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Migrating Dropbox from Nginx to Envoy

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Re: Migrating Dropbox from Nginx to Envoy

#91

Post by donavanm »

stock_toaster wrote: post #17
SaveTheRbtz wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the best slice of who's migrating to Envoy can be observed via EnvoyCon talks[1][2]: * Lyft (of course) * Spotify * Stripe * Square * eBay * Yelp * Pinterest Plus the support from major cloud providers: Google, Microsoft, and Amazon. [1] https://envoyconna18.sched.com/ [2] https://envoycon2019.sched.com/

So, seems like nginx is fine until your company reaches the "we are worth billions now" scale?

I work for a billions company. Nginx is still fine. Youll need to be prepared to pay for better operations, management, visibility, and protocol support. You can either pay them or build it in house, but you will want to pay.

Re: Migrating Dropbox from Nginx to Envoy

#93

Post by _8j50 »

e40 wrote: post #40

Also note that we’ll cover the open source version of the Nginx, not its commercial version with additional features. It always kills me when very successful companies don't buy software from other companies. I remember being at a lunch with a prospective client that really loved our technology. About 1/2 way through, he said he really would love to purchase our software, but the CEO doesn't allow them to use anythin…

You have a good problem. What sucks is when you sell a foss solution and they want paid support and SLA but the foss maker does not want free money in form of closing out issues/bugs/features they might anyways workon without getting paid for it.

Re: Migrating Dropbox from Nginx to Envoy

#94

Post by Matthias247 »

ram_rar wrote: post #68

I feel so old now. There was a time, when I used to discuss with senior engineers @ Yahoo! to use NginX over Apache. Nginx was the hot thing, popularizing C10k [1]. Now in my current team, I have junior devs in my team pushing for Envoy over HAProxy/Nginx setup. Is this trend happening primarily because devs are pushing for GRPC over REST? What benefits does Envoy offer over Nginx, if you're still a REST based servic…

The sibling comments point towards the difference in configuration if you take the "out of the box" product. But there is also a vast difference in how code is organized, in case you ever have to touch it.

From my point of view Nginx feels "old". It's a C codebase without a great amount of abstractions and interfaces, and instead having a bunch of #ifdefs here and there. Unit-tests and comments are not to be found. Build via autotools.

Envoy looks as modern as it gets for a C++ codebase - apart from maybe the lack of using coroutines which could be interesting for that use-case. It uses C++14, seems to be extremely structured and documented, has unit-tests, uses Bazel for builds, etc.

So I think the experience for anyone being interested in working on the code will be very different, and people that prefer the style of project A will have a very hard time with the style of project B and the other way around.

Re: Migrating Dropbox from Nginx to Envoy

#96

Post by nrmitchi »

e40 wrote: post #40

Also note that we’ll cover the open source version of the Nginx, not its commercial version with additional features. It always kills me when very successful companies don't buy software from other companies. I remember being at a lunch with a prospective client that really loved our technology. About 1/2 way through, he said he really would love to purchase our software, but the CEO doesn't allow them to use anythin…

I think a part of this is that engineers in particular have a preference to use software which can be treated as a transferable skill if/when they move on. They would rather use the OSS version of Nginx, of Envoy, because they know they will have access to it in the future. I think there is some aversion to becoming familiar with the features, functionality, and characteristics of a piece of software that your current employer is paying a non-trivial amount for, when you know that chances are your next employer will refuse. This may not be in the best interest of the current company, but it's a bias that I think impacts a lot of engineers.

Re: Migrating Dropbox from Nginx to Envoy

#97

Post by dilyevsky »

ram_rar wrote: post #68

I feel so old now. There was a time, when I used to discuss with senior engineers @ Yahoo! to use NginX over Apache. Nginx was the hot thing, popularizing C10k [1]. Now in my current team, I have junior devs in my team pushing for Envoy over HAProxy/Nginx setup. Is this trend happening primarily because devs are pushing for GRPC over REST? What benefits does Envoy offer over Nginx, if you're still a REST based servic…

Envoy is lot more configurable and rivals nginx on performance (especially throughput). Codebase is a lot more manageable (but that’s my personal preference). Runs circles around nginx on observability features.

Re: Migrating Dropbox from Nginx to Envoy

#99

Post by pjmlp »

nrmitchi wrote: post #96
e40 wrote: post #40

Also note that we’ll cover the open source version of the Nginx, not its commercial version with additional features. It always kills me when very successful companies don't buy software from other companies. I remember being at a lunch with a prospective client that really loved our technology. About 1/2 way through, he said he really would love to purchase our software, but the CEO doesn't allow them to use anythin…

I think a part of this is that engineers in particular have a preference to use software which can be treated as a transferable skill if/when they move on. They would rather use the OSS version of Nginx, of Envoy, because they know they will have access to it in the future. I think there is some aversion to becoming familiar with the features, functionality, and characteristics of a piece of software that your curren…

It is a generation thing, back when I started the only free beer software was my own.

Even for code listings I had at very least to buy the medium where they came.

Re: Migrating Dropbox from Nginx to Envoy

#100

Post by pjmlp »

mehrdada wrote: post #84
rebelnz wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the point was a financially successful company not contributing to an open source project even after making a bunch of money just seems un-ethical? Maybe I'm old-school but I still think we should be supporting each other in this type of situation especially if one of us strikes it big? Sure - move away from Nginx but maybe throw some $ their way for the service they provided even if you don't legally have to…

I did not infer that from the OP’s comment, but in any case, I don’t know the specifics of their arrangement or whether they had been a commercial customer or not. Last time I checked Nginx had been doing fine selling itself for half a billion. But more abstractly, I don’t actually agree with that sentiment. I see more of a responsibility to give back in the form of patches and collaboration than throwing $ at the pr…

All fine and dandy, except that those patches and collaboration don't pay bills.
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