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Introducing Cloud Spanner, a Global Database Service

cloudplatform.googleblog.com

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Re: Introducing Cloud Spanner, a Global Database Service

#251

Post by tscanausa »

sandGorgon wrote: post #208
craigkerstiens wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Helpful feedback, we do have a development plan for $99, but it's not really intended for production workloads. If you only have 10 GB of data we'd heavily recommend going with something like RDS or Heroku Postgres. At that amount of data single node Postgres works great.

RDS is not single node - its multi-AZ replicated. And that's what we are paying 300$ instead of 99$ for. Imagine.. RDS is literally the ONLY place where you can buy a 10 GB data multi-AZ replicated, snapshotted and managed postgresql. Its pretty much a monopoly, now that Google seems to have officially closed the book on ever supporting postgresql.

> now that Google seems to have officially closed the book on ever supporting postgresql.

I would be hesitant to say that this is a fact.

Re: Introducing Cloud Spanner, a Global Database Service

#252

Post by floatboth »

nodesocket wrote: post #246

So does Cloud Spanner replace the existing Google Cloud SQL offering [1]? What are the pros/cons of each? [1] https://cloud.google.com/sql/

That offering is just normal managed MySQL, the new thing is a custom built database for huge scalability, much more expensive of course.

Re: Introducing Cloud Spanner, a Global Database Service

#253

Post by dzhiurgis »

cobookman wrote: post #214
abalone wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's vague. AWS also powers huge websites and Amazon is recommending Aurora as the "default choice" for most workloads.[1] There are certainly significant architectural differences but I would say we can definitely make a direct practical comparison. [1] http://www.computerworld.com/article/2953299/cloud-computing...

If Aurora powers huge websites, spanner is for ginormous websites. Think a multiplier to netflix's database needs.

Curious to know what are Netflix's needs for relational database?

Doesn't strike me as a business with complex logic.

Re: Introducing Cloud Spanner, a Global Database Service

#254

Post by user5994461 »

aanm1988 wrote: post #236
user5994461 wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Amazon: Create usual services and sell them. Google: Make unique products that push the boundaries of what was previously thought possible. Amazon: Don't care about inefficiencies and usage. Inefficiencies can be handled by charging more to the clients, usage doesn't matter because the users are mostly the clients and they don't feel their pain. Google: Had to make all their core technologies efficient, performant, s…

> Google: Had to make all their core technologies efficient, performant, scalable and maintainable or they couldn't sustain their business. Which Amazon totally didn't have to do with their firehose of cash?

Google has to support Google, Youtube and many of the most resources intensive services in existence on Earth. They needed to be "efficient enough" to operate that, meaning incredibly efficient.

Amazon runs nothing, it's an outsourcing firm. They needed to make services "good enough" to be sold. If a service is somewhat inefficient, it just charges the clients more to cover the costs.

Technologies reflect the business they were created in.

Re: Introducing Cloud Spanner, a Global Database Service

#255

Post by nodesocket »

floatboth wrote: post #252
nodesocket wrote: post #246

So does Cloud Spanner replace the existing Google Cloud SQL offering [1]? What are the pros/cons of each? [1] https://cloud.google.com/sql/

That offering is just normal managed MySQL, the new thing is a custom built database for huge scalability, much more expensive of course.

Right that's what I was getting at, a typical web app does not and probably should not start with Cloud Spanner (ignoring the fact it costs $0.90 per hour per node). Cloud Spanner seems like it is attacking the big data market correct?

Re: Introducing Cloud Spanner, a Global Database Service

#256

Post by tekoyaki »

bdarnell wrote: post #189
karlding wrote: post #47

I wonder how this will affect adoption of CockroachDB [1], which was inspired by Spanner and supposedly an open source equivalent. I'd imagine that Spanner is a rather compelling choice, since they don't have to host it themselves. As far as I know, CockroachDB currently does not support providing CockroachDB as a service (but it is on their roadmap) [2]. [1] https://www.cockroachlabs.com/docs/frequently-asked-questi…

(Cockroach Labs CTO here) Google launching Spanner is generally a positive thing for our industry and our product. It's more proof that what we're aiming for is possible and that there's demand for it. We expect that in five years, all tech companies will be deploying technology like ours. One of the big differences is that Spanner only uses SQL for read-only operations, with a custom API for writes. We use standard…

Exciting times on the horizon for Cloud technologies. Godspeed.

Re: Introducing Cloud Spanner, a Global Database Service

#257

Post by boulos »

jedberg wrote: post #151
hueving wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>and release products that let you do things "the old way" while hiding the details in an abstraction. However, by 'abstracting' this away, you're not being forced to think about failure domains. If there is ever a massive country-wide connectivity break to the wider Internet (feasible for lots of people inside censored countries), you'll be pretty pissed when you can't use the DB services for your servers in the Goo…

Exactly my point. I would say I personally prefer the Amazon way of forcing you to think about these things.

I'd encourage you to read the F1 paper and the Spanner paper if you haven't already. The big thing that stood out to me is that Google started that way (with BigTable) where you'd roll your own availability and transactions. It didn't go well.

That's the motivation behind both Spanner and F1: take the experience of how painful it is to do transactions on a Regional or Global level, and never make individual teams do it again.

I see it a bit like "Don't roll your own crypto". Clearly some people are exempted from it, but you better be able to tell me why you get an exception.

Disclosure: I work on Google Cloud and want you to pay for Spanner :).

Re: Introducing Cloud Spanner, a Global Database Service

#258

Post by aanm1988 »

user5994461 wrote: post #254
aanm1988 wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Google: Had to make all their core technologies efficient, performant, scalable and maintainable or they couldn't sustain their business. Which Amazon totally didn't have to do with their firehose of cash?

Google has to support Google, Youtube and many of the most resources intensive services in existence on Earth. They needed to be "efficient enough" to operate that, meaning incredibly efficient. Amazon runs nothing, it's an outsourcing firm. They needed to make services "good enough" to be sold. If a service is somewhat inefficient, it just charges the clients more to cover the costs. Technologies reflect the busines…

> Amazon runs nothing, it's an outsourcing firm.

What the fuck are you talking about. It's one thing to say AWS services are "good enough" but "Amazon runs nothing" is a ridiculous statement.

Re: Introducing Cloud Spanner, a Global Database Service

#259

Post by euyyn »

ocdtrekkie wrote: post #158
scarmig wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The absolute level of computation available isn't changing at the consumer level. What's happening for the next decade is the destruction of businesses hosting their own IT infrastructure and moving it to a couple of core centers. So, the computational "Gini index" is increasing, but no one is being thrown into computational poverty.

The parent comment doesn't seem to specify "consumer level" and the loss of businesses having their own infrastructure is equally troubling. Everyone is putting a lot of eggs in a very small number of baskets.

That's like being sad about the emergence of banks, because everybody's money is being kept in a small number of vaults instead of under each one's mattress.

Re: Introducing Cloud Spanner, a Global Database Service

#260

Post by discodave »

scarmig wrote: post #128
tazjin wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The main sales pitch of Cloud Spanner is Google's network infrastructure. No startup will be able to replicate that anytime soon, a lot of time (and money) has been put into it by a lot of people over a long time.

Curious: is there any company in the world that could replicate its breadth, performance, and reliability in the next decade? Could any government? Has any government? My impression is that, infrastructure wise, Google is genuinely in a class of size one.

AWS, they just don't talk publicly about it so much.
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