convox

rack

Go2015–2021

convox / rack

rack

Private PaaS built on native AWS services for maximum privacy and minimum upkeep

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6Distinct people

26Mentions

2Explicit recommenders

1.9KGitHub stars

REPOSITORY AT A GLANCE

What to know before exploring

What it is

Private PaaS built on native AWS services for maximum privacy and minimum upkeep

GitHub

Where it is used

No documented product use has been verified yet.

What people are saying

If you're on AWS, I highly recommend Convox [1]. They use AWS ECS instead of k8s, but EKS support will be coming soon. Their rack project is free and open-source [2]. They also…

nathan_f77 used a recommendation phrase. 3 indexed comments match. This is a phrase match, not a verdict.

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Also in these discussions

remind101/empire · linked in 2 of the same discussions

Mentioned in the same Hacker News threads. That is not proof they are substitutes.

This week on Hacker News

Nov 7–Nov 14 UTC · Direct repository links and separately labeled related project stories. Indexed through 11/14/2026, 1:49:46 PM UTC.

No direct repository links were found in the indexed HN discussions over the past seven days. Older discussions are available below.

Mentions over time

HN mentions by year26 dated mentions

Observed mentions: 2015-12-26 22:37:23 UTC to 2021-03-01 21:31:00 UTC.

Counts come from the repository’s dated source evidence. Index cutoff: 2026-11-02 08:16:59 UTC.

View mention counts and date ranges

UTC ranges include their start and exclude their end. Select a period to filter the source evidence.
Period	Start (UTC)	End (exclusive, UTC)	Mentions	Submissions	Comments
2015	2015-01-01 00:00:00 UTC	2016-01-01 00:00:00 UTC	2	0	2
2016	2016-01-01 00:00:00 UTC	2017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC	12	1	11
2017	2017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC	2018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC	1	0	1
2018	2018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC	2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC	5	0	5
2019	2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC	2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC	2	1	1
2020	2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC	2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC	3	0	3
2021	2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC	2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC	1	0	1

What Hacker News says

26 sources

nathan_f77·Mar 1, 2021

Yes, I'm a huge fan of Convox [1]. One thing that don't make very clear is that the paid "Convox Pro" hosted console is optional, and convox/rack [2] is completely free and open source. You can set everything up with a single command, and then interact with your rack and app directly through the CLI. I really like how simple and opinionated it is, even though their new v3 version uses Kubernetes behind the scenes. [1] https://convox.com [2] https://github.com/convox/rack

In RIP Flynn.io

nathan_f77·May 30, 2020

No, Convox doesn't automatically make any application compliant. Convox makes it far easier to achieve HIPAA/PCI compliance by easily setting up compliant server infrastructure: https://docsv2.convox.com/reference/hipaa-compliance Note that dedicated instances are no longer required for HIPAA compliance [1]. Also note that the private Convox console is completely optional. You can achieve all of this with the free and open source convox/rack project: https://github.com/convox/rack As I mentioned in my original comment, you still need to do a lot of work to set up company policies and make sure your application complies with all regulations. You should also be aware that I'm comparing Convox with some other popular options for HIPAA-compliant hosting: * Aptible: https://www.aptible.com (Starts at $999 per month) * Datica: https://datica.co

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m (I think it starts around $2,000 per month, but not 100% sure) These companies do provide some additional security and auditing features, but I think there's no reason to spend thousands of dollars per month when Convox can get you 95% of the way in your own AWS account. PLUS: If you have any free AWS credits from a startup program, you might not need to pay any hosting bills for years. [1] https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/security/aws-hipaa-program-upda...

In Why is Kubernetes getting so popular?

nathan_f77·May 30, 2020

I run a Dockerized monolithic application in ECS, and I'll be switching to Kubernetes soon. I am 100% sold on this approach and will never go back to any deployment methods that I've used in the past (Capistrano, Ansible, Chef, Puppet, Saltstack, etc.) I use Convox [1] which makes everything extremely simple and easy to set up on any Cloud provider. They have some paid options, but their convox/rack [2] project is completely free and open source. I manage everything from the command-line and don't use their web UI. It's just as easy as Heroku: convox rack install aws production convox apps create my_app convox env set FOO=bar convox deploy You can also run a single command to set up a new RDS database, Redis instance, S3 bucket, etc. Convox manages absolutely everything: secure VPC, application load balancer, SSL cert

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ificates, logs sent to CloudWatch, etc. You can also set up a private rack where none of your instances have a public IP address, and all traffic is sent through a NAT gateway: convox rack params set Private=true This single command sets up HIPAA and PCI compliant server infrastructure out of the box. Convox automatically creates all the required infrastructure and migrates your containers onto new EC2 instances. All with zero downtime. Now, all you need to do is sign a BAA with AWS and make sure your application and company complies with regulations (access control, encryption, audit logs, company policies, etc.) I run a simple monolithic application where I build a single Docker image, and I run this in multiple Docker containers across 3+ EC2 instances. This has made it incredibly easy to maintain 100% uptime for over 2 years. There were a few times where I've had to fix some things in CloudFormation or roll back a failed deploy, but I've never had any downtime. My Docker images would be much smaller and faster if I built my backend server with C++ or Rust instead of Ruby on Rails. But I would absolutely still package a C++ application in a Docker image and use ECS / Kubernetes to manage my infrastructure. I think the main benefit of Docker is that you can build and re-use consistent images across CI, development, staging, and production. So all of my Debian packages are exactly the same version, and now I spend almost zero time trying to debug strange issues that only happen on CI, etc. So now I already know I want to use Docker because of all these benefits, and the next question is just "How can I run my Docker containers in production?". Kubernetes just happens to be the best option. The next question is "What's the easiest way to set up Docker and Kubernetes?" Convox is the holy grail. The application language or framework isn't really relevant to the discussion. [1] https://convox.com [2] https://github.com/convox/rack P.S. Things move really fast in this ecosystem, so I wouldn't be surprised if there are some other really good options. But Convox has worked really well for me over the last few years.

In Why is Kubernetes getting so popular?

dmlittle·Feb 11, 2020

People at Convox[1] and Remind101 are doing similar open-source work. Convox's business model is selling you the managed version of their open source rack. We've been using Convox in production for over 3 years now and we've had pretty good success with it. It's not perfect but the UX improvement for developers when building docker images, promoting new builds or rolling back cannot be understated. Remind101 has built Empire[2] which is not a product they actually sell but rather the tool they use internally and have decided to open-source it. Empire is a little less managed and while it allows you to run services on it it requires you to have your own solution for building and hosting docker images. [1] https://convox.com/, https://github.com/convox/rack [2] https://github.com/remind101/empire

In Show HN: A open source Heroku-like PaaS that runs on your server

yarapavan·Nov 6, 2019Submission

Rack: Private PaaS built on native AWS services for max privacy, minimum upkeep

2 points · Open discussion

nathan_f77·Nov 6, 2019

I'm working on FormAPI [1] as a solo founder. I started on Heroku, but Heroku was a bit unreliable and I had some random outages that I couldn't predict or control. (This was even while using dynos in their professional tier.) I also had a lot of free AWS credits, so I migrated to AWS. I didn't want to write all my terraform templates from scratch, so I spent a lot of time looking for something that already existed, and I found Convox [2]. Convox provides an open source PaaS [3] that you can install into your own AWS account, and it works amazing well. They use a lot of AWS services instead of re-inventing the wheel (CloudFormation, ECS, Fargate, EC2, S3.) It also helps you provision any resources (S3 buckets, RDS, ElastiCache), and everything is set up with production-ready defaults. I've been able to achieve 100% uptime for over 12 mont

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hs, and I barely need to think about my infrastructure. There's even been a few failed deployments where I needed to manually go into CloudFormation and roll something back (which were totally my fault), but ECS keeps the old version running without any downtime. Convox is also rolling out support for EKS, so I'm planning to switch from ECS to Kubernetes in the near future (and Convox should make that completely painless, since they handle everything behind the scenes.) [1] https://formapi.io [2] https://convox.com [3] https://github.com/convox/rack

In Ask HN: How do you make sure your servers are up as a single founder?

nathan_f77·May 14, 2018

I think the author should take a look at Convox [1]. Convox is really the "holy grail" PaaS that I've spent many years looking for. It's a self-hosted Heroku on your own AWS account, and it uses Docker. You can set up a production-ready deployment in about 10-15 minutes, including RDS, SSL, logging, high availability, and auto-scaling. The cost starts at $67 per month: 3x t2.small instances for your highly-available cluster, and 1x db.t2.small RDS instance. (convox/rack [2] is a free and open-source project.) I've worked with OpsWorks (Chef), Saltstack, Puppet, Ansible, and Capistrano, and Convox is a breath of fresh air. I hate Chef with a passion, since I've had to maintain a cookbook for a client that is using OpsWorks. It's ugly, painful, and extremely slow. Docker is a great tool, but it's not a PaaS. You need a layer on top to make

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it useful for production. But I do love having a CI image that is identical to production. [1] https://convox.com [2] https://github.com/convox/rack

In Docker is a dangerous gamble

nathan_f77·May 12, 2018Recommendation phrase

If you're on AWS, I highly recommend Convox [1]. They use AWS ECS instead of k8s, but EKS support will be coming soon. Their rack project is free and open-source [2]. They also have a hosted console that can manage your racks, deploy from GitHub webhooks, and send slack notifications. But you can use convox without that. [1] https://convox.com [2] https://github.com/convox/rack

In Is K8s Too Complicated?

nathan_f77·May 4, 2018

I've also been searching for this for years, and the closest thing I've found is Convox [1]. Unfortunately they only support AWS for now, but it's a really good PaaS on your own servers. It's open source, too [2]. You can run a convox rack without using their hosted console. One problem is that it requires a minimum of 3 instances, so it can be more expensive than Heroku to start. [1] https://convox.com [2] https://github.com/convox/rack

In Ask HN: What problem in your industry is a potential startup?

nathan_f77·Apr 5, 2018Recommendation phrase

DB: Postgres API: Ruby on Rails Frontend: React, the react_on_rails gem to set up webpack, Flow, Redux, Immutable.js Background Jobs: Sidekiq and Redis Caching: Memcached PaaS: convox (on AWS). See: https://convox.com and https://github.com/convox/rack (But you should start with Heroku.) I recommend the Rails stack. It's not the "hot new thing", but it's very stable, secure, and productive.

In Ask HN: What tech stack would you choose for a serious, long-term business app

nathan_f77·Mar 23, 2018

Deis Workflow [1] I had really high hopes for this, but the team was acquired by Microsoft and the project was abandoned. I don't think is a job for a single developer, so it probably needs a company to sponsor development. EDIT: They updated the README recently with a link to a fork [2], but there's no new commits for 7 months. I'm very happy with convox [3] now, and they're mostly open source [4]. Their management console is a freemium SaaS service, which includes GitHub/GitLab/Slack integrations. The console can be self-hosted, but that requires an enterprise license. [1] https://github.com/deis/workflow [2] https://github.com/teamhephy/workflow [3] https://convox.com/ [4] https://github.com/convox/rack

In Ask HN: What abandoned OSS project would you like to see revived?

nzoschke·Jan 20, 2017

If you want to deploy to AWS and ECS check out: Convox - https://github.com/convox/rack ECS CLI - http://docs.aws.amazon.com/AmazonECS/latest/developerguide/c... Disclaimer: I work at Convox

In What’s New in Docker 1.13?

bglusman·Oct 13, 2016

This is a great overview of the kubernetes/self-hosted PaaS landscape, but is also clearly a bit of marketing for Flynn. Flynn looks awesome, but also as/more awesome at a glance from my research and test runs is https://github.com/convox/rack which I got closer to working more quickly than Flynn, though it helped that Convox builds on top of docker-compose.yml files, which we were already using for development. For better or worse, we're going the full kubernetes route though, and still working out what deployment etc looks like. So far a lot of un-DRY looking YAML files have inspired a spike at a tool to help manage creating and maintaining kubernetes yaml[1], which others reading this are welcome to try and I'd love to hear better alternatives to or get feedback/pull requests/etc. I may push up a branch I'm working on later that pa

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rtially automates creating deployments from a Procfile, but we discovered having seperate Procfiles may make applying env-variable only changes harder, curious to hear if others have any guidelines on that, it's so easy to edit an ENV var on Heroku we took it for granted. [1] https://github.com/stellaservice/ky

In An Open Source, Self-Hosted Heroku

nzoschke·Oct 11, 2016

You probably are aware, but AWS has a container orchestration service built into the platform with ECS. The container agent is open source (https://github.com/aws/amazon-ecs-agent). We're building an open-source platform at Convox that leverages ECS very successfully. https://github.com/convox/rack In my experience, ECS is easy to run, as it's a first class part of the platform. Boot up the right "cattle" AMIs with the right ASG configuration and you're good to go. K8, Docker Swarm, Mesos and Nomad have plenty of documented success but you to stand up and operate the orchestration layer yourself. This is booting up "pet" AMIs and making sure they are monitored, etc. Then you boot up your "cattle" AMIs to run your apps. The Convox philosophy is that you get application portability by packaging your app correctly with Docker. The orchestrat

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ion layer should be invisible, something that you shouldn't build or operate yourself.

In Open Guide to Amazon Web Services

nzoschke·Sep 23, 2016Recommendation phrase

Fanstatic article, that gets the subtleties correct. This is my favorite part: > If we see the gap of management and scaling between Serverless FaaS and hosted containers narrow the choice between them may just come down to style, and type of application. For example it may be that FaaS is seen as a better choice for event driven style with few event types per application component, and containers are seen as a better choice for synchronous-request driven components with many entry points. I expect in 5 years time that many applications and teams will use both architectural approaches, and it will be fascinating to see patterns of such use emerge. We will see this gap narrow. I'm running tons of ECS workloads and operating the servers takes no effort. Amazon releases AMIs, CloudFormation automates AMI updates and scale, and ASGs keep ever

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ything running. It took effort to learn these techniques and build tools that use them, but that's solved by open source software. See Convox for an OSS project that sets it all up out of the box: https://github.com/convox/rack. Disclaimer: I work on Convox full time. > containers are seen as a better choice for synchronous-request driven components with many entry points Is absolutely correct, and describes ~95% of real-world software. For greenfield on AWS, I'd definitely see if Lambda, API Gateway and DynamoDB will work. For all those "old" Java, Python, PHP and Postgres systems out there, we have to run traditional containers, and load balancers and databases. There's really no future where we are all "serverless". But there is a future where the resource cost and operational burden of both Containers and Functions is very very low.

In Serverless Architectures

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