Azure cracks, AWS strong: Covid-19 stress-tests the cloud • Hacker News Board

Re: Azure cracks, AWS strong: Covid-19 stress-tests the cloud

#11

Post by jscholes » Thu, Apr 02, 2020, 5:30 PM UTC

godtoldmetodoit wrote: post #8

> Since Microsoft’s other businesses are either hardware or office software, with the exception of maybe XBox’s gaming, it generally lacks operational experience in running “always on” services and preparing for unanticipated traffic surges. Uh, as a former Microsoft equivalent of a SRE this is a utterly ridiculous statement. I was in the Windows division on a team handling all the incoming telemetry - we definitely…

Yeah, really weird statement for the author to make, particularly given that at the top of the very same section they list a bunch of cloud-based MS products.

Re: Azure cracks, AWS strong: Covid-19 stress-tests the cloud

#12

Post by sokoloff » Thu, Apr 02, 2020, 5:33 PM UTC

godtoldmetodoit wrote: post #8

> Since Microsoft’s other businesses are either hardware or office software, with the exception of maybe XBox’s gaming, it generally lacks operational experience in running “always on” services and preparing for unanticipated traffic surges. Uh, as a former Microsoft equivalent of a SRE this is a utterly ridiculous statement. I was in the Windows division on a team handling all the incoming telemetry - we definitely…

Office 365 was derisively referred to as “Office 360” with some good reason years ago. (I use it and the uptime has gotten noticeably better. That it could get noticeably better is the problem.)

Re: Azure cracks, AWS strong: Covid-19 stress-tests the cloud

#13

Post by MrZongle2 » Thu, Apr 02, 2020, 5:39 PM UTC

rjbwork wrote: post #9

altoidaltoid wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

and have 6% representation in the Senate...

Yes, that's how the Senate works.

More specifically: every state has 2 US Senators, whereas Representatives in the US House of Representatives are allocated to states based upon population.

Re: Azure cracks, AWS strong: Covid-19 stress-tests the cloud

#14

Post by Havoc » Thu, Apr 02, 2020, 5:41 PM UTC

Doesn't seem like a particularly balanced article. Plus some downright bizarre statements. GCP is "not big enough to be stress tested on the same level."??? Even smaller operations are subject to stress proportionately and I'm using a hell of a lot of google hangouts conferences...

Re: Azure cracks, AWS strong: Covid-19 stress-tests the cloud

#15

Post by virtue3 » Thu, Apr 02, 2020, 5:41 PM UTC

altoidaltoid wrote: post #6

madhadron wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By population, New York + California + New Jersey is 22% of the USA.

and have 6% representation in the Senate...

That's what the house is for.

The senate is there so the larger states don't trample over, say, Idaho. Majority rules does NOT work for the USA. You have to think of us as the EU with member votes for each country (country being state). This nation is not supposed to be about the federal government, it all went to shit around 9/11 and has continued to do so.

Re: Azure cracks, AWS strong: Covid-19 stress-tests the cloud

#16

Post by virtue3 » Thu, Apr 02, 2020, 5:44 PM UTC

altoidaltoid wrote: post #6

madhadron wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By population, New York + California + New Jersey is 22% of the USA.

and have 6% representation in the Senate...

NY + NJ + CA are represented by 21% of the house.

Re: Azure cracks, AWS strong: Covid-19 stress-tests the cloud

#17

Post by quaquaqua1 » Thu, Apr 02, 2020, 5:46 PM UTC

sokoloff wrote: post #12

godtoldmetodoit wrote: post #8

> Since Microsoft’s other businesses are either hardware or office software, with the exception of maybe XBox’s gaming, it generally lacks operational experience in running “always on” services and preparing for unanticipated traffic surges. Uh, as a former Microsoft equivalent of a SRE this is a utterly ridiculous statement. I was in the Windows division on a team handling all the incoming telemetry - we definitely…

Office 365 was derisively referred to as “Office 360” with some good reason years ago. (I use it and the uptime has gotten noticeably better. That it could get noticeably better is the problem.)

HAH this has been my experience as well. And the system often times out even when the main screen is "accessible".

Re: Azure cracks, AWS strong: Covid-19 stress-tests the cloud

#18

Post by smt88 » Thu, Apr 02, 2020, 5:46 PM UTC

Havoc wrote: post #14

Doesn't seem like a particularly balanced article. Plus some downright bizarre statements. GCP is "not big enough to be stress tested on the same level."??? Even smaller operations are subject to stress proportionately and I'm using a hell of a lot of google hangouts conferences...

Do major Google services even run on GCP? My understanding was that they don't...

Re: Azure cracks, AWS strong: Covid-19 stress-tests the cloud

#19

Post by TallGuyShort » Thu, Apr 02, 2020, 5:47 PM UTC

godtoldmetodoit wrote: post #8

> Since Microsoft’s other businesses are either hardware or office software, with the exception of maybe XBox’s gaming, it generally lacks operational experience in running “always on” services and preparing for unanticipated traffic surges. Uh, as a former Microsoft equivalent of a SRE this is a utterly ridiculous statement. I was in the Windows division on a team handling all the incoming telemetry - we definitely…

>> we definitely knew how to prepare for traffic surges and keep our services "always on"

Okay, but as a heavy customer of AWS for 10 years and Azure & GCP for 6 years... there's some very valid criticism of the capacity planning and elasticity.

I hit capacity, provisioning and scaling issues all the time in Azure regions. And many times the cause is not obvious because most services seem to be unaware that the resources are exhausted, and fail with seemingly unrelated errors and partial failure.

edit: and to be fair, I'm not saying it's easy to build something like Azure or that I would do better. And I have a huge list of cases where Amazon's product engineering is terrible compared to Azure's. But... the problems I've seen all week in the UK aren't imaginary. I've had no such problems on Amazon.

Re: Azure cracks, AWS strong: Covid-19 stress-tests the cloud

#20

Post by omegaworks » Thu, Apr 02, 2020, 5:52 PM UTC

virtue3 wrote: post #15

altoidaltoid wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

and have 6% representation in the Senate...

That's what the house is for. The senate is there so the larger states don't trample over, say, Idaho. Majority rules does NOT work for the USA. You have to think of us as the EU with member votes for each country (country being state). This nation is not supposed to be about the federal government, it all went to shit around 9/11 and has continued to do so.

Even the House is slowly becoming less representative. The number of seats was capped at 435 back in the Taft era and states have rarely lost seats since[1].

With the 2020 Census likely in disarray due to both the Coronavirus and this administration's clear, documented intent to bias it "to Republicans and non-Hispanic whites,"[2] the crisis of representation will only worsen.

1. https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/05/31/u-s-populat...

2. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/30/us/census-citizenship-que...