21–30 of 157 posts
This comment further down, supposedly from an Amazon employee, paints a grim picture for EBS: http://www.reddit.com/r/blog/comments/g66f0/why_reddit_was_d...
The perspectives of disgruntled employees have been known to be worse than reality, on occasion. Not definitively saying that's the case here, just saying.
If you would like to know more please send me an email: prakash [at] cedexis.com
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Sounds like a case of similar to safety systems at a nuclear plant. Not pressing until it is REALLY PRESSING! Its the usual dilemma, investing time/moey on something that most likely wont be needed versus adding that cool feature all the users will immediately see the benefit of. In a competitive environment, it isn't difficult to understand how they ended up on one vendor.
If a nuclear plant has problems, it can kill a lot of people, and wreck the lives of many others. If reddit has problems, I suppose the worst that can happen is a cloud of toxic and poorly thought out comments is released on the internet. So the tradeoffs they've made, in saving some money, are probably sensible.
Actually, that's what happens when reddit is working :)
Like other technical fads, everyone will probably come back to servers they can reach out and touch when needed, sooner or later.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
If a nuclear plant has problems, it can kill a lot of people, and wreck the lives of many others. If reddit has problems, I suppose the worst that can happen is a cloud of toxic and poorly thought out comments is released on the internet. So the tradeoffs they've made, in saving some money, are probably sensible.
> If reddit has problems, I suppose the worst that can happen is a cloud of toxic and poorly thought out comments is released on the internet. Actually, that's what happens when reddit is working :)
If I were faced with EBS performance issues, I would see this as a big red flag, consider EBS unsuitable for the application and avoid it, rather than carrying on with such a workaround.
RAIDing together multiple EBS volumes feels like a massive hack to me. I can't help but wonder if this compounds the problem at Amazon's end. If EBS performance is a problem, Amazon need to fix it. For example, if some way of tying together multiple EBS volumes is a reasonable way of working around the problem, then why aren't Amazon providing "high performance" EBS volumes which do that under the hood? If I were fac…
Honestly, since EBS vols are supposedly not tied to a single disk, the raiding should be done on Amazon's end. That it isn't is telling.
This comment further down, supposedly from an Amazon employee, paints a grim picture for EBS: http://www.reddit.com/r/blog/comments/g66f0/why_reddit_was_d...
I firmly believe "the cloud" is a fad, unless for some reason you own and operate all the hardware yourself (ie. Google). Like other technical fads, everyone will probably come back to servers they can reach out and touch when needed, sooner or later.
You are wrong.
> everyone will probably come back to servers they can reach out and touch when needed, sooner or later.
No they won't, because most of us don't want to be managing hardware, ever.
I firmly believe "the cloud" is a fad, unless for some reason you own and operate all the hardware yourself (ie. Google). Like other technical fads, everyone will probably come back to servers they can reach out and touch when needed, sooner or later.
This was the role of shared hosting in the past. Several years ago, everybody realized that having root is better. Now, instead of colocating two servers and negotiating transit and dealing with remote hands, you can spin up two Linodes for $40 and have enough power to build anything. Critical mass? Add three more. You're not waiting for a shipment of servers to the datacenter to handle a sudden load from a positive mention on HN.
Saying that the cloud is a fad and we should all own our gear does two things: (a) increases humanity's carbon footprint, since most organizations never utilize hardware to their full potential, and (b) guarantees that only those with significant capital to buy a fleet, a cage, and power will ever compete in the Internet space, which is where we were many years ago. It is very arguable that the cloud is progress, and everybody sitting on the sidelines calling it a "fad" is scared by it.
Jeremy Edberg of Reddit had a good comment later in that thread, to someone who paralleled the cloud to electricity generation:
http://www.reddit.com/r/blog/comments/g66f0/why_reddit_was_d...
What sucks is, my remarks really depend on what you define "cloud" as, which -- partially thanks to Microsoft television commercials -- is currently up in the air.