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Ross brown
1,457 Pointsheroku and amazon aws
I'm a little confused on the use cases being heroku and amazon aws. Is there anyone that can shed some light on this? Many thanks!
5 Answers
James Barnett
39,199 Points- Dedicated server: Piece of physical hardware in a datacenter somewhere
- AWS: Virtual machine (VM) - allows you to install your own OS on VM that is hosted in "the cloud" somewhere aka Iaas - (infrastructure as a service)
- Heroku: Run your application "in the cloud"
The differences:
Not pictured: dedicated server, you manage all of the software.
Ross brown
1,457 PointsThere must be millions of sites using amazon services - including the likes of Netflix. This must have been an oversight, right? I would think the same would have happened to a Herkou customer.
I'm interested in the merits of both.
Véronique Bellamy
20,810 PointsTheir response weren't much better. It took me several months to get Amazon to agree to let me into my account for a couple days to download my MP3s and that is because I blogged about it a lot and got on their case (type my name into Google and one of the suggestions is "jessica sideways banned from amazon".
Ross brown
1,457 PointsThank you for sharing your insight.
Has anyone got any thoughts aligned with my question?
Eddie Flores
9,110 PointsRoss, as to your question James gave a good representation of the infrastructure. But in simple terms here's my best explanation:
AWS (Amazon Web Services) : It's a way to get a virtual machine in a quick, reliable, and highly-efficient way that can be billed by hour and by machine. It's a great way to build an infrastructure and expand it easily. You can configure it with your own pre-set image whether it's Server 2008, Ubuntu, Unix, or whatever you want it to be. They provide the hardware, you do the rest. You can set up a massive network (Like Netflix, Flickr, Pintrest, etc... who all host via AWS) and be able to expand in a few keystrokes.
Heroku: This is a service provider that allows you to host your applications for a low cost (sometimes free). It allows you to bring your apps in and use the tools attached to monitor your data usage. You can rely on Heroku to help manage your apps with the tools that it has partnered with like New Relic, Cloudmain, IronCache (these are the ones that I use) or you can put it on an AWS server and put those tools in manually and monitor it on your own instead of the Dashboard that Heroku provides.
So basically AWS is a way to provide the hardware and maintenance needed for runtime, but you will have to manage the apps and everything that goes along with that yourself. Heroku helps to manage your app on its own hardware. That is a service that they provide. I believe that's what James tried to show the difference of in his picture that he put up.
I hope that helps...
Véronique Bellamy
20,810 PointsDon't use Amazon, they block people from accessing their account at random. I know because it happened to me.
Eddie Flores
9,110 PointsI've used AWS for personal and professional purposes and have never had an issue bringing up an instance and accessing it. I've been a customer of AWS since it came out and have received nothing but great service. They rarely have issues (can't say I've NEVER had any), but they were always good about fixing it quickly and compensating me for the interruption.