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Google on today’s massive Google+ spam influx: “We ran out of disk space”

venturebeat.com

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Re: Google on today’s massive Google+ spam influx: “We ran out of disk space”

#11

Post by starwed »

craigmccaskill wrote: post #8

Some quick napkin math on numbers: If you're to believe Eric Schmidt when he says 'millions' and put that at 3 million users (being generous), guessing that each user uploads 20 megabytes of content (again, generous) thats: 3x10^6 × 20 MB 6x10^7 MB or 60TB Sanity check or does that not seem like a lot of resources to allocate to a project of this size? Edit: formatting

I don't think this has anything to do with how much content a user uploads. They specifically said that “For about 80 minutes we ran out of disk space on the service that keeps track of notifications.”

So probably they had allocated some amount that made perfect sense while testing, but was too low for the full rollout that seems to (effectively) be happening now.

Re: Google on today’s massive Google+ spam influx: “We ran out of disk space”

#12

Post by Maakuth »

craigmccaskill wrote: post #8

Some quick napkin math on numbers: If you're to believe Eric Schmidt when he says 'millions' and put that at 3 million users (being generous), guessing that each user uploads 20 megabytes of content (again, generous) thats: 3x10^6 × 20 MB 6x10^7 MB or 60TB Sanity check or does that not seem like a lot of resources to allocate to a project of this size? Edit: formatting

Maybe some heavy logging in this field test phase could explain it? Indeed 60TB sounds like very little. I thought Google would use their GFS system to back this kind of things so the disk space wouldn't be an issue. What do I know.

Re: Google on today’s massive Google+ spam influx: “We ran out of disk space”

#13

Post by carbonica »

ChuckMcM wrote: post #6

Interesting. Given the minimum size of a Colossus cluster I find the explanation Vic gives unsatisfying. That being said I'm pretty impressed with the overall product, it is the best attempt yet to unseat Facebook, and I predict it will if Facebook can't come up with a credible response quickly. The killer feature is that its blended with Gmail, and since a lot of people keep gmail open all the time it means you get…

How do you know "the minimum size of a Colossus cluster"? Are you a Google employee leaking information?

Re: Google on today’s massive Google+ spam influx: “We ran out of disk space”

#14

Post by [deleted] »

craigmccaskill wrote: post #8

Some quick napkin math on numbers: If you're to believe Eric Schmidt when he says 'millions' and put that at 3 million users (being generous), guessing that each user uploads 20 megabytes of content (again, generous) thats: 3x10^6 × 20 MB 6x10^7 MB or 60TB Sanity check or does that not seem like a lot of resources to allocate to a project of this size? Edit: formatting

[deleted]

Re: Google on today’s massive Google+ spam influx: “We ran out of disk space”

#15

Post by ChuckMcM »

mlinsey wrote: post #9
ChuckMcM wrote: post #6

Interesting. Given the minimum size of a Colossus cluster I find the explanation Vic gives unsatisfying. That being said I'm pretty impressed with the overall product, it is the best attempt yet to unseat Facebook, and I predict it will if Facebook can't come up with a credible response quickly. The killer feature is that its blended with Gmail, and since a lot of people keep gmail open all the time it means you get…

since a lot of people keep gmail open ... Not as common to keep one's facebook page open. Do you have data on this? I'd think it would be close, if not the opposite. Edit for clarification: In my social circles, what you said is probably true, but I know many others use FB messages more than email (any email, not just gmail). Facebook has more pageviews total, and Facebook has probably around 3X as many active users…

You are correct in that I was generalizing when I should not have been.

I've used Google Apps for work and since a lot of communication comes through email that means Gmail is open (or at least getting notifications with the talk gadget). I would not be surprised if you were correct that many folks leave Facebook open all the time.

Re: Google on today’s massive Google+ spam influx: “We ran out of disk space”

#16

Post by ChuckMcM »

craigmccaskill wrote: post #8

Some quick napkin math on numbers: If you're to believe Eric Schmidt when he says 'millions' and put that at 3 million users (being generous), guessing that each user uploads 20 megabytes of content (again, generous) thats: 3x10^6 × 20 MB 6x10^7 MB or 60TB Sanity check or does that not seem like a lot of resources to allocate to a project of this size? Edit: formatting

Quite simply, no. But if it was notifications they were probably going through 'Chubby' [1] which is sometimes used as a scratchpad for notifications. But if you read the interview with Sean Quinlan [2] you can get a sense that 60TB is quite small.

[1] http://labs.google.com/papers/chubby.html

[2] http://queue.acm.org/detail.cfm?id=1594206

Re: Google on today’s massive Google+ spam influx: “We ran out of disk space”

#17

Post by flyt »

ChuckMcM wrote: post #6

Interesting. Given the minimum size of a Colossus cluster I find the explanation Vic gives unsatisfying. That being said I'm pretty impressed with the overall product, it is the best attempt yet to unseat Facebook, and I predict it will if Facebook can't come up with a credible response quickly. The killer feature is that its blended with Gmail, and since a lot of people keep gmail open all the time it means you get…

Is this a joke? When I see people using their phones in public the #1 app, bar none, that I see open is Facebook. people are just browsing their feeds, commenting, liking, etc. This is mostly on iOS devices but increasingly on Android as the FB app has matured.

750 million people around the world use Facebook at least once a month. Of that number HALF return every single day, and 80% use it at least once a week. Facebook is a big deal that has deeply imbedded itself into the lives of many, many people. "Checking your Gmail" is a completely different kind of interaction.

Re: Google on today’s massive Google+ spam influx: “We ran out of disk space”

#20

Post by whiskers »

carbonica wrote: post #10
craigmccaskill wrote: post #8

Some quick napkin math on numbers: If you're to believe Eric Schmidt when he says 'millions' and put that at 3 million users (being generous), guessing that each user uploads 20 megabytes of content (again, generous) thats: 3x10^6 × 20 MB 6x10^7 MB or 60TB Sanity check or does that not seem like a lot of resources to allocate to a project of this size? Edit: formatting

60TB? That's about a couple grand worth of space. Why would that be a lot of space to Google?

Even using 3TB consumer grade SATA disks you'd need 20 of them, an enclosure for 20 disks costs a lot more than a couple of grand.
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