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My manager spent $1M on a backup server that I never used

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Re: My manager spent $1M on a backup server that I never used

#151

Post by Mavvie »

lmm wrote: post #143
Mavvie wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How can eventual consistency handle the inventory use case as well as an ACID system? You can't tell the user "your order is placed successfully" and then later tell them "actually no, it was out of stock".

That's a different problem from your previous examples, and it's the same problem whether it's ACID or not: there's always an opportunity for the user to see the item as being in stock, then request to order it, and discover it's out of stock. Your "recovery" from the case where there's nothing in stock doesn't need to happen in a transaction (and can't meaningfully do so); you just tell the user their order failed,…

I see what you mean, but with ACID you can tell the user right away if the order was successfully placed. With eventual consistency you don't know how long it'll take so you either show them a loading spinner that takes an indeterminate amount of time, or what?

Not saying that the spinner solution is wrong (as it definitely scales better), but the immediate feedback is something you lose with eventual consistency, by definition, right?

Re: My manager spent $1M on a backup server that I never used

#152

Post by nitwit005 »

dijit wrote: post #86
nitwit005 wrote: post #82

> Data Consistency as a Requirement Probably only sort of consistent, I imagine? Game servers tend not to support seamless failover. If the server crashes at the wrong moment, data is going to be lost, regardless of how politely behaved the data backend is. That is, if you kill a boss and successfully pick up an item, you know it'll be saved to DB. If the game crashes before you can pick it up, it's probably just gon…

the way we had it working was local storage (sqlite) and remote storage (postgresql with a middleware). If you pick something up it flags as an “interesting event” and syncs your profile to local storage- on game server crash, there would be a crash collector which syncs the local database with the remote one and removes the lock - meaning you can join a working server. The crash collector also did things like… well,…

Interesting. Hadn't heard of a scheme like that before. Appreciate the explanation.

Re: My manager spent $1M on a backup server that I never used

#154

Post by jjav »

NikolaNovak wrote: post #48
kubb wrote: post #8

My manager doesn't do almost anything. I wonder why they keep him around. He has like two reports and we're both fully self-directed. He can't understand technical issues, and whenever he proposes something, it's completely untenable due to his lack of understanding what's useful or possible.

It is definitely possible they indeed don't do anything. Fwiw though - a decade ago when I was a sysadmin I had a manager that I was certain never did anything. And then he was replaced. And then... We realized how much politics, uncertainty, churn, screaming, changing requirements, ambiguous priorities and other carp he protected us from :-/ Not saying it's the case with your manager. But managers have duties roles…

> And then he was replaced.

> And then... We realized how much politics, uncertainty, churn, screaming, changing requirements, ambiguous priorities and other carp he protected us from :-/

Indeed, have experienced that. At my best job experience ever, there was zero politics or distractions, I could focus all day long on interesting and relevant technical problems. I was both very happy and extremely productive.

And then.. my manager left. Whoa! The following months were insane mudslinging and relentless politics thrown at us in the team, could barely get any work done. Left the company soon after.

Turns out our previous manager was absorbing and firewalling all that from us so we could be happy and productive.

A great manager is like a great security team. You'll never notice what they're doing until they're not there.

Re: My manager spent $1M on a backup server that I never used

#155

Post by anuragvohraec »

kubb wrote: post #8

My manager doesn't do almost anything. I wonder why they keep him around. He has like two reports and we're both fully self-directed. He can't understand technical issues, and whenever he proposes something, it's completely untenable due to his lack of understanding what's useful or possible.

Generally managers are hired to act us buffer between higher order management and employee. HOM don't want to micro manage employees, but they want responsibility, which lower rank employee (the one who do actual work) tend to carry the least. While most workforce would come defensive, that they work responsibily, but indeed most don't. So they higher this manager who do micro manage employee on HOM behalf. The minute most employee gets a good offers, they will fly like its none of there responsiblity, so HOM higher this buffer manager to manage this minute but important aspect for successful project delivery.

Re: My manager spent $1M on a backup server that I never used

#156

Post by vishnugupta »

ilyt wrote: post #104
NikolaNovak wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is definitely possible they indeed don't do anything. Fwiw though - a decade ago when I was a sysadmin I had a manager that I was certain never did anything. And then he was replaced. And then... We realized how much politics, uncertainty, churn, screaming, changing requirements, ambiguous priorities and other carp he protected us from :-/ Not saying it's the case with your manager. But managers have duties roles…

> And then... We realized how much politics, uncertainty, churn, screaming, changing requirements, ambiguous priorities and other carp he protected us from :-/ Over years I've noticed like 80% of those is because other managers are terrible and it so happens that the dept. I'm in takes some of the fallout of their mess.

>...because other managers are terrible...

It's interesting you should say this because this is one of the categories of Bullshit jobs as defined by David Graeber in his book. And incidentally only y'day I was listening to him on a podcast[1] speaking about BS jobs.

His favourite example is corporate lawyers. Companies are forced to hire them just because other companies have them and are in fear of getting sued. I hadn't thought of managers to fall in this category, which makes sense.

[1] https://podcasts.apple.com/in/podcast/srsly-wrong/id87229289...

Re: My manager spent $1M on a backup server that I never used

#157

Post by thumbsup-_- »

>all of this, written by hand in C++, nothing off the shelf, very minimal dependencies (OpenSSL being the only one of note), everything running on Windows and completely bespoke

Great engineering but this is the time you could have spent building your core competency. re-inventing the wheel is a good recipe for failure

Re: My manager spent $1M on a backup server that I never used

#158

Post by jiggawatts »

This rant starts of pretty badly, with "Windows bad, Unix good, Windows especially bad because it doesn't have Unix tools".

Reverse that statement. Is Unix bad because it doesn't Windows tools?

> but simultaneously there was nothing to lean back on: no shell, no Unix tools like sed/awk, no SSH. I

He joined in 2014, when Windows had a superior shell and remoting system that eliminates the requirement for low-level string parsing tools like sed/awk entirely!

PowerShell + WinRM + Desired State Configuration (DSC) was all pretty mature at the time, and I had used these technologies to manage huge fleets of servers solo without issues.

Then, almost none of this heroic database backup efforts would have been required if they had just a commercial database product, e.g.: one designed for Windows such as SQL Server.

In 2014 it supported AlwaysOn Availability groups that allowed multiple synchronous and asynchronous replicas! It also has had true online backups since before 1997.

His second mistake is that backups can be incremental, but a restore in a (true) disaster is a full restore by definition! Differential + Log backups are great to capture data regularly during the day, but the business requirement is usually that a full restore must complete in a reasonable time.

Typical commercial databases plus the product he mentioned could easily backup and restore tens of terabytes in setups I've seen directly to or from any proper database engine without having to through "NFS" on the way. Typically you'd use a native backup agent.

This whole article sounds like a self-important Unix engineer refusing to touch commercial products, lack of understanding of business requirements, and an allergy to Windows.

Re: My manager spent $1M on a backup server that I never used

#159

Post by sgt »

jiggawatts wrote: post #158

This rant starts of pretty badly, with "Windows bad, Unix good, Windows especially bad because it doesn't have Unix tools". Reverse that statement. Is Unix bad because it doesn't Windows tools? > but simultaneously there was nothing to lean back on: no shell, no Unix tools like sed/awk, no SSH. I He joined in 2014, when Windows had a superior shell and remoting system that eliminates the requirement for low-level str…

What are you talking about - Windows was always terrible for an admin. Unix was and is vastly superior when it comes to remote admin. Having used both (Powershell is powerful yes, but it's nowhere as fluid as a Unix shell).

Re: My manager spent $1M on a backup server that I never used

#160

Post by fsckboy »

dijit wrote: post #77
znpy wrote: post #9

The author makes a good progression in their reasoning but then somehow arrives to the wrong conclusion: > So when someone says that Amazon has invested a lot of money into security I think about the fact that Ubisoft spent $1M on a backup solution that didn’t work for the game that would have had the best use of it. The missing point here is thst ubisoft is/was spending money for something outside of its domain of e…

I wrote the article in a fit of anger because someone (on hackernews) said that Amazon spent a lot of money on security therefore its better than whatever [you] could possibly need. The main thesis of the post is that sometimes incentives are not aligned and you still need to think critically about what you bought and what its intended purpose is, the cost of a thing does not mean it fits your need. You can pull a tr…

> its not the right tool just because it costs as much or more than a train does

you might want to rethink why it's not a good idea to pull a train with a Veyron; in fact, you might be on to a good excuse to buy a Veyron.

quick search: "a diesel locomotive could cost from $500,000-$2 million, while electric locomotives cost between $4,000,000 and $6,500,000"

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