Tuesday, August 19, 2008

Morph Labs and FiveRuns combine efforts to support, test and monitor Rails apps

Ruby on Rails in the cloud got another leg up this week with the announcement that Morph Labs and FiveRuns have joined forces to provide a managed hosting platform for application testing and monitoring.

Morph Labs of Portland, Oregon, a platform-as-a-service (PaaS) provider, and FiveRuns, an Austin, Texas company that provides Ruby on Rails monitoring and analysis, will use Morph Labs' AppSpace to allow developers to get insight into application performance. The goal is to make enterprise-class application developers and deployers an offer they can't refuse.

Developers can subscribe to Morph AppSpace for free and select the version that automatically integrates FiveRuns TuneUp. The apps can be deployed without any special modifications or hassles.

The Morph AppSpace automated deployment system activates FiveRuns TuneUp giving developers insight into potential bottlenecks and performance issues early on. By running the application in an enterprise-caliber environment, developers gain a clear picture of how the application will perform in real production.

Users may also choose to participate in a secure group or open community where they can share their performance information such as tips, tricks and advice from and for other Ruby and Rails enthusiasts. The companies are providing this ramp-up to FiveRuns TuneUp, along with a developer subscription to the Morph AppSpace, to encourage developers to better test and analyze their applications.

In the second phase of the partnership, Morph Labs will integrate FiveRuns Manage as a production option for each Morph AppSpace. By adding FiveRuns Manage, developers will be able to continually monitor each application running within a Morph AppSpace subscription.

FiveRuns Manage also provides additional information to enable developers to quickly diagnose problems and proactively maintain application performance.

The integrated Morph AppSpace and FiveRuns Manage solution is expected to be available in the fourth quarter of 2008.

This certainly ups the ante for other cloud providers that target the Ruby and Rails communities, and makes the fast-track development and deployment environment all the more appealing to enterprises.

2 comments:

  1. The partnership sounds great and all, but that isn't enough to have a truly great hosting experience.

    If you're looking for responsive support when a show-stopper issue comes up, please think twice about hosting with Morph Labs:

    http://forums.mor.ph/forums/1/topics/122?page=1#post-body-583

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  2. For the record, it took 53 hours from the time I opened a pretty serious ticket until morph labs support acknowledged my ticket (I assume the support process moves on from here).

    If anyone has critical issues that need attention in the future, please keep my experience in mind.

    Perhaps we get what we pay for – the savings from choosing this type of service (even with the "freebie" tuning support) may be offset by less-than responsive support regardless of issue severity.

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