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Ask HN: Azure has run out of compute – anyone else affected?

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Re: Ask HN: Azure has run out of compute – anyone else affected?

#271

Post by askvictor »

astrostl wrote: post #175
xwowsersx wrote: post #10

Oof, that sucks and I feel for you. That said... > setting up in a new region would be complicated for us. Sounds to me like you've got a few weeks to get this working. Deprioritize all other work, get everyone working on this little DevOps/Infra project. You should've been multi-region from the outset, if not multi-cloud. When using the public cloud, we do tend to take it all for granted and don't even think about t…

"Multi-cloud from the outset" is probably the single-worst generic cloud advice that I think anyone could be given. In professional cloud consulting the rule of thumb is to do one cloud with excellence until you even think about another one. And even that is really just kicking the conversational can, as both becoming excellent and actually needing multi-cloud combined is one-in-a-billion.

On top of which, startups often don't have that luxury; you have often need to ruthlessly prioritise your effort.

Re: Ask HN: Azure has run out of compute – anyone else affected?

#272

Post by jiggawatts »

janober wrote: post #56
websap wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it that much cheaper for you to build a new region on Azure versus getting setup on AWS? If you rely on Kubernetes for orchestration and have minimal cloud API dependency, it may be worth that evaluating this option. Also, do you have a TAM associated with your account? Are you just going through regular support channels? Can they deliver different instance types (not sure what the Azure parallel is), can they del…

We already tried to push Microsoft, sadly have they been not very helpful. Still trying to get in contact with somebody that can actually make a difference. After all, are we also not asking for a hundred machines. Can really not imagine that they can not somehow make the resources we require available.

Some tricks you can try is to switch to a different SKU. Most Azure databases have different generations of underlying compute. They may be out of just on model. Try a different one.

Similarly, just keep trying to change the size. Often it’ll go through when someone else decommissions something.

Re: Ask HN: Azure has run out of compute – anyone else affected?

#273

Post by SgtBastard »

29athrowaway wrote: post #256
jiggawatts wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My experience is the opposite: AWS has more features on paper but most of them exist only to tick a checkbox. Azure has more integrations between their offerings, as well as Azure Active Directory, and Microsoft 365.

And Active Directory integrates horribly with everything outside Microsoft.

Azure Active Directory has both SAML and OpenID Connect endpoints… what’s missing?

Re: Ask HN: Azure has run out of compute – anyone else affected?

#274

Post by d3ckard »

ghayes wrote: post #186
astrostl wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Multi-cloud from the outset" is probably the single-worst generic cloud advice that I think anyone could be given. In professional cloud consulting the rule of thumb is to do one cloud with excellence until you even think about another one. And even that is really just kicking the conversational can, as both becoming excellent and actually needing multi-cloud combined is one-in-a-billion.

Completely agree, though certain aspects, such as running on k8s or Docker might make it easier to switch if you ever decide to, versus say, being tightly coupled with many bespoke cloud products.

Or you could just deploy on metal, which will be cheaper and sufficient for vast majority of cases. Plus you can always migrate to VMs with relatively low hassle.

Re: Ask HN: Azure has run out of compute – anyone else affected?

#275

Post by jiggawatts »

One of the biggest benefits of k8s is that you can easily mix in pools of different hardware types without a “rebuild”.

Something to try in scenarios like this is to add the “weird and wonderful” VM SKUs that are less popular and may still have capacity remaining.

For example, the HPC series like HBv2 or HBv3. Also try Lsv3 or Lasv3.

Sure they’re a bit more expensive, but you only have use them until April.

Re: Ask HN: Azure has run out of compute – anyone else affected?

#277

Post by indoorskier »

marcinzm wrote: post #225
Twirrim wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's worth pointing out that every cloud is the same when it comes to capacity / capacity risk. They all apply a lot of time and effort to figuring out the optimal amount of capacity to order based on track record of both customer demand and supply chain satisfaction. Too much capacity is money spent getting no return, up front capex, ongoing opex, physical space in facilities etc. On cloud scales (averaged out over…

In my experience there are differences between clouds so while all have the same basic problem in practice some may be better than others. I've never had issues getting GPUs on AWS but GCP constantly has issues with GPU/TPU capacity.

Is this region dependent? In us-east I can’t get them to approve a quota for GPU instance families (G,P) for anything more than 4 CPUs. At one point they rejected my request citing “unprecedented demand”. Of course this is small time, just my personal account.

It is true I can get an instance most of the time, but not if I need >16GiB GPU memory.

Re: Ask HN: Azure has run out of compute – anyone else affected?

#278

Post by femto113 »

Twirrim wrote: post #261
more_corn wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All cloud providers are NOT equal here. Amazon over-provisions and sells the excess capacity as spot instances.

So does google, so does azure etc. etc. https://cloud.google.com/spot-vms , https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/products/virtual-machines/... Spot instances exist just to try to turn over-provisions in to not a complete loss. You're at least making some money from your mistake. edit: You should consider "spot instances" in general to be a failure as far as a cloud provider is concerned. It means you've got your guesses…

Cloud providers aren't guessing at demand to plan capacity, they're literally building new data centers and then wheeling new racks into them as fast as they physically can (short-term decisions are more likely made at the other end, e.g. when to retire old systems, not add new ones). AWS was born out of the fact that Amazon's own compute needs are inherently variable so to meet peak demand they had to "over-provision" compared to average demand--this in turn meant they had a lot of excess compute power most of the time. At the point when Amazon still was a dominant consumer of AWS, spot instances were actually a deliberate convenience to Amazon, since it meant AWS could monetize resources while still ensuring Amazon could claim them instantly when needed (later they added a two minute warning, but early on they could literally disappear at any moment, and regularly did).

Re: Ask HN: Azure has run out of compute – anyone else affected?

#279

Post by xwowsersx »

astrostl wrote: post #175
xwowsersx wrote: post #10

Oof, that sucks and I feel for you. That said... > setting up in a new region would be complicated for us. Sounds to me like you've got a few weeks to get this working. Deprioritize all other work, get everyone working on this little DevOps/Infra project. You should've been multi-region from the outset, if not multi-cloud. When using the public cloud, we do tend to take it all for granted and don't even think about t…

"Multi-cloud from the outset" is probably the single-worst generic cloud advice that I think anyone could be given. In professional cloud consulting the rule of thumb is to do one cloud with excellence until you even think about another one. And even that is really just kicking the conversational can, as both becoming excellent and actually needing multi-cloud combined is one-in-a-billion.

Who are you quoting? I said "multi-region from the outset" and later acknowledged that multi-cloud would probably be overkill.

Re: Ask HN: Azure has run out of compute – anyone else affected?

#280

Post by iso1631 »

ComputerGuru wrote: post #224
z3t4 wrote: post #34

I think there is some general rule in business that you should not depend on a provider that if they lost your business it would be less then one percent of their revenue. Or be ready when they drop the guillotine.

For anyone getting started, that means no dependencies at all. Even colocating would be out of the question, according to your metric.

In the olden days you use to buy computers from Dell and were well under 1% of their revenue. But if they dropped you as a customer, you bought them from HP instead, no problem.
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