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Replacing a $3000/mo Heroku bill with a $55/mo server

(disco.cloud)
804 points jryio | 6 comments | 21 Oct 25 20:28 UTC | HN request time: 0.903s | source | bottom
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tempest_ ◴[21 Oct 25 20:54 UTC] No.45661573[source]▶
The cloud has made people forget how far you can get with a single machine.

Hosting staging envs in pricey cloud envs seems crazy to me but I understand why you would want to because modern clouds can have a lot of moving parts.

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odie5533 ◴[21 Oct 25 20:56 UTC] No.45661597[source]▶
Fully replicating prod is helpful. Saves time since deployment is similar and does a better test of what prod will be.
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1. teaearlgraycold ◴[21 Oct 25 21:01 UTC] No.45661657[source]▶
Completely agree. It’s not a staging server if it’s hosted on a different platform.
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2. odie5533 ◴[21 Oct 25 21:04 UTC] No.45661694[source]▶
I think OP is using these less as staging and more as dev environments for individual developers. That seems like a great use of a single server to me.

I'd still like a staging + prod, but keeping the dev environments on a separate beefy server seems smart.

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3. ricketycricket ◴[21 Oct 25 21:09 UTC] No.45661739[source]▶
I've been using a development server for about 9 years and the best thing I ever did was move to a machine with a low-power Xeon D for a time. It made development painful enough that I quickly fixed the performance issues I was able to overlook on more powerful hardware. I recommend it, even just as an exercise.
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4. hamdingers ◴[21 Oct 25 21:13 UTC] No.45661797[source]▶
The "platform" software runs on is just other software. If your prod environment is managed kubernetes then you don't lose much if your staging environment is self-hosted kubernetes.
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5. odie5533 ◴[21 Oct 25 21:15 UTC] No.45661814[source]▶
Load balancers, IAM roles, kubernetes upgrades, postgres upgrades, security settings, DNS records, http routes... there's a lot that can go wrong and makes it useful to have a staging environment.
6. eru ◴[22 Oct 25 00:22 UTC] No.45663527{3}[source]▶
For similar reasons, in the Google office I worked in you had the option to connect to a really intentionally crappy wifi that was simulating a 2G connection.