Our service is down because Msft Azure is down. This is how we chose to react. • Hacker News Board

Re: Our service is down because Msft Azure is down. This is how we chose to react.

#21

Post by Avalaxy » Sat, Dec 29, 2012, 9:06 PM UTC

niggler wrote: post #18

When can we move beyond blaming a cloud service and just owning up to the decision? Soluto chose to use Azure and knew they were taking a risk. It's their fault for choosing to use Azure, and unless they signed for a 100.000000000% uptime guarantee (which I'm sure they didn't, given no one would give such a guarantee) they have to own up to any faults. This extends to those services that blames AWS as well. It's not…

Azure offers a SLA with a 99,95% uptime guarantee for computing instances and a 99,9% uptime SLA for storage. If they do not meet this SLA you will get your money back.

You can read more about it at www.windowsazure.com/en-us/support/legal/sla/

Re: Our service is down because Msft Azure is down. This is how we chose to react.

#22

Post by ChuckMcM » Sat, Dec 29, 2012, 9:08 PM UTC

Maybe the world is ready for RACSP (Redundant Array of Cloud Service Providers)

Re: Our service is down because Msft Azure is down. This is how we chose to react.

#23

Post by sologoub » Sat, Dec 29, 2012, 9:09 PM UTC

roee wrote: post #14

sologoub wrote: post #12

Maybe a noobish question, but in the future, is there anything other than need for preparation, that prevents you from having a backup spun up on say AWS or another service provider? It seems like a prudent step to take.

It's the entire service, not a bunch of files. When Netflix went down due to AWS outage, could you image them just "restoring a backup" on rackspace and running just like that?

The core service, sure. The problem is that Netflix accounts for something like a 3rd of US bandwidth consumption. Not many services can sustain that. Netflix also has to manipulate a giant library of assets. Doesn't sound like this is part of their service. A normal company should be able to fail-over.

I have been experimenting a lot with Google App Engine. Failing over from a PaaS like that is not easy because your app typically relies on a bunch of proprietary APIs. However, it is possible, provided you keep right replication and architect the application accordingly.

You also don't need to fail over 100% of your app. I don't have a very clear understanding of what Soluto actually does (sounds like a GotToAssist competitor), ability to fail over the part of the system that facilitates the remote desktop experience would be more important than administration or creation of new accounts. (This is a crude example.)

Re: Our service is down because Msft Azure is down. This is how we chose to react.

#24

Post by hhudolet » Sat, Dec 29, 2012, 9:09 PM UTC

runesoerensen wrote: post #7

I can recommend trying AppHarbor - we're striving to deliver a better .NET and Windows cloud platform. Feel free to shoot me an email (rs@appharbor.com) if there's anything I can help with.

Its just too expensive, you cant host your custom domain name on free instance. And there's nothing between 0 and 50$. I'm waiting for prices of azure web sites, hopefully it would compare to shared hosting prices.

Re: Our service is down because Msft Azure is down. This is how we chose to react.

#25

Post by roee » Sat, Dec 29, 2012, 9:10 PM UTC

niggler wrote: post #20

roee wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No one's "blaming" anyone. The expectancy is that cloud providers work their asses off to fix stuff that gets broken, which is the case.

"Our service is down because Azure is down" definitely sounds like scapegoating (regardless of whether it is the case, Soluto should have a contingency plan)

That's not scapegoating, it's pointing at facts. Sad as they are. When you have a complex web service, you rely on a provider. That provider can go down sometimes, and it takes you with it. Again I'll point to Netflix and AWS, they waited until AWS were back up, they didn't "restore a backup" somewhere else.

Re: Our service is down because Msft Azure is down. This is how we chose to react.

#26

Post by hhudolet » Sat, Dec 29, 2012, 9:11 PM UTC

nodesocket wrote: post #3

I tried Microsoft Azure for a month because I received free credits via their BizSpark program. I can confidently say their uptime is the worst I have ever seen. Nearly daily servers would loose access to disks and switch to read-only mode. Also, they lack any ability to snapshot backup servers, which is a basic requirement of a cloud platform. I know its early, and they are just starting, but I just don't have confi…

I have a VM on azure, and no downtime in last 3 months. Also, didn't notice any problems with disks.

Re: Our service is down because Msft Azure is down. This is how we chose to react.

#27

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Dec 29, 2012, 9:14 PM UTC

roee wrote: post #14

sologoub wrote: post #12

Maybe a noobish question, but in the future, is there anything other than need for preparation, that prevents you from having a backup spun up on say AWS or another service provider? It seems like a prudent step to take.

It's the entire service, not a bunch of files. When Netflix went down due to AWS outage, could you image them just "restoring a backup" on rackspace and running just like that?

[deleted]

Re: Our service is down because Msft Azure is down. This is how we chose to react.

#28

Post by roee » Sat, Dec 29, 2012, 9:17 PM UTC

ChuckMcM wrote: post #22

Maybe the world is ready for RACSP (Redundant Array of Cloud Service Providers)

That's too close to RackSpace. Choose another name :)

Re: Our service is down because Msft Azure is down. This is how we chose to react.

#29

Post by AlexDanger » Sat, Dec 29, 2012, 9:20 PM UTC

Perhaps this is part of your current problem with Azure, but is it possible to retain some part of your frontpage during an outage like this? Or failover to a static page with a basic description of the service? Your support site seems to look ok.

I only make the suggestion because I was not aware of Soluto. I went to your homepage and see the outage notice and a link to support. I still have no idea what your service is about.

Perhaps not the best time to be spruiking your site and service, but any-publicity-is-good-publicity etc.