DevOps

100% Free and Open Source Software
No license fees or subscription fees
Deployment & infrastructure fees only
No migration required when scaling out
No paid features further down the road
Integration with 3rd party services

Our DevOps Roadmap

Tier 0: 3rd Party Services

For limited budget projects we can deploy your project onto a 3rd party service such as Gitlab or Github. Their services are free for single user deployments and open source projects. This allows small websites and projects to be made available online for no more than the yearly internet domain fee.

Both services offer complete industry standard Git services complete with CI/CD integration. Adding team members quickly becomes prohibitively expensive on both platforms however and putting highly sensitive Intellectual Property onto their servers might be cause for concern.

For this reason we recommend using 3rd party Git services exclusively for websites and open source projects, for anything else we recommend Tier 1 of Coduity DevOps.

Tier 1: Single Virtual Server

Our first tier is by far the most affordable solution on the market, starting at the price of a monthly cup of coffee. We’ll deploy a Virtual Private Server on one of the many VPS providers in the market and set it up with Podman containerization.

Using Gitea as the private Git service and Woodpecker-CI as the build service you’ll be able to enjoy a fully industry standard compliant DevOps deployment on a single host. Accessible through an NGINX reverse-proxy, both services will be available via a single subdomain such as ‘git.example.com’.

Being based on an FOSS derivative of Red Hat Enterpise Linux the system will be secured with SELinux, while services run ‘rootless’ which offers enhanced protection to the system. Thanks to the OCI standard and Podman’s comaptibility with Kubernetes Pods it is simple to move to the second tier if needed. This doesn’t mean moving to the next tier is necessary as vertical scaling is also possible. Simply add virtual CPUs and RAM to the system, which is a feature offered by every platform in the market.

Tier 2: K3s Cluster

Our second Tier is intended for more complicated deployments, such as those that include microservices and FaaS / Serverless technologies. While still 100% Free and Open Source Software, infrastructure costs and deployment complexity are increased. K3s can be deployed on both on a single server as well as a cluster of servers, but the need to go beyond a single server will be sooner rather than later.

K3s offers a number of exciting benefits however such as autoscaling, FaaS / Serverless as well as infrastructure level cluster scaling. Being a fully compliant small-scale Kubernetes distribution, K3s offers many of the benefits of a Kubernetes deployment while being far cheaper and easier to maintain.

Tier 3: Kubernetes Cluster

Our final tier offers a true hyperscale Enterprise grade deployment. Our Kubernetes offering can be distributed over different cloud providers, different locations and scale to infinity. While the superiority of Kubernetes as the defacto standard platform for large scale microservice and FaaS deployments is without question, it is really reserved for Enterprise customers and large scale deployments.

While infrastructure costs can be reduced somewhat by using a 3rd party offering, it generally also means a reduced feature set. Kubernetes requires a fleet of virtual servers and load balancers to reach full potential, so infrastructure costs can rise quite quickly. To mitigate this as much as possible Coduity has prepared a number of infrastructure level scaling options for common VPS providers, meaning worker nodes can be created and deleted automatically at a moments notice.

The combination of Kubernetes, Gitea and Woodpecker-CI however is a thing of beauty. True elastic cloud computing, automated management and seamless integration.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is a VPS?

Virtual Private Servers are ‘portions’ of physical servers that are rented out low rates (usually starting around $5 and up).

Virtual servers offer many benefits over physical servers as they are essentially software defined, allowing them to move freely to another server in case of failures or maintenance. They come in many types and sizes, with the lowest tiers sharing hardware resources with other virtual servers in a first-come-first-served setup. Higher tiers instead offer guaranteed availability of resources.

The takeaway is that they are far cheaper than regular servers or even web hosting accounts in most cases. They are a flexible low cost solution with which to start building a project or business infrastructure without vendor lock-in.

Does Coduity provide VPS or Git hosting?

No, we purposely avoid getting into the hosting business. We instead develop solutions that can be run on the infrastructure of any hosting provider, ensuring our neutrality and allowing customers to get the best hosting deal available for their region(s).

We do however offer setup and management services, giving customers the choice to either manage their servers in-house or leaving it up to us on their behalf.

What is the difference between the tiers?

The primary difference is the number of servers required to host the DevOps services. For the most part they function in a very similar way, although tier 2 and 3 do pave the way for many advanced features.

We have deliberately designed our tiers so that upgrading is as painless as possible. Our configurations and container images remain the same across the 3 tiers, it is only the management system that changes.

What is the difference K3s and Kubernetes?

K3s and K8s / Kubernetes are actually very similar as they are both certified distributions of the same technology. In basic deployments they function in much the same way, the differences mainly become apparent in advanced setups.

K3s can be deployed onto a single virtual server and expand to include extra servers over time if necessary. K8s requires a number of servers right from the start. If or when the time comes to create large server clusters and multi-cloud deployments however, it is time to move to tier 3 and a full Kubernetes deployment.

Each of our tiers are based on free and open source software, so the primary cost over time is that of infrastructure in the form of virtual servers, load balancers and IP addresses.