Montreal Tech Watch

Solutious, a company started by Delano Mandelbaum (@solutious), has released last monday Rudy version 0.9

Rudy allows simplified development and deployement on Amazon’s cloud computing platform by using a Ruby DSL (Domain Specific Language), allowing then quick and easy provisioning of custom environments on Amazon’s hosting platform.

The best use case for Rudy might be software development companies who’d use Amazon as a staging and a testing platform, since the servers are only needed for a fraction of time, compared to the “real” production environment, which might be at Amazon, or much more probably in a different hosting company.

Since an example is much better than long text descriptions, compare the following lines to the usual raw command lines a sys-admin has to type to provision instances on EC2:

 machines do
   env :stage do                   # Define an environment
     ami 'ami-e348af8a'            # Specify a machine image

     role :app do                  # Define a role
       disks do                    # Define EBS volumes
         path "/rudy/disk1" do
           size 100
           device "/dev/sdr"
         end
       end
     end

   end
 end

 routines do

   startup do                      # $ rudy startup
     adduser :rudy
     authorize :rudy               # Enable passwordless login

     disks do
       create "/rudy/disk1"        # Create and mount a volume 
     end                       

     remote :rudy do               # Run remote commands via SSH
       mkdir :p, "great"           # $ mkdir -p great
       mysql_init :start
       your_script 'arg1', 'arg2'  # Call your own scripts
     end
   end

 end

The user only has to provide the AMI, and of course the custom scripts to setup and launch its software stack.

I really like Rudy, since it illustrates what Amazon is best at: provisioning for a finite timelapse a custom infrastructure, for a specific job. Fire the rudy/ruby script, provision as many instances as you need, launch the job, get test results. It will bring shorter development cycles for software companies, and also an easier path to try out EC2.

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