Aptana Cloud - Hands On
Sunday, June 1st, 2008I received beta access today to Aptana cloud, something I’d previously mentioned. Aptana cloud is targeted at rapid development, in particular web applications that need to scale rapidly (think Facebook applications etc.)
Aptana cloud plugs nicely into the Aptana IDE as you would expect and as an extra treat it comes with a beta version of the new PHP editor and a pre-release version of Jaxer 1.0. This post will discuss some of the key features and my experience of trying out for the first time…
The only obvious change after the install if you can see a cloud control button next the Jaxer button at the top of the IDE.
After creating a project it then is automatically available in the cloud options.
When you click on the project under the cloud menu you are taken through a (very easy to use) wizard for configuration. This runs your through a few steps, setting up a site name, picking a payment plan (the beta is free), payment details and so on. Most of these screens are fairly standard, however the service selection is quite interesting. I imagine these prices are not final, so just take them with a pinch of salt.
The payment scheme seems to be quite flexible and we can see a large number of services that are included, PHP being the main server side language at the moment, with Aptana Jaxer still being a beta… (Ruby of Rails is on the ‘coming soon’ list). The prices range from the cheapest being 256 MB ram and 5 GB hard disc for $0.99 a day, up to 2 GB of ram and 25 GB hard disc for $8.22 a day. Seems fairly reasonably priced.
After set-up is finished, it phones home and does some magic. Shortly after displaying the following screen;
And sure enough, browse on over to http://mycloud.aptanacloud.com/ to see the following screen.
After that, you’re set up. You can go ahead and develop the application as normal. When you next go into the project in the cloud menu it provides you with a simple synchronisation process for uploading new and changed files. Going to http://mycloud.aptanacloud.com/index.php shows the output of a phpinfo. Currently running 5.2.5, thankfully nice and up to date! Doesn’t look like you are able to use pear however… that is shame.
This has been a very quick into, just to show exactly how easy it is to get started with a new project, there is a whole host of facilities that have been integrated that I’ve not covered. See the following screenshot for a quick look-see. Database management, SVN, back-ups and more all now easily managed from one IDE.
The first questions that then spring to mind are, I don’t see how to develop with two versions for testing etc. As we don’t want to be testing under a live environment do we! I’m assuming there is also a way for developing with SVN and having multiple developers working on the same projects.
All in all, I’m quite impressed and look forward to seeing this develop further.
I’ve liked the idea of Jaxer since I first heard about it, now with Aptana cloud I’ve got some online hosting where I can try out a few things. Expect some Jaxer posts coming soon! 
p.s. I didn’t notice any of the new PHP features…