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Scaling lessons learned at Dropbox, part 1

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Re: Scaling lessons learned at Dropbox, part 1

#41

Post by mturmon »

bestes wrote: post #27
nl wrote: post #16

I wish he'd left the security advice out. The whole post was excellent, but all the useful points will now be overshadowed by the armchair quarterbacking about security by people who mostly don't understand that ALL security is a compromise, and it is as important to understand and make deliberate decisions about your security as it is to try to make a secure system in the first place.

I'm glad he put the security notes in. It is so hard to get true facts about how things are actually done.

Looking again at the post, I think the author was in fact rather careful to not give away anything about security practices at Dropbox when he was there, for obvious reasons.

He keeps many comments at a high level (security/convenience) and refers to a few non-Dropbox examples.

Re: Scaling lessons learned at Dropbox, part 1

#42

Post by tszming »

misiti3780 wrote: post #17
philfreo wrote: post #9

Can you explain the nginx/HAproxy config a little more?

agree - i see a lot of start ups putting haproxy behind nginx for load balancing but i have never figured out why they wouldnt just stick with nginx. does anyone have an example of how the configuration looks on github?

there are features that haproxy support out of the box, e.g. sticky session load balancing, http 1.1 to upstream (newer version of nginx also support btw); on the other hand, people use nginx for SSL termination.

Re: Scaling lessons learned at Dropbox, part 1

#43

Post by [deleted] »

pdeuchler wrote: post #39
akent wrote: post #14

I noticed that a particular “FUUUCCKKKKKasdjkfnff” wasn’t getting printed where it should have Why not take the extra half a second to make those random strings meaningful and hidden behind a DEBUG log level?

Oh c'mon. Does HN have the capacity to not be critical 24/7? The guy is clearly competent at his job, there is no need to nitpick. Let he who has never written a frustrated, nonsense, print statement throw the first stone, if you will.

[deleted]

Re: Scaling lessons learned at Dropbox, part 1

#44

Post by misiti3780 »

tszming wrote: post #42
misiti3780 wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

agree - i see a lot of start ups putting haproxy behind nginx for load balancing but i have never figured out why they wouldnt just stick with nginx. does anyone have an example of how the configuration looks on github?

there are features that haproxy support out of the box, e.g. sticky session load balancing, http 1.1 to upstream (newer version of nginx also support btw); on the other hand, people use nginx for SSL termination.

any chance could either explain this a bit more or post a link to a blog? this is very interesting to me and i do not know much about it

Re: Scaling lessons learned at Dropbox, part 1

#46

Post by chipsy »

inerte wrote: post #38
apu wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I actually purposely used to set all the various clocks at home ahead by anywhere from 0 - 15 minutes. At first, I could remember which ones were ahead by how much, but then soon I started to forgot and had to just assume they were running at the right time. It worked great. After a few years of this, I set them all back to right time and found that I had trained myself to just leave at the right time, with no more t…

I only have one alarm. If it fails I am late. I found out that depending on complex systems work against you. Once I had three wake up alarms, at different points at the bedroom. Didn't work. Being late is lame. Suffering its consequences is the best teacher one can have.

Were you the college roommate I had who suspended the alarm on a string over the bed so that standing was required to turn it off?

Re: Scaling lessons learned at Dropbox, part 1

#47

Post by eranki »

akent wrote: post #14

I noticed that a particular “FUUUCCKKKKKasdjkfnff” wasn’t getting printed where it should have Why not take the extra half a second to make those random strings meaningful and hidden behind a DEBUG log level?

^ For those that wonder why there is even a separate clean log.

Re: Scaling lessons learned at Dropbox, part 1

#48

Post by [deleted] »

emmett wrote: post #31
philfreo wrote: post #9

Can you explain the nginx/HAproxy config a little more?

HAproxy is great at exactly one thing: load balancing. It's better than nginx for that one use, because it's more flexible, has better controls for flapping, is smarter about queuing, gives you cool stats pages, etc. Nginx is great for...pretty much everything else.

[deleted]

Re: Scaling lessons learned at Dropbox, part 1

#49

Post by eranki »

nl wrote: post #16

I wish he'd left the security advice out. The whole post was excellent, but all the useful points will now be overshadowed by the armchair quarterbacking about security by people who mostly don't understand that ALL security is a compromise, and it is as important to understand and make deliberate decisions about your security as it is to try to make a secure system in the first place.

I thought about it, but honestly, I think it's important to try to fight against all the sanctimony and handwringing that surrounds security. People should feel comfortable talking about security as a tradeoff without diluting the argument with gratuitous qualifications and apologies.

Re: Scaling lessons learned at Dropbox, part 1

#50

Post by kevinburke » 

    MySQL has a huge network of support and we were 
    pretty sure if we had a problem, Google, Yahoo, 
    or Facebook would have to deal with it and patch 
    it before we did. :)
I am fairly certain Google is running its own (patched) version that's fairly different than the off-the-shelf MySQL.
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