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Spotify moves its back end to Google Cloud

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Re: Spotify moves its back end to Google Cloud

#81

Post by caleblloyd »

waffle_ss wrote: post #16

I tried Google Container Engine (GKE) and really liked it - it's the best cloud solution for deploying Docker to production in my opinion, mainly due to its use of Kubernetes. Unfortunately in my Web apps I make heavy use of Postgres-specific features, and since Cloud SQL only supports MySQL, Google Cloud is a total non-starter for me. So for now I'm on AWS, using Postgres on RDS and deploying containers with ECS. EC…

Google Cloud SQL is no replacement for Amazon RDS in my opinion. Cloud SQL instances run outside of your project's private network, so connections from Google Compute Engine have to be over a Public IP. This means accepting connections from any host (insecure) or whitelisting each Google Compute Engine VM's IP address (pain in the ass).

I've resorted to running my own MySQL instance inside of Google Compute Engine and setting up replication and off-site backups myself. It's definitely not as convenient as Amazon RDS, but the rest of Google Cloud has some great features like Google Container Engine.

Would love to see an RDS-like solution from Google that runs in a project's private network and supports more than just MySQL.

Re: Spotify moves its back end to Google Cloud

#82

Post by dsacco »

crb wrote: post #50
waffle_ss wrote: post #16

I tried Google Container Engine (GKE) and really liked it - it's the best cloud solution for deploying Docker to production in my opinion, mainly due to its use of Kubernetes. Unfortunately in my Web apps I make heavy use of Postgres-specific features, and since Cloud SQL only supports MySQL, Google Cloud is a total non-starter for me. So for now I'm on AWS, using Postgres on RDS and deploying containers with ECS. EC…

There are vendors running managed Postgres services on Google Cloud Platform, like ElephantSQL [1] and Aiven [2]. And you can of course run your own on GCE, even to the extent of 24/7 commercial support - you can run EnterpriseDB from Cloud Launcher [3]. And, you can also run Kubernetes on AWS - we have a group focused on making sure it's an excellent experience. I work for Google Cloud Platform; ping me if you'd lik…

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Re: Spotify moves its back end to Google Cloud

#83

Post by boulos »

Hermel wrote: post #72
latchkey wrote: post #35

What Google Cloud needs is a better sales story. AWS consistently beats out Google in this respect. This story is welcomed and there should be more success stories published like this. My business is a heavy GC user (AppEngine, Datastore, CloudStorage, BQ, ComputeEngine, ManagedVM) and I couldn't imagine achieving what we have achieved in such a short amount of time on any other platform. We (myself and another guy)…

Are you happy with the performance of AppEngine? I have tried it last summer and was quite disappointed. CPU-bound programs that completed in a few seconds on my own computer took about ten times as long on AppEngine despite similar nominal specs (GHz and RAM).

If you like the App Engine model, but want a "full computer worth of horsepower", you might want to consider our "Managed VM" environment built on top of Compute Engine: https://cloud.google.com/appengine/docs/managed-vms/

Disclaimer: I work on Compute Engine.

Re: Spotify moves its back end to Google Cloud

#84

Post by seanp2k2 »

caleblloyd wrote: post #81
waffle_ss wrote: post #16

I tried Google Container Engine (GKE) and really liked it - it's the best cloud solution for deploying Docker to production in my opinion, mainly due to its use of Kubernetes. Unfortunately in my Web apps I make heavy use of Postgres-specific features, and since Cloud SQL only supports MySQL, Google Cloud is a total non-starter for me. So for now I'm on AWS, using Postgres on RDS and deploying containers with ECS. EC…

Google Cloud SQL is no replacement for Amazon RDS in my opinion. Cloud SQL instances run outside of your project's private network, so connections from Google Compute Engine have to be over a Public IP. This means accepting connections from any host (insecure) or whitelisting each Google Compute Engine VM's IP address (pain in the ass). I've resorted to running my own MySQL instance inside of Google Compute Engine an…

So, basically something like AWS's VPC? Given that it took them a few years to get that right even with tons of people asking for it, I'm not super optimistic that Google could match it any time soon. I'd love to be wrong!

Re: Spotify moves its back end to Google Cloud

#85

Post by waffle_ss »

crb wrote: post #50
waffle_ss wrote: post #16

I tried Google Container Engine (GKE) and really liked it - it's the best cloud solution for deploying Docker to production in my opinion, mainly due to its use of Kubernetes. Unfortunately in my Web apps I make heavy use of Postgres-specific features, and since Cloud SQL only supports MySQL, Google Cloud is a total non-starter for me. So for now I'm on AWS, using Postgres on RDS and deploying containers with ECS. EC…

There are vendors running managed Postgres services on Google Cloud Platform, like ElephantSQL [1] and Aiven [2]. And you can of course run your own on GCE, even to the extent of 24/7 commercial support - you can run EnterpriseDB from Cloud Launcher [3]. And, you can also run Kubernetes on AWS - we have a group focused on making sure it's an excellent experience. I work for Google Cloud Platform; ping me if you'd lik…

> There are vendors running managed Postgres services on Google Cloud Platform, like ElephantSQL

I did check out ElephantSQL but my pricing needs are somewhere between their $100 and $20 plans and there seems to be a lack of configurability compared to RDS's parameter groups (e.g. enabling extensions).

> you can also run Kubernetes on AWS

I've had success turning up Kubernetes clusters on AWS for demo purposes, but I really don't want to manage a k8s cluster myself (anecdotes I've read about etcd failures / partitions especially scare me). Also I use Terraform for provisioning, and kube-up.sh is not something that fits into that paradigm. I've also made the mistake running kube-up.sh with the wrong arguments after a previous invocation that had created a cluster, which caused it to try and create a new cluster, which wiped the local cache of the previous cluster I had made, making kube-down.sh unable to automatically clean up the old cluster (so I had to do it manually in the AWS console).

The other thing I tried was the kube-aws CoreOS tool, which is nice, but it comes baked with a 90-day expiration due to TLS certificate expiration, so I'd have to set up some sort of PKI process to make that production-ready. All in all just too much work for a single person trying to deploy a small number of containers for small to medium sized projects; if I was a medium-sized company with hundreds of containers and some dedicated DevOps resources maybe it would be worth it, but for myself I'd prefer a turn-key solution like ECS or GKE.

Re: Spotify moves its back end to Google Cloud

#86

Post by merb »

crb wrote: post #50
waffle_ss wrote: post #16

I tried Google Container Engine (GKE) and really liked it - it's the best cloud solution for deploying Docker to production in my opinion, mainly due to its use of Kubernetes. Unfortunately in my Web apps I make heavy use of Postgres-specific features, and since Cloud SQL only supports MySQL, Google Cloud is a total non-starter for me. So for now I'm on AWS, using Postgres on RDS and deploying containers with ECS. EC…

There are vendors running managed Postgres services on Google Cloud Platform, like ElephantSQL [1] and Aiven [2]. And you can of course run your own on GCE, even to the extent of 24/7 commercial support - you can run EnterpriseDB from Cloud Launcher [3]. And, you can also run Kubernetes on AWS - we have a group focused on making sure it's an excellent experience. I work for Google Cloud Platform; ping me if you'd lik…

You can't compare that to postgresql on aws. especially not when it comes to pricing.

Re: Spotify moves its back end to Google Cloud

#87

Post by shockzzz »

vgt wrote: post #36
shockzzz wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Kind of. We all know that companies cut deals with providers in exchange for blog posts, tweets, and other sorts of promotion. I'm always wary of posts like these, especially when they lack detail or awareness of competing products.

I think if Spotify dressed down Google Cloud Platform competition, no matter the merit, there would be many more complaints (ex. see comments on this technical post https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11029032 ). Spotify did say that they really enjoy specific aspects of Google Cloud Platform, through their own engineering blog. Spotify engineers have also been independently vocal on Twitter. Netflix has been very s…

Right, I don't think they have to directly attack anyone. It's just a matter of tradeoffs - here are the things the Google Cloud gets us, here's a specific example that hones it in, and here's why that's critical to our business.

At the moment, the blog post just says, "Yay we moved to the cloud" and threw out some marketing buzzwords. It should be beyond a shadow of doubt that they got a lower price as a result. That's ok - now give us the details! On a product level, what made Google Cloud so compelling that you were willing to move your entire infrastructure to it? That question really wasn't answered, and is really the biggest thing, as a customer, I'd want.

Right now, I'd have to call Spotify as a reference in order to do to get that answer, which again allows them bring the price lower. Not necessarily democratize the information.

Re: Spotify moves its back end to Google Cloud

#88

Post by boulos »

kuschku wrote: post #77
boulos wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We offer paid support for Cloud ( http://cloud.google.com/support ) that let you trade off responsive time (e.g., 4 hours vs 1) for price. The support personnel (and engineering!) also do best effort scanning of Stack Overflow, Server Fault, and per-product mailing lists. You can get links to those here: https://cloud.google.com/support/#community . Disclaimer: I work on Compute Engine, but not in Support (though I d…

So, you ask your paying customers to pay extra – not to get support, but to increase the chance of getting support in time? That’s... an interesting business model.

Paying more for more support cases or more urgent responses is standard practice for support plans. For example, here's the AWS Support comparison page:

https://aws.amazon.com/premiumsupport/compare-plans/

which has similar tiers of support.

Re: Spotify moves its back end to Google Cloud

#89

Post by seanp2k2 »

crb wrote: post #50
waffle_ss wrote: post #16

I tried Google Container Engine (GKE) and really liked it - it's the best cloud solution for deploying Docker to production in my opinion, mainly due to its use of Kubernetes. Unfortunately in my Web apps I make heavy use of Postgres-specific features, and since Cloud SQL only supports MySQL, Google Cloud is a total non-starter for me. So for now I'm on AWS, using Postgres on RDS and deploying containers with ECS. EC…

There are vendors running managed Postgres services on Google Cloud Platform, like ElephantSQL [1] and Aiven [2]. And you can of course run your own on GCE, even to the extent of 24/7 commercial support - you can run EnterpriseDB from Cloud Launcher [3]. And, you can also run Kubernetes on AWS - we have a group focused on making sure it's an excellent experience. I work for Google Cloud Platform; ping me if you'd lik…

IMO one of the benefits of a platform service is that you get the whole platform from one vendor, so if you're having some problem, you can work with one vendor to sort it out. Trying to get Google support to work with a 3rd-party vendor and my hypothetical company on an issue sounds like a nightmare. There are already many other options for platform services which provide e.g. Everything you'd need to run a Rails app in dev and prod, so that's where the bar is.

Re: Spotify moves its back end to Google Cloud

#90

Post by lukasm »

Splines wrote: post #64
lukasm wrote: post #30

Isn’t it risky to move to competition's infrastructure?

Not really - many people rely on Google Cloud and if Google made it harder for Spotify to compete (via, say, raising prices for Google Cloud for them), they'd have to be pretty specific to Spotify to not cause other customers to move to AWS or Azure. Spotify has much bigger risks in their licensing deals.

cost it not a problem and google wouldn't do it. I'm talking about stealing recommendation algorithms and models. Have a peek new features before release etc.
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