ryanwold.net - Civic Tech, Bitcoin, and Open Government Innovation

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### Background

Recently, I've moved many applications from [Dreamhost](https://dreamhost.com) to [Heroku](https://heroku.com), and it has been great to alleviate some of the deployment workarounds I had to do on Dreamhost that disappeared with Heroku. However, what did appear was an increasingly large monthly bill for web services.  Quickly peaking $100/month for personal and side apps; I traded one convenience for another.

More recently, I've heard about [Pivotal](https://pivotal.io)'s Cloud Foundry or Pivotal Web Services, and wanted to give it a try.

Moving a Rails app from Heroku to PWS took a little getting used to. But once going through a time or two, it felt just as easy, and felt a bit more performant for my starter app.

### My Experience

Logging into PWS the first time; the web UI has a modern, enterprisey feel. Dropped onto the Welcome screen, I'm instructed to download and install the command-line tool (CLI). Clicking through to "Getting Started..." reiterates the first steps and ends with a link on how to get started deploying your first app (which was a little awkward, but...). Clickety click.

##### Setup

Create an "environment" inside Pivotal Web Services. An environment consists of Organizations `Org`; the highest level. Orgs have 1 or more Spaces. Spaces `Space`, are subdivisions. Maybe like departments. Spaces have one or more Applications `App`.

When it came time to deploy, I had a bit of trouble finding out how to get an app deployed. Fortunately, it was easy once I figured it out (the cost is finding information).  To deploy a Rails app to Pivotal Web Services, use `cf push`.

> `cf push` pushes the whole current directory (NOT a branch, like Heroku does)

So beware of tmp files, logs, uploads, and other things you may have accumulated in a local development branch.

# Resources

#### In PWS

* http://docs.run.pivotal.io/devguide/deploy-apps/deploy-app.html
* http://docs.run.pivotal.io/buildpacks/ruby/sample-ror.html
* https://docs.run.pivotal.io/buildpacks/ruby/gsg-ror.html

#### Provision and Bind a Service (like Postgres)

My Rails app on Pivotal Web Services uses a `manifest.yml` [configuration file](http://docs.run.pivotal.io/devguide/deploy-apps/manifest.html#minimal-manifest), which is new to me, coming from Heroku.

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