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Platform

M3O is a platform for cloud native development.

Overview

M3O is Micro as a Service. We take the open source Micro framework (v3 and beyond) and host it as a service in the cloud. Think managed kubernetes, elasticsearch, etc or how we prefer to see it git and github. Git is a phenomenal tool for distributed version control and GitHub provides essentially git hosting as a service.

Micro is a fantastic tool for writing cloud native services. M3O is Micro hosted as a service.

Features

We’re starting with a Dev tier focused on small teams and individuals. You likely don’t want to manage infrastructure and want to focus on Go based microservices development in the cloud. That’s what we’re here for. Where Netlify is the frontend. Micro is the backend and M3O is the host.

We’re offering a Dev tier to start which provides the following:

  • Fully managed Micro as a Service
  • Public API endpoints
  • Private repo support
  • Upto 5 collaborators
  • Upto 10 services
  • Fair usage limits

Getting Started

Visit the getting started guide if you just want to get started.

How it works

M3O is a cloud service which lets you use Micro without having to manage infrastructure. We run highly available systems on managed kubernetes in the cloud e.g etcd, nats, cockroachdb and then provide a shared multi-tenant experience. From your standpoint its simply Micro hosted for you. For us its scratching an itch to fix the pain points with using AWS and other cloud providers.

As a developer you should just be able to focus on writing code but not just a single app, multiple applications and various design patterns in a way that’s not limiting but removes choice and friction in a way that let’s you be super productive. Micro + M3O is just that!

Hosting

M3O hosts Micro in the cloud using various cloud providers in different regions. Initially during the beta phase we’re starting with Scaleway in Europe so that we can focus primarily on users needs and do it in a cost effective manner. Over time we’ll move on to AWS, GCP and Azure in the US and Asia.

So how do you access it?

Environments

Micro has the concept of environments or an “env” built in. These are basically different hosted Micro servers you can switch between to do development and run Micro services. There are three built ins, “local”, “dev” and “platform”.

Local is your local server running on “127.0.0.1:8081”. Dev is a free environment in the cloud for small projects and testing. The platform refers to the M3O platform for secure, scalable and supported production workloads.

You can swap between local, dev and the platform like so.

# platform
micro env set platform

# local
micro env set local

# dev
micro env set dev

Services

M3O provides a hosted version of Micro, which means anything built into the open source is available for you to use. This includes authentication, config, messaging, service discovery, service-to-service calls, storage, etc.

Micro comes with a pre-initialised Go library to run on a Micro server and the platform basically abstracts away the underlying infrastructure so you don’t have to worry about it.

Pricing

Our pricing is a subscription of $35/dev/month. For that you get the ability to deploy upto 10 services, invite 5 people to collaborate with, support for private git repos and secure public api endpoints for your services.

Cloud and serverless pricing is anxiety inducing in a way that mostly now requires pricing calculators. This doesn’t make sense to us. We believe to start developers should be given a fair flat subscription price and then we charge for additional services you use that are separate to the platform itself.

Separately we provide a free Dev environment for testing and hobbyist side projects.

Additional Users

Every additional user added to your account is billed at $35/month. Whether you invite them or just plain create the account we’ll keep track and invoice this as “M3O Additonal Users” on your invoices.

Additional Services

Beyond 10 services, we bill every additional service at $3/month. Additional service meaning anything with a new unique name e.g users, customers, orders. We’ll add a line item on your invoice called “M3O Additional Services” automatically.

Fair Usage Limits

We invoke fair usage limits on the platform by capping everything to sane defaults for all services. Over time we may make this configurable or allow you to pay for additional resources. For now the caps are as below per service

  • CPU - 1 core
  • Mem - 128 mb
  • Disk - 512 mb

We additionally apply caps across your namespace to limit overall resource usage which is just an upperbound multiple on services. Caps may evolve or change in future to include different resource types but the goal is to provide a fair system that can be shared by all.

Dev Environment

The Dev environment is a free tier hosted by us as a best effort service. It’s a place for hobbyists and side projects. To get access please talk to #m3o-platform on slack. To login see the following.

# set the dev env
micro env set dev

# signup > use the credit card '4242 4242 4242 4242'
micro signup

# login
micro login

Future

In the future we’ll introduce different pricing tiers for teams and enterprise that include support and SLAs along with additional features for metrics, logs, etc. For now we really want to help small teams and individual developers.

Next Steps

Head to the signup page to get started or join us on slack to chat.

To kick the tyres on the open source Micro project head to micro.mu.