Founder of JuiceFS here, congrats to the Launch! I'm super excited to see more people doing creative things in the using-S3-as-file-system space. When we started JuiceFS back in 2017, applied YC for 2 times but no luck. We are still working hard on it, hoping that we can help people with different workloads with different tech!
I'm a happy and satisfied JuiceFS user here, so I too would be interested in the difference between these. Is the Regatta key point caching?
Launch HN: Regatta Storage (YC F24) – Turn S3 into a local-like, POSIX cloud FS
271–280 of 329 posts
Re: Launch HN: Regatta Storage (YC F24) – Turn S3 into a local-like, POSIX cloud FS
#272I'm also not sure that its a good architecture to have your servers inbetween my S3. If i'm on one cloud provider, the traffic between their S3 compatible solution and my infrastructure is most of the time in the same cloud provider. And if not, i will for sure have a local cache rcloning the stuff from left to right.
I also don't get your calculator at all.
Re: Launch HN: Regatta Storage (YC F24) – Turn S3 into a local-like, POSIX cloud FS
#273Your pricepoint is very bad. The overprovicioning statement in your Post indicated that you would be a 'cheap' alternative but 100gb for $5? I'm also not sure that its a good architecture to have your servers inbetween my S3. If i'm on one cloud provider, the traffic between their S3 compatible solution and my infrastructure is most of the time in the same cloud provider. And if not, i will for sure have a local cach…
> If i'm on one cloud provider, the traffic between their S3 compatible solution and my infrastructure is most of the time in the same cloud provider
This is exactly right, and it's why we're working to deploy our infrastructure to every major cloud. We don't want customers paying egress costs or cross-cloud latency to use Regatta.
> I also don't get your calculator at all.
This could probably use a bit more explanation on the website. We're comparing to the usage of local devices. We find that, most often, teams will only use 15% of the EBS volumes that they've purchased (over a monthly time period). This means that instead of paying $0.125/GiB-mo of storage (like io2 offers), they're actually paying $0.833/GiB-mo of actual bytes stored ($0.125/15%). Whereas on Regatta, they're only paying for what they use -- which is a combination of our caching layer ($0.20) and S3 ($0.025). That averages out closer to $0.10/GiB stored, depending on the amount of data that you use.
Re: Launch HN: Regatta Storage (YC F24) – Turn S3 into a local-like, POSIX cloud FS
#274Your pricepoint is very bad. The overprovicioning statement in your Post indicated that you would be a 'cheap' alternative but 100gb for $5? I'm also not sure that its a good architecture to have your servers inbetween my S3. If i'm on one cloud provider, the traffic between their S3 compatible solution and my infrastructure is most of the time in the same cloud provider. And if not, i will for sure have a local cach…
Thanks for the feedback. If price is the single blocker for teams to try the product, I'd love to discuss more. Please send me an email at hleath [at] regattastorage.com. > If i'm on one cloud provider, the traffic between their S3 compatible solution and my infrastructure is most of the time in the same cloud provider This is exactly right, and it's why we're working to deploy our infrastructure to every major cloud…
Btw. while your experience works well for Netflix, in my company (also very big), we have LoBs and while different teams utilize their storage in a different way, none of us are aligned on a level that we would benefit directly from your solution.
From a pure curiosity point of view: Do you have already enough customers which have savings? What are their use cases? The size of their setups?
Re: Launch HN: Regatta Storage (YC F24) – Turn S3 into a local-like, POSIX cloud FS
#275Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm a happy and satisfied JuiceFS user here, so I too would be interested in the difference between these. Is the Regatta key point caching?
I know that I've answered this question a couple times in the thread, so I don't know if my words add extra value here. But, I agree that it would be interesting to hear what Davies is thinking.
Re: Launch HN: Regatta Storage (YC F24) – Turn S3 into a local-like, POSIX cloud FS
#276Earlier quoted context omitted.
We're also interested in SQLite shared by multiple processes on something like Regatta but my concerns are the issues described in the SQLite documentation about NFS [1]. Notably "SQLite relies on exclusive locks for write operations, and those have been known to operate incorrectly for some network filesystems." [1] https://sqlite.org/useovernet.html
Ah, yes — there are some specific file locking concerns with NFSv3 (notably that locks aren’t built as leases like in NFSv4). Let me do a double click here, but I know we will be able to support locks correctly with our custom protocol when we launch it by the end of the year.
I ask because last time I checked, S3 wouldn't let you "patch" an object. So you'd have to push the diff as separate objects and then "reconstruct" the original file client-side as different chunks are read, right?
Re: Launch HN: Regatta Storage (YC F24) – Turn S3 into a local-like, POSIX cloud FS
#277Earlier quoted context omitted.
Thanks for the feedback. If price is the single blocker for teams to try the product, I'd love to discuss more. Please send me an email at hleath [at] regattastorage.com. > If i'm on one cloud provider, the traffic between their S3 compatible solution and my infrastructure is most of the time in the same cloud provider This is exactly right, and it's why we're working to deploy our infrastructure to every major cloud…
What is then your initial latency if i start an AI job 'fresh'? You still need to hit the backend right? How long do you then keep this data in your cache? Btw. while your experience works well for Netflix, in my company (also very big), we have LoBs and while different teams utilize their storage in a different way, none of us are aligned on a level that we would benefit directly from your solution. From a pure curi…
That's correct, and it's something that we can tune if there's a specific need. For AI use cases specifically, we're working on adding functionality to "pre-load" the cache with your data. For example, you would be able to call an API that says "I'm about to start a job and I need this directory on the cache". We would then be able to fan out our infrastructure to download that data very quickly (think hundreds of GiB/s) -- much faster than any individual instance could download the data. Then your job would be able to access the data set at low-latency. Does that sound like it would make sense for you?
> Btw. while your experience works well for Netflix, in my company (also very big), we have LoBs and while different teams utilize their storage in a different way, none of us are aligned on a level that we would benefit directly from your solution.
I'm not totally sure what you mean here. I don't anticipate that a large organization would have to 100% buy-in to Regatta in order to get benefits. In fact, this is the reason why we are so intent on having a serverless product that "scales to 0". That would allow each of your teams to independently try Regatta without needing to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on something Day 1 for the entire company.
> From a pure curiosity point of view: Do you have already enough customers which have savings? What are their use cases? The size of their setups?
These are pretty intimate details about the business, and I don't think I can share very specific data. However, yes -- we do have customers who are realizing massive savings (50%+) over their existing set ups.
Re: Launch HN: Regatta Storage (YC F24) – Turn S3 into a local-like, POSIX cloud FS
#278Earlier quoted context omitted.
Ah, yes — there are some specific file locking concerns with NFSv3 (notably that locks aren’t built as leases like in NFSv4). Let me do a double click here, but I know we will be able to support locks correctly with our custom protocol when we launch it by the end of the year.
One more question. How does it handle large files that are frequently modified in arbitrary locations (like a SQLite file)? Will it only upload the "diffs" to S3? I'm guessing it doesn't have to scan the whole file to determine what's changed since it can keep track of what's "dirty". I ask because last time I checked, S3 wouldn't let you "patch" an object. So you'd have to push the diff as separate objects and then…
Re: Launch HN: Regatta Storage (YC F24) – Turn S3 into a local-like, POSIX cloud FS
#279How do you handle wrote concurrency? If you different processes write on the same file at the same time, what do I read after?
All connected file system clients see read-after-write consistency, so you see the up to date file data!
The good news is that you, personally, don't have to spend the time to create the Jepsen test harness, you can pay them to run the test but I have no idea what kind of O($) we're talking here. Still, it could be worth it to inspire confidence, and is almost an imperative if you're going to (ahem) roll your own protocol for network file access :-/
Re: Launch HN: Regatta Storage (YC F24) – Turn S3 into a local-like, POSIX cloud FS
#280Earlier quoted context omitted.
We're also interested in SQLite shared by multiple processes on something like Regatta but my concerns are the issues described in the SQLite documentation about NFS [1]. Notably "SQLite relies on exclusive locks for write operations, and those have been known to operate incorrectly for some network filesystems." [1] https://sqlite.org/useovernet.html
Ah, yes — there are some specific file locking concerns with NFSv3 (notably that locks aren’t built as leases like in NFSv4). Let me do a double click here, but I know we will be able to support locks correctly with our custom protocol when we launch it by the end of the year.