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Google Cloud outage brings down Layer

status.layer.com

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Re: Google Cloud outage brings down Layer

#11

Post by Artemis2 »

andyfleming wrote: post #8
smt88 wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Especially when they seem to be referencing only a single region. Multi-region deployments is the most basic protection against outages when using IaaS.

They should at least be in multiple availability zones. Multiple regions often comes with a lot of challenges, but there isn't much reason not to be redundant in multiple AZs.

Were they or were they not in multiple AZs? Developing for multiple availability zones is trivial when creating cloud-first software (and it's irresponsible not to use AZs!), multi-region comes with its own set of problems.

Re: Google Cloud outage brings down Layer

#12

Post by JasonSage »

ben_jones wrote: post #10

Most concise summary of Layer I could find on the internet quickly. > Layer is an amazingly elegant and light-weight solution for video communication. Layer is currently in a private beta primarily focused on Video, Voice and Chat on Android and iPhone. [1] Comment was in 2014. [1]: https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-difference-between-PubNub-...

If you just go to layer.com, the first text you see on the page does a pretty good job of spelling out what it is. At least, it did for me. It's also more up-to-date than that comment, it would seem.

Re: Google Cloud outage brings down Layer

#13

Post by ben_jones »

JasonSage wrote: post #12
ben_jones wrote: post #10

Most concise summary of Layer I could find on the internet quickly. > Layer is an amazingly elegant and light-weight solution for video communication. Layer is currently in a private beta primarily focused on Video, Voice and Chat on Android and iPhone. [1] Comment was in 2014. [1]: https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-difference-between-PubNub-...

If you just go to layer.com, the first text you see on the page does a pretty good job of spelling out what it is. At least, it did for me. It's also more up-to-date than that comment, it would seem.

> Everything you need, from UI to infrastructure, to boost retention, engagement or drive transactions with the power of rich messaging.

Wasn't enough for me. And if you click "Learn more" it's more marketing drivel. Granted my quora quote isn't much better.

Re: Google Cloud outage brings down Layer

#16

Post by johnm1019 »

I am so turned off when I click a "Pricing" link and get a contact form. Even more so when I read that, "our pricing team" [will get back to you].

So, you have an entire team of people who will try and maximize how much I pay? Sounds like a great experience doing business with you. /heavysarcasm

Re: Google Cloud outage brings down Layer

#17

Post by ngrilly »

flyt wrote: post #15

It doesn't do any good to point the finger at your vendors when your service goes down; that data isn't useful for your customers. Never forget the lesson of http://www.whoownsmyavailability.com/

I'm not sure I agree. Customers like to know why it doesn't work. If it was a physical machine, they would have said something like "the disks are broken and we are replacing them". But it is cloud and they said "Google persistent disks are currently unavailable and they are fixing it".

Re: Google Cloud outage brings down Layer

#18

Post by tschellenbach »

JasonSage wrote: post #12
ben_jones wrote: post #10

Most concise summary of Layer I could find on the internet quickly. > Layer is an amazingly elegant and light-weight solution for video communication. Layer is currently in a private beta primarily focused on Video, Voice and Chat on Android and iPhone. [1] Comment was in 2014. [1]: https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-difference-between-PubNub-...

If you just go to layer.com, the first text you see on the page does a pretty good job of spelling out what it is. At least, it did for me. It's also more up-to-date than that comment, it would seem.

Layer is just a building block for adding chat to your app. Similar to how you would use Elastic for search or Sendgrid for email.

Re: Google Cloud outage brings down Layer

#19

Post by tschellenbach »

mbesto wrote: post #4

> As we are now several hours into this outage and do not have satisfactory timeline for resolution, we have begun the process of migrating our hosts into another deployment zone within GCE. We will have a baseline set of services migrated within the hour and evaluate our ability to operate in a split deployment. Should we need to pursue a complete migration of hosts across zones then we would expect another 4-5 hour…

I like how Algolia does that, https://www.algolia.com/infra (their blogposts and presentations go into much more detail)

Currently thinking of creating a similar page for getstream.io, at the moment we always explain it during sales/onboarding calls. (we replicate our data to 3 different instances across multiple AZs)

Re: Google Cloud outage brings down Layer

#20

Post by inlined »

Artemis2 wrote: post #11
andyfleming wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They should at least be in multiple availability zones. Multiple regions often comes with a lot of challenges, but there isn't much reason not to be redundant in multiple AZs.

Were they or were they not in multiple AZs? Developing for multiple availability zones is trivial when creating cloud-first software (and it's irresponsible not to use AZs!), multi-region comes with its own set of problems.

In the report they say they're looking at moving to a new region, but Google apparently told them that us-central1-a was down. The "-a" makes it an AZ. It sounds like they're only on one AZ and may not fully understand the difference.

[correction: they accidentally called usc1-a a region, but everything mentioned in their outage was a zone. They specifically called it a "deployment zone" not an availability zone, so it sounds like an issue of inexperience with best practices.]

[obligatory disclaimer: I'm a Google employee. I don't have a relationship with Layer]

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