Show HN: Alien – Self-hosting with remote management (written in Rust)
28 pointsby alongub2 hours ago3 comments
  • gsgreen23 minutes ago
    Even when you do control the environment, infra isn’t as stable as people think.

    Same VPS, same config, but under sustained load you’ll see latency creep or throughput drift depending on the host / routing / neighbors.

    Short tests almost never show it — only shows up after a few minutes.

    • alongub19 minutes ago
      Right, and that's when you do control the environment. Now imagine debugging that when it's your customer's infra, you have no access, and you're relying on them to copy-paste logs on a Zoom call.
  • msteffen37 minutes ago
    IIUC this kind of thing is usually called “managed deployment.” Minio used to have a slick implementation of this, and I think databricks does as well. Usually it’s less “execute arbitrary commands on customer hosts,” and more “send metrics and logs to shared repository and send RPCs to customer deployment”
    • alongub32 minutes ago
      It's heavily inspired by Databricks' deployment model. And you're right that it's not "execute arbitrary commands". Commands are predefined functions in the deployed code that the developer defines upfront and customers can review.

      The metrics/logs part is also core to Alien... telemetry flows back to the vendor's control plane so you actually have visibility into what's running.

  • cassianolealan hour ago
    RCE into my environment? No, thanks.
    • alongub29 minutes ago
      It's not RCE. The commands are predefined RPCs written into the deployed code. Customers can review and approve them. Trust between the vendor and the customer is still required and Alien doesn't make it unnecessary.