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Is Amazon's cloud service too big to fail?

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Re: Is Amazon's cloud service too big to fail?

#151

Post by ams6110 »

kirykl wrote: post #103
awkwarddaturtle wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's amazing how the promise of "decentralized" internet has turned into centralized datacenters. P2P networks, each computer being a "data store" on the internet, no one entity can control data, etc to modern day centralized cloud where a couple of players control so much. There has been a cultural shift. In the early 2000s, the idea of storing your data somewhere else would have been weird. But now, people don't ca…

I was pretty befuddled when my company IT switched from self hosted storage to commercial cloud accounts for incredibly sensitive info. I think the reasoning was cloud accounts are easier for the masses than mapping a drive and accessing over VPN

Also someone else to blame when the sensitive info is exposed.

Re: Is Amazon's cloud service too big to fail?

#152

Post by kondro »

cjsuk wrote: post #73
kondro wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One region isn't going to be effected by fire. And AWS have dozens of regions. They're even managed as separate units by separate people. You'll notice there's never been a large, multi-region outage of AWS.

Yet. Some of the traditional apps we host are vulnerable hypervisor failure be that rack, DC or region.

Hardware always fails. That's why AWS has so many availability zones, regions and services that let you take easy advantage of HA across them.

Re: Is Amazon's cloud service too big to fail?

#153

Post by patta54 »

falsedan wrote: post #148
patta54 wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I warn other developers at my company about this. When new projects spin up they're often very excited about using new Amazon services and will make any excuse to choose an AWS product over a stable open source solution. If I were a manager, I'd be very worried over the vendor lock-in. I don't understand the preference for AWS over open source in many cases. Their services are "reliable", but they often have minute r…

> "But RabbitMQ might crash! We don't have to worry about that with AWS!" I can confirm that not only can RabbitMQ get into an unusable state, it will do so extremely rapidly and with little warning unless you sit an engineer or two on it to monitor and manage the incoming/dead letter rates.

So then you swap in another one of the dozen open source message buses out there.

Re: Is Amazon's cloud service too big to fail?

#154

Post by aidenn0 »

darkr wrote: post #144
savoytruffle wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

irrelevant points are "moot", not "mute"

I think you mean "moo". It's like a cow's opinion, you know, it just doesn't matter. It's "moo".

Have I been living with him for too long, or did that all just make sense?

Re: Is Amazon's cloud service too big to fail?

#155

Post by myusernameisok »

matthewrudy wrote: post #97
myusernameisok wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Especially because AWS regions are broken up into multiple availability zones (data centres in the same area). So taking out a single data centre won't do much if the AWS customers have correctly designed their systems for high-availability (ie having redundant instances in other AZs/regions with their data backed up elsewhere).

A single availability zone can be spread across many physical data centres. According to this rackspace article, the largest AZ has 5 data centres. https://blog.rackspace.com/aws-101-regions-availability-zone...

Take this for what it is - I'm a software developeer who works in the cloud, not a cloud expert.

The abstraction behind AZs is what every AZ counts for at least 1 data centre. So for every region there is at least 2 AZs, and every AZ means at least 1 data centre (or 5 in your link).

This just means it's harder to take out a whole region by destroying individual data cetnres. Since most regions consist of 2-5 AZ, and AZs consist of 5+ data centres, that means destroying dozens of data centres.

Re: Is Amazon's cloud service too big to fail?

#156

Post by goldenkey »

[deleted] wrote: post #136
earthboundkid wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, this goes to show that there are ~zero terrorists in the US. The US has an almost infinite supply of soft targets, but since 9/11 there have been no attacks of any consequence. There have been a few minor attacks like Boston bombers, but those have all been laughably amateurish. The US has no terrorism problem. In 1979, the Irish killed the Queen's uncle in law, and in 1984, they blew up a hotel where Thatcher w…

[deleted]

Miturban Izderti?

Re: Is Amazon's cloud service too big to fail?

#157

Post by dx034 »

groby_b wrote: post #122
fenwick67 wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If AWS went down hard, it would be more than just "I can't watch Netflix". Some people wouldn't be able to do their computer work, send receive emails, others might not receive their paychecks or be able to pay bills.

That still ranks lower than "sewage treatment gone". Maslow's pyramid still applies. The sewage plant hits both physiological needs and safety needs (it's a pretty dire health threat quickly). AWS has weak tendrils to financial safety, but mostly affects layers above that.

Receiving your paycheck could be worse. There are ways to deal with water outages. Worst case you let sewers overflow into rivers, as discussed in another comment. If salaries of large companies remain unpaid this would be far more severe for a lot of people.

Re: Is Amazon's cloud service too big to fail?

#158

Post by dx034 »

arethuza wrote: post #47
gaius wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can live without Netflix much longer than you can without a flushing toilet, is the point I'm making. Yet we don't have armed guards patrolling the sewageworks... It's a matter of priority how finite security personnel are deployed.

I used to work at a company that had a large cage in a local data center - one of the other cages in the same room was apparently for the local police force (we weren't supposed to know this!). It wouldn't surprise me if those police systems have moved, or are moving, to Azure or AWS data centers.

Police would probably still work fine without data centers for a few days. As long as they can communicate and 911 works, they can do most of their job in the short run.

It's much worse if benefits or paychecks don't get paid. For many people that means that they won't be able to buy groceries as soon as a few days later. Not the standard HN crowd, but many people depend on regular paychecks and can be in trouble if it comes even one day late.

Re: Is Amazon's cloud service too big to fail?

#159

Post by dx034 »

myusernameisok wrote: post #95
BurningFrog wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Knocking out all of AWS is very different from knocking out a single data center.

Especially because AWS regions are broken up into multiple availability zones (data centres in the same area). So taking out a single data centre won't do much if the AWS customers have correctly designed their systems for high-availability (ie having redundant instances in other AZs/regions with their data backed up elsewhere).

The question is how load would behave if more than 1 AZ fails for several days. If 2 out of 5 AZs in US-East are down for a week, everyone would distribute to the other 3 (and probably on all three to be sure). I'm not sure if they have enough spare capacity to handle that. The AZ model is designed for single failures and failures that are a few hours, not days.

Of course just speculation, I have no knowledge about DR plans at Amazon.

Re: Is Amazon's cloud service too big to fail?

#160

Post by dx034 »

erentz wrote: post #143
peteretep wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you wanted to blow something up to make the west suffer, an AWS datacenter would probably be a pretty good target. I wonder at what point that becomes a legitimate national security concern, and the government steps in to provide protection.

A great soft target is electricity grid. The timelines for manufacturing large transformers for example can be many months and they usually don't have as much redundancy as you would expect. A semi coordinated attack against the grid, using dynamite to take out a number of pylons along main HV lines, easily accessible because they're out in rural areas. Combine with a number of sticks thrown over fences at transforme…

The economist had a pretty good article about that. It dealt with electromagnetic impulses, as those could take out several at once:

http://www.economist.com/news/world-if/21724908-huge-potenti...

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