IronWorker

With their unique cloud features, IronWorkers are simple to set up and maintain

Comments: IronWorker is mostly used by us to schedule tasks that would otherwise call for running CRON on a dedicated computer. IronWorker makes it simple to schedule jobs in a cloud environment, especially a persistent one. Before, a computer running a cron daemon was required. Do it now. It's absolutely wonderful. simple to use And it supports PHP natively.

Pros:

It is quite simple to assure consistency with your local environment because IronWorkers deploys the workers using Docker containers. My PHP code is immediately executed by IronWorker. Jobs may be easily scheduled. The scheduler is a fantastic feature, too. simplifies the process of running PHP functions in the cloud without the need to set up servers or containers. They all agree that using this tool will help you maintain order in your creative process.

Cons:

The dashboard doesn't provide a means to change code. Uploading the full solution is necessary in order to update the code, even for a little modification. Typically, this is not an issue. The upload procedure is quite laborious. To edit my code online in a browser window would be ideal. For the previous several years, the product hasn't undergone much innovation, but I don't think that's necessary.

Easy to use and monitor IaaS

Pros:

- easy to use- easy to deploy- easy to monitor

Cons:

I feel like some times a page will show an error, and then load successfully with no apparent reason

Very useful product

Pros:

API is very easy to use. Easy to navigate the website

Cons:

System goes down occasionally. Also often the timer for the worker will continue counting even after the job succeeds in our system, and will only stop counting when the page is refreshed.

Highly scalable infrastructure, plus fast and easy code releases thanks to Docker integration

Comments: Overall, I am very satisfied with IronWorker and I have recommended it to my friends and colleagues

Pros:

I love that Iron Workers can now be loaded using Docker containers! Speeds up release time exponentially and makes testing significantly easier since my local environment is always the same as the production environment. It is also fairly easy to push workers directly from my code base (PHP) or create crons that are run from the command line.

Cons:

The docker documentation is poor. Each time I needed to launch a worker in a new environment, I needed to talk with Iron support team to help them build the Dockerfile. IronWorker doesn't appear to be primary product of Iron either (that would be IronMQ), so updates to the platform are somewhat infrequent.

Simple set up, very good support, and clean interface

Comments: I like Iron Worker. I don't use all of the features but it has helped a lot with scaling up and streamlining functions in my app.

Pros:

It's simple but scalable, the support is very good. When setting up I had a lot of questions and they respond quickly. I like the interface, the ability to easily see exactly what is contained in each request is great and the API is straightforward.

Cons:

There is not much middle ground on the pricing, it's either an opening price point plan with more limited features, and then the next level jumps up significantly in price. I am using this for an app that is not processing a up huge volume of traffic so I am able to get by with the features on the lowest price point plan, but I would like something offered in the middle that doesn't jump up in price so steeply. I should mention I am using the worker via the Heroku app. The only other negative is that the worker has gotten hung up on me a couple of times but it has only happened minimally and they are quick to resolve once I report it.

DevOps solution to speedup the Software development.

Comments: Iron Worker helps in simplifying the development and focus on the cost cutting. The custom auto scaling helps to set the threshold limit so we should not run out of budget. The opensource server-less computing with help of IronFuncation give the wings to application and help in integrating with the containers .

Pros:

Iron Worker helps in managing the multiple management portfolio to speed up the software development and delivery. It also provides the flexibility while designing the deployment cycle for different level of architecture. Brief metrics help in auditing and identifying area of improvements. Simple Queue Service is much more enhanced and provide the multiple option like sharing the queue and generating the report and analytics to get the area of cost cutting. SQS dashboard help to analysis all the things in the single panel window. Authentication is provided with the token which make the queue share possible without compromising with the security.

Cons:

REST based API configuration is little complex and we need to go through the documentation before implementation as user interface for setup wizard should be user friendly and simple.

Nice but a little expensive

Comments: Overall I was really thankful for it and initially it enabled me to do some things that would have been very, very difficult on other platforms.

Pros:

I used Iron Worker for a couple of automated processes like running subscription payments for the gym software that I built. I found a PHP plugin that got me up and running really quickly and initially the cost was very low. I couldn't have had everything working as quickly and as well as I did with any other platform than Ironworker.

Cons:

Quite honestly it got expensive to the point that it was cost prohibitive. It ended up being cheaper for me to spin up an EC2 instance and run my processes using cron jobs on a virtual server. I haven't checked the pricing recently so it might have changed, but at the time it became too expensive to use.

The ORIGINAL serverless platform

Comments: This is a great solution to the "cloud cron" problem. Scheduling of jobs is easy. No need to have a cloud instance running cron.

Pros:

I love the ability to schedule jobs to run at regular times. Native PHP support is also a great plus.

Cons:

Occasionally jobs stall in the queue and need to be manually pushed through. This has not happened recently.

Effective cloud message queue

Comments: We use Iron Worker for the rise.global SaaS software to handle post score bulletin activities such as data cleaning, email notification queue. It works well out of the box and is very reliable.

Pros:

Easy to set up and create additional message queues Very robust and reliable

Cons:

You can't see messages waiting in the queue

Background Jobs

Comments: We were trying to implement background jobs and orchestrations. Background jobs can still be achieved but for orchestration we had to move to AWS Step functions.

Pros:

Iron IO and Iron Worker are all easy to use. Its also well documented, so quite easy to get started

Cons:

I think its nice with all hardware scaling and all. But from software point of view its small. You dont have too many options or configurations.

Serial processing to parallel processing with Iron Worker

Comments: As per my mini essay above!

Pros:

Iron Worker is a great way to move your workflows from serial to parallel. This tool is actually a bit hard to wrap your head around, but it effectively enables either a large job to be sliced up into smaller, bit-sized chunks and processed concurrently, or can process lots of small tasks concurrently. What this means is that instead of having a bottleneck in your data production line (borrowing a factory analogy), where your output is low because one step takes a long time and thus the ENTIRE production line is limited, you can de-bottleneck it with Iron Worker. For us, this was doing ETL on a huge CSV file. I needed to have lots of data pulled out and standardized, before sending it off on a message queue (we also use Iron's Message Queue [Iron MQ], because of it's push queue feature). This was a huge bottleneck for us, and we were just spinning up more and more resources in AWS to try and push a watermelon through a baseball sized capacity window. Iron Worker was great because we were able to run 20 Workers that EACH worked on pulling the data we needed, organizing it and then placing it onto the message queue, at the same time. To say that our capacity lifted 20x with these 20 workers for our entire flow is not an exaggeration, and returning to our production line analogy, the operating capacity of our production line has greatly increased.

Cons:

The tool is a little tough to understand at first, but really this makes it a bit of a secret as many people don't understand how to employ it and reap the rewards. Worker came originally from a consulting solution to large company problems around these production line issues (I have chatted with the CEO over a call), and it really does a good job at it. Additionally, the docs are a little tricky to pick up at first, but is worth the effort to overcome. I do wish Iron would simplify some of their docs and there is a bit of versioning.

Massively Important Functionality Missing

Pros:

I like the formatting in which logs are displayed through Iron.

Cons:

I can't stand that there is no search functionality in the application. In order to find a log I may have to page through hundreds of times in order to find the one specific log and that's hoping that I don't accidentally miss it while paging through. The fact that I can not search for a specific and known Task Label to retrieve that specific log instance I am looking for, is why I would not recommend Iron to others. The fact that I can only get 7 days worth of logs is also not great for OUR purposes. But the lack of a search feature/function is the #1 issue for Iron in my opinion. There really needs to be an exposed, front end, search feature/function added for Iron to be a more efficient product.

Iron.IO Makes Worker Deployment Simple

Comments: Overall, I throughly enjoy my experience with Iron.IO except for a few caveats.

Pros:

The hybrid service is excellent and allows for greater control for my usage and us very simple to deploy new instances with one command.

Cons:

They Autoscaling is not true autoscaling... It will not automatically add the Security Groups when scaling up. Therefore, I still need to be available to add security.

Iron Worker Review

Pros:

Iron Worker provides our company in depth monitoring capabilities that help our IT support teams quickly identify bottlenecks and reduce Mean Time Restore.

Cons:

Iron Worker provides extensive capabilities and thus there is a learning curve for navigating the tool and finding the data that is needed, but becomes much easier to use once you know how to navigate.

Good service but price model is questionable

Comments: Use baseline service during pilot stage, works well.
With our volume increase, baseline service shows reliability issue and sometime out-of-sync.
So we are suggested to use either enterprise or on-premise deployment. The question is, it's just small part of our overall architecture but either E/P services charged too much.
So our engineer build similar home-made solution within ~3 weeks to replace it.

Pros:

Good functionality set, customer support is fast and expert level

Cons:

The baseline service and enterprise service had a huge gap. Baseline service is high value-of-return but can't guarantee performance and promised behavior. Enterprise service is over-charged comparing with other similar Cloud service.

I use Iron services every day.

Pros:

Very easy to use, the analytics is great option for use to optimize our code, the guarantee cron job is peace of mind to our business.

Cons:

Very short window of period on worker history, so that we have to track and store every tasks with the payload and the result.

Solid service but can get pricey

Comments: Very reliable, stable and quick to learn platform which would be even better if a little cheaper.

Pros:

Easy to get started and upload in my case, PHP packages to do some queue processing.

Cons:

As soon as I threw good amounts of traffic at the service, costs would add up pretty quickly. In the end it was cheaper to run my own queue servers instead of using third party.

Great, solid serverless worker solution

Pros:

I jumped on the IronWorker program in the early days. I like the fact that the solution is mature, solid and that I can deploy worker code and seemingly "forget it" while my workers execute day in and day out. Great "peace of mind".

Cons:

The secret is out on Iron.io so the pricing tiers probably reflect that. I wish there was a pricing tier in between 'Hobby' and 'Launch'. For a long time Iron.io solutions were probably not priced for the great value they provide so those days are probably over but a tier that fits between "weekend hacker" and "startup with some capital" would be great!

It does what I’d expect it to do

Comments: Asynchronous, retried job dispatch such as sending emails

Pros:

It is relatively low effort. Solves the retry to send this to a third part some what simply.

Cons:

Testing is a pain. Getting the correct dependancies installed can feel like a lottery. It feels like it has been abandoned in terms of updates.

Easy to use caching + worker deployment

Pros:

Very easy to integrate the product; highly available service; great performance.

Cons:

Little support and support by email takes a very long time to get a response. Platform availability great but they could improve customer service support and documentation or knowledgebase.

Great Service

Pros:

Iron provides great documentation which makes it simple to get started running workloads on their system that can then scale as far as you need.

Cons:

Some of the offerings overlap with AWS which may be a better choice if you're already using Amazon or Google's clouds.

Iron is Great

Comments: We are using iron to automate and time tasks

Pros:

Iron allows users to easily maintain their automated tasks.

Cons:

Iron allows limited concurrency which does overload the servers.

Makes my job so much easier

Pros:

I love how it easy it makes my job. By automating part of our processes, it saves us so much time!!

Cons:

It was difficult for me to figure out how to go online and change my CC# information. But once I figured it out..it was fine.

Very User friendly

Pros:

For people not technically advanced, it's a very easy to use UI. Easy to find what I'm looking for.

Cons:

There are production level outages occasionally which would cause the queue to stack up. Not a good customer experience.

Excellent

Pros:

All, everything I do I can do it with ease

Cons:

Nothing, I think it's the best software