Earlier quoted context omitted.
Try us :)
If Google utilization is really only 10% of capacity, that's pretty surprising and worrying for a host of other reasons.
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The Really Big One
201–210 of 286 posts
Re: The Really Big One
#202So how can you escape from a 10-meter tsunami, like the 11-meter Tohoku tsunami that wrecked Fukushima Dai-Ichi, assuming you have years to prepare? You could build buildings that could withstand the water flowing around them, as the nuclear reactor center itself did; but windows that can survive not just ten meters of water pressure but also cars and trees being dashed against them by the tsunami are going to be les…
Running in the opposite direction and toward high ground is sufficient. In the case of Japan's tsunami in 2011, there was 25 minutes of warning, which is enough time to get clear of most inundation zones if you indeed do start moving immediately.
This isn't a catchall solution (old folks, the disabled, children), but it would work for a lot of downtown people.
Re: The Really Big One
#203Earlier quoted context omitted.
That does seem likely, though as far as I know, AWS's biggest zone is located in Northern Virginia. And, I'm sure the AWS people have planned as much as they can for this eventuality. (Um, I hope.)
I doubt the datacenter's locations matter. The services at the bottom of the stack need constant ops to stay alive. With most of the engineers out, I expect barely a few days to go by before one of the essential services needs servicing.
When supporting a service on the scale of say, EC2 and the rest of AWS, one would typically expect follow-the-sun support.
Re: The Really Big One
#204I was in New Orleans in October 2002, and this guy was on the front page of the main newspaper predicting that within 20 years a category 5 hurricane was likely to whip around Florida and strike the city head on. He said the levies weren't high or strong enough, and that downtown New Orleans would be under 20 feet of water: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/earth/predicting-katrina.html I remember reading it with interest…
I tend to look at the insurance company's take on these kind of things for a more clinical rational analysis. Compare rates and try to ferret out why they are what they are. Yes, its come to that..
Re: The Really Big One
#205So how can you escape from a 10-meter tsunami, like the 11-meter Tohoku tsunami that wrecked Fukushima Dai-Ichi, assuming you have years to prepare? You could build buildings that could withstand the water flowing around them, as the nuclear reactor center itself did; but windows that can survive not just ten meters of water pressure but also cars and trees being dashed against them by the tsunami are going to be les…
Running in the opposite direction and toward high ground is sufficient. In the case of Japan's tsunami in 2011, there was 25 minutes of warning, which is enough time to get clear of most inundation zones if you indeed do start moving immediately. This isn't a catchall solution (old folks, the disabled, children), but it would work for a lot of downtown people.
It depends on how far away the high ground is. There are islands where it’s hundreds of miles away (and putting out to sea is by far the better idea) but even miles away would be too far to run for me.
Re: The Really Big One
#206Hmm, in the spirit of thinking of worst-case scenarios, most of the engineering talent for Amazon and Microsoft is in Seattle and Redmond, respectively. There's even a sizable percentage of Google cloud platform in Fremont and Kirkland. Even if most of the employees live, it's likely basic infrastructure will be a disaster for quite a while. Maybe Google would be able to offload ops work to Mountain View, but it seem…
Not only would there be significant downtime of major internet services, but lots of people would die as well!
Reminds me of this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Edl0l3VaIks
Re: The Really Big One
#207Earlier quoted context omitted.
Running in the opposite direction and toward high ground is sufficient. In the case of Japan's tsunami in 2011, there was 25 minutes of warning, which is enough time to get clear of most inundation zones if you indeed do start moving immediately. This isn't a catchall solution (old folks, the disabled, children), but it would work for a lot of downtown people.
It depends on how far away the high ground is. There are islands where it’s hundreds of miles away (and putting out to sea is by far the better idea) but even miles away would be too far to run for me.
We're talking about Seattle. I don't know if you've been there, but most of it is pretty hilly.
Re: The Really Big One
#208Earlier quoted context omitted.
There's no shortage of advertising on The New Yorker.
That killed me when I subscribed to the NYT online. I was paying $15/mo and seeing as many ads as I would expect from a free site. I love the NYT journalism and am willing to pay for it, and I understand they have bills to pay, but it's a lot of money to be sitting on ads. In fact I canceled my subscription (not a quick or easy process) and have the same amount of advertising on their NYT Now app whether I subscribe…
Why would anybody take your money and not show ads when they can both take your money and show you ads?
Re: The Really Big One
#209A heads up: this peace is 6.3K+ word long and according to my estimate it would take you around 45 mins to finish reading it. Enjoy!
This is not helped by the three hundred and sixty-six thousand nine hundred and thirty two numbers typed out as words rather than digits.
Re: The Really Big One
#210Earlier quoted context omitted.
Try us :)
If Google utilization is really only 10% of capacity, that's pretty surprising and worrying for a host of other reasons.
Utilization and availability are not directly related. Much of their utilization is probably not super time critical and could be proportionately shed or suspended in an emergency situation like the one in question.
I bet Google could absorb 100% of the emergency evacuation of AWS in a pinch. Remember also that not 100% of services will be moved, and those that are will not be running at 100% capacity - everyone would be suspending their batch/analytics/warehousing jobs that week (or month).
EDIT: Also, lock in would stop all the redshift/dynamo/etc users from migrating, and would limit people to just what they could throw up on GCE/GAE.