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Spotify moves its back end to Google Cloud

news.spotify.com

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Re: Spotify moves its back end to Google Cloud

#101

Post by obulpathi »

caleblloyd wrote: post #81
waffle_ss wrote: post #16

I tried Google Container Engine (GKE) and really liked it - it's the best cloud solution for deploying Docker to production in my opinion, mainly due to its use of Kubernetes. Unfortunately in my Web apps I make heavy use of Postgres-specific features, and since Cloud SQL only supports MySQL, Google Cloud is a total non-starter for me. So for now I'm on AWS, using Postgres on RDS and deploying containers with ECS. EC…

Google Cloud SQL is no replacement for Amazon RDS in my opinion. Cloud SQL instances run outside of your project's private network, so connections from Google Compute Engine have to be over a Public IP. This means accepting connections from any host (insecure) or whitelisting each Google Compute Engine VM's IP address (pain in the ass). I've resorted to running my own MySQL instance inside of Google Compute Engine an…

I am sure Google Cloud has VPC stuff for all the components, including Cloud SQL. It lacks the variety (No PostgreSQL, Oracle, MSSQL, or MariaDB). All traffic is encrypted by default on all posts (Google Cloud does this for free) too.

Re: Spotify moves its back end to Google Cloud

#103

Post by CydeWeys »

vonklaus wrote: post #98
atrudeau wrote: post #4

This reads like they've been acquired by Google and are integrating. Now Google just has to write the check and own music streaming.

I thought this as well. They have. This is Androids answer to Apple Music. edit: This also seemingly posted from a shelf account. Front page on HN, account 530+ days old, 0 comments, 0 posts. Reads like an acquisition. I am not sure what to make of this as it could be a total coincidence that after a year and a half dmichel was really interested in spotify's backend migration, but either way I wouldn't be surprised i…

Do you have any source that Spotify has been acquired by Google? It sounds like baseless rumormongering to me. This wouldn't be a good way to announce such an acquisition anyway.

Re: Spotify moves its back end to Google Cloud

#104

Post by waffle_ss »

stevenleeg wrote: post #40
dabeeeenster wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Latency

Got it, thanks! What about running a postgres container on GKE?

Lots of reasons not to. You'd be in charge of setting up backups (e.g. setting up WAL-E + an S3 bucket and monitoring that - and you'd have to add WAL-E support to your Docker image, which is a PITA), have to perform database upgrades yourself, have to monitor resource usage (CPU, memory, and disk), have to worry about how to manage the Docker volume so that write performance doesn't suffer (Docker defaults to copy-on-write - very bad for databases), you'd have to manage a Docker image and how to make it configurable (how do you enable Postgres extensions if you end up needing one?), you'd have to worry about how the GKE/Kubernetes scheduler will allocate the pod and what other resources on that node might affect it (and how that will affect the resource assumptions in your Postgres config), any Docker updates will require restarting the container and thus downtime (unless you have some kind of replication setup), all kinds of things.

In general I wouldn't want to run a relational database in Docker, especially not as some sort of generic cluster of containers; I'd want to give it its own VM with Postgres configuration settings specific to its resources (e.g. using pgtune).

Re: Spotify moves its back end to Google Cloud

#105

Post by stickfigure »

Hermel wrote: post #72
latchkey wrote: post #35

What Google Cloud needs is a better sales story. AWS consistently beats out Google in this respect. This story is welcomed and there should be more success stories published like this. My business is a heavy GC user (AppEngine, Datastore, CloudStorage, BQ, ComputeEngine, ManagedVM) and I couldn't imagine achieving what we have achieved in such a short amount of time on any other platform. We (myself and another guy)…

Are you happy with the performance of AppEngine? I have tried it last summer and was quite disappointed. CPU-bound programs that completed in a few seconds on my own computer took about ten times as long on AppEngine despite similar nominal specs (GHz and RAM).

Traditional App Engine is not particularly cost-effective for compute-intensive loads, but it works great for basic web workloads. If you have special needs, Managed VMs have the performance characteristics of the underlying Compute Engine node. We've found that App Engine is not "all or nothing"; it's the backbone of our app but we run services where they make the most sense (usually GCE).

Re: Spotify moves its back end to Google Cloud

#106

Post by S4M »

dsacco wrote: post #80
S4M wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Man, you should consider remote options at least for the Customer Success given how low you're paying (is $50K really livable in San Francisco?).

This may shock you, but yes, it's livable. Many people live on $50,000 or less everyday in San Francisco. It may not be a standard of living that we as engineers are familiar with, but it is not poverty either. It's not a salary you'd want as a household income with dependents, but for an individual it is fine.

I live in Spain and am very frugal, so I haven't experienced first hand the high cost of life in SF, but if someone has to spend $1000 on the rent, there won't be much left from the salary received.

Also the job in question is "Customer Success", and consists in interacting with customers "through phone, email, and live chat" (from the job description). Those can very well be done remotely.

Re: Spotify moves its back end to Google Cloud

#107

Post by dmichel »

vonklaus wrote: post #98
atrudeau wrote: post #4

This reads like they've been acquired by Google and are integrating. Now Google just has to write the check and own music streaming.

I thought this as well. They have. This is Androids answer to Apple Music. edit: This also seemingly posted from a shelf account. Front page on HN, account 530+ days old, 0 comments, 0 posts. Reads like an acquisition. I am not sure what to make of this as it could be a total coincidence that after a year and a half dmichel was really interested in spotify's backend migration, but either way I wouldn't be surprised i…

Just an employee of spotify excited about the transition (I usually just lurk)

Re: Spotify moves its back end to Google Cloud

#108

Post by crb »

caleblloyd wrote: post #81
waffle_ss wrote: post #16

I tried Google Container Engine (GKE) and really liked it - it's the best cloud solution for deploying Docker to production in my opinion, mainly due to its use of Kubernetes. Unfortunately in my Web apps I make heavy use of Postgres-specific features, and since Cloud SQL only supports MySQL, Google Cloud is a total non-starter for me. So for now I'm on AWS, using Postgres on RDS and deploying containers with ECS. EC…

Google Cloud SQL is no replacement for Amazon RDS in my opinion. Cloud SQL instances run outside of your project's private network, so connections from Google Compute Engine have to be over a Public IP. This means accepting connections from any host (insecure) or whitelisting each Google Compute Engine VM's IP address (pain in the ass). I've resorted to running my own MySQL instance inside of Google Compute Engine an…

Look no further (for item 1 of 2 anyway) —

http://googlecloudplatform.blogspot.co.nz/2015/12/the-next-g...

Re: Spotify moves its back end to Google Cloud

#109

Post by Someone1234 »

boulos wrote: post #88
kuschku wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, you ask your paying customers to pay extra – not to get support, but to increase the chance of getting support in time? That’s... an interesting business model.

Paying more for more support cases or more urgent responses is standard practice for support plans. For example, here's the AWS Support comparison page: https://aws.amazon.com/premiumsupport/compare-plans/ which has similar tiers of support.

I agree that Google Cloud offering different response times for different support tiers is consistent with the industry at large.

That being said, Google Cloud support is overly expensive. $150/month Vs. $49/month for AWS Vs. $29/month ($174 minimum commitment over six months) for Azure.

I wish all them had a "per issue" tier. I want to pay for a single ticket/resolution. But at least Google Cloud and AWS don't have a minimum commitment period like Azure (even if Azure is cheap per month).

I'd likely rank them:

- AWS is best (alright price with no commitment).

- Azure is next (amazing price but lame commitment).

- Google Cloud is worst (high price, almost as much as six months at Azure!).

And before you tell me that they offer different things at those price points I DON'T CARE. All I care about is the minimum amount of money I have to pay someone to look at a technical support ticket for me. I don't care if it takes 1 or 48 hours, I just don't want to pay a lot. If I cared about responsiveness I'd be buying the gold plated support with telephone agents.

Google Cloud's $150 to look at one ticket thing really puts me off the entire platform.

Re: Spotify moves its back end to Google Cloud

#110

Post by stickfigure »

kyrra wrote: post #93
thibaut_barrere wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been relying on multiple Cloud offerings (including PaaS, IaaS etc) outside Google for many years, but for some unclear reason, I cannot manage to consider Google a reliable partner for a type of hosting or another, at this point. I would love to be proven wrong really, because I often look at their GC offering, and I /really/ want to dive in, yet I feel that I would risk having to migrate quickly in 2 weeks at…

Anecdotal: AppEngine deprecated their Master/Slave datastore[0] in April 2012, and it was actually shutdown on July 6, 2015. So that's 3+ years to move to newer tech. [0] http://googleappengine.blogspot.com/2012/04/masterslave-data...

Also worth noting that Google built an automated tool to handle the M/S to HRD datastore migration for you. It was remarkably painless.
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