- > A vendor is typically the author of a software / AI application
Can you explain how „AI Application“ differs from „Software“ in your model?
- Sure, multiple of our customers that distribute applications with a machine learning/AI component also need to distribute their models. They can use our OCI registry to distribute large images with huge layers. We specifically reworked our registry implementation to storing in-transit blobs on disk to save memory, ensuring the application doesn’t run out of memory [1].
- Man. I absolutely hate that the term AI just has to be meaninglessly sprinkled over every single piece of marketing material now.
I don't even hate the player, it's just what you gotta do to run a business now. But man I can't wait for this chapter of the game to be over.
- I feel you, but a huge percentage of recently funded companies are in the AI space. Software distribution for them is even more complex due to all the moving parts, and we want to make sure these companies know that our solution is a great fit for them.
- Hi HN, I am Philip, one of the creators of Distr and happy to answer questions.
- Hi Philip!
We develop one or more apps that we deploy on-prem. An app for us is a git repo with a docker compose file. On-prem is either a Linux server or a Linux vm that we have ssh access to (normally via Wireguard vpn).
For app updates, we use ansible to ssh into machines, run pre-deployment scripts, pull git repo and docker images, restart containers and run post-deployment scripts.
It could be better, but it works for us.
The biggest bottleneck we have now is communication with customers, scheduling of updates, letting them know of breaking changes or new features, that kind of stuff.
The apps are provided "fully managed". They dont know and don't care about the details I just described, but they do need assurances that everything is done "properly".
What we think would help us a lot is a way to easily let them know of new releases of any apps they have installed, let them read release notes, docs, and be able to either deploy on-demand or schedule a deployment at a certain time.
Although having fewer things for us to do is nice, what is crucial is to oversee deployments and make sure they are successful (and intervene if not).
Is distr for us?
- We already have a customer portal where you can display any information you want for your customers. We also provide container and deployment logs, as well as alerts in the platform, so you can immediately see if an update failed and what went wrong. Release notes are already on our roadmap, and a lightweight issue tracker has also been requested.
Scheduled updates are currently not on the roadmap, but we’d be happy to scope that feature together and add it.
I think Distr could be a great fit. If you’re interested, I’m happy to walk you through the platform in a quick demo: https://cal.glasskube.com/team/gk/distr-demo
- Thanks:)
- Is it just meant for software or also IoT use cases, like https://github.com/balena-io/open-balena ?
- How does Distr compare to Replicated?
- Distr is a modern Open Source alternative to Replicated. We have a more in-depth comparison over here https://distr.sh/compare/replicated/. If you have any questions, I’m happy to help.
- Any chance you would consider avoiding the SSO tax and making it available for all tiers?
- SSO (Google, Microsoft, GitHub) is available on all tiers. Custom OIDC provider support is even available in our ~MIT~ (Apache2) licensed community edition if you self host Distr. Even TOTP MFA is available for all users and part of the community edition.
How can we improve in reducing SSO tax?
- Starter package does not show SSO as being available. Thanks for clarifying https://distr.sh/pricing/
I see Apache 2 licensed code in your GitHub but not MIT. Is there another repo or that's what you were referring to?
- Custom SSO integrations often require specific development and are therefore not available in our beginner tier.
Oh my bad. Our repository[1] is obviously Apache2.0 licensed, not MIT. Thanks for pointing that out.
- we may be interested in it.
how does it handle very bad internet connection on-prem?
- Feel free to reach out via our website[1]. Distr does not require an internet connection to keep your application running. Update commands are fetched directly from the agent and do not require any special connectivity.
Updates are pulled before the rollover to a new version is performed, so a poor internet connection may only affect the download speed of new updates. Distr is designed to operate even when no connection is available, or when connectivity is only allowed in short time slots.
57 points by louis_w_gk 10 hours ago | 17 comments