’ve removed other posts you’ve made today on this forum thread…perhaps to stage the appearance that MDG indiscriminately flagged you on more than the one specific post to gain sympathy?
Let’s keep it professional and fact-based.
I’ve explicitly stated that Galaxy as a runtime platform is absolutely production-ready; meaning it’s not beta/pilot/preview. We had an early access program earlier this year and since publicly launching in October we’ve successfully deployed many commercial customers’ apps since - your apps included.
Here’s my exact post from earlier today in this forum thread:
But just because Galaxy itself is generally available, does that mean all editions of Galaxy are equal? Absolutely not. As I’ve stated ad naseum, when compared to the Team/Business/Enterprise editions of Galaxy, Developer Edition is not where you should be running your mission-critical apps. But is it a cost-effective way to explore the benefits of Galaxy and run a reasonable set of apps so you can see first-hand if it meets your needs/budget? Definitely. This is my most recent post on this thread:
MDG is now much more than the hub of a popular open-source project; we now have a number of paying customers like yourself who trust us as a key business partner. We take our growing number of commercial customer relationships very seriously which is why I’ve personally sent similar emails to each of our earliest customers to affirm this guidance in detail. But we don’t appreciate it when our attempts to run a professional business become fodder for out-of-context forum conversations that have an accusatory/threatening tone and don’t serve the goals of the larger Meteor community. It’s not a great use of anyone’s time when we should all be focused on building our respective projects/businesses.
I hope you understand and respect what we’re trying to do for the entire Meteor community (both open-source and commercial) and I look forward to speaking with you directly.
Mark the content of the ‘personal’ email you sent me is entirely taken from the public Developer Edition announcement. Why in the world you be upset by that and cite it as a violation of your confidentiality clause? The email you sent me was boilerplate press release material and, as I’ve demonstrated, the content is nearly entirely sourced from public material. Why should I think that was a confidential message that you didn’t want others to see?
You accuse me of trying to stir up controversy with out-of context quotes, but all I did was ask: do you recommend Developer Edition for production or not? You created the controversy by dodging the question and deleting my posts. Why not simply explain: Developer Edition is ‘production-ready’ as a platform, but no we don’t recommend it for production apps due to x, y and z. I wasn’t here to create any controversy. I was in fact promoting Galaxy and trying to help people understand the differences between Developer and Team which I’ve been using now for several months.
You tell me to act professionally and stick to the facts and then childishly accuse me of deleting my own posts “to stage the appearance that MDG indiscriminately flagged you on more than the one specific post.”
Matt deleted two of my posts, and I’ve already explained that I’ve removed some of my own posts because I don’t want to publicly promote your services anymore. I’ve reinstated what I could. I have nothing to hide. I was explaining why Galaxy makes sense for our organization, and I was saying the same things you are saying about Developer: not the right choice for mission-critical apps. Why you decided to censor me is beyond my comprehension.
I don’t understand what people are complaining about. Galaxy is a great service with very competitive pricing compared to other Meteor hosting providers. The fact that MDG have provided everything for us devs to develop and deploy web & mobile apps is quite an achievement imo.
I sometimes think that some people just need to step away from the keyboard & go for a walk before posting messages here.
I’m not sure which posts you are responding to, but on the whole I don’t think people are really complaining about the price of Developer. We are just discussing it to understand what it really means in terms of features, availability, performance, etc. and how it compares to other options.
@marktrang in all fairness some of the announcements and forum posts did sound like they were prepared in a “marketing voice” and probably almost to the extent that they concealed the fact that the developer edition is unfit for production by simply saying galaxy overall is production ready.
In fact, right before @maxhodges’ deleted post appeared, I was about to ask you for clarification of galaxy-production-readiness based on the “public” announcement (which seemed to be the exact same content with your said private email) contradicting your posts on this form thread.
I also do strongly believe that you guys should not have deleted that post. As far as I can remember, @maxhodges has always been one of your top evangelists, marketing your product much stronger than you have ever done, and with a genuine voice. His explanation about the situation (your email - whatever part he shared - not containing anything not already publicly disclosed) and why he chose to delete his former posts also hold up while your email sounds nothing like coming from a company who values their customers.
I sincerely hope that this is not the direction MDG is heading for. With all the existing controversy going on around community management and involvement, blaze/react issues and enterprise-readiness, this has not been much good and reassuring on your part.
Mark, you answered one of my posts about Dev Edition saying that it was production ready, but based on the posts that followed on the thread I am still a little bit confused. My current app is used in classrooms to play games, and if the app were to restart while the class was playing on their unique url it would be a disaster for the classroom. I really want to use Galaxy. However, the use of my app is not yet wide enough to be worth $500 in hosting and need 10 containers (hopefully it will soon )
But as @maxhodges said, it would clear everything up if we just got a clear answer as to whether this can be used on an app that actually matters and why. With that answer, all of this controversy could have been avoided. Now it feels like there may be a bait and switch situation going on, even though I am sure that is not the intention.
I think that in general, having clarity in answers and community communication could solve a lot of the issues going on right now, and could have even turned the Blaze/React situation into a positive. People are more than willing to pay for this product, it would be a shame if nontechnical reasons and confusion were to turn them away. This post started off as a Star Wars joke and has somehow degenerated due to a lack of communication.
What is the difference between 1 pro edition or 1 dev container from 3 crashing? I would expect it to survive anyway. Just run on 2 containers for a while when pro edition will run 3 containers no matter what.
Recovering in both cases, just load for the 2 containers would be bigger…
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