Comparing Amazon EC2 to Joyent SmartOS • Hacker News Board

Re: Comparing Amazon EC2 to Joyent SmartOS

#31

Post by 4ad » Mon, Nov 19, 2012, 11:10 AM UTC

latchkey wrote: post #13

I recently tried out Joyent SmartOS for a NodeJS consulting gig I'm doing. After about 30 seconds, I killed the vm and switched to Ubuntu 12 server. I don't care if SmartOS is 'faster' or has dtrace. The fact that it is missing basic things like top (no prstat isn't anything close to top) and 'standard' things like upstart made me want to run for the hills. The Joyent wiki documentation on SmartOS is abysmal at best.…

You're complaining that SmartOS doesn't ship with inferior technology? That's not a valid criticism. Perhaps a valid criticism might be that Joyent doesn't make it clear enough why prstat, DTrace and SMF are superior to Linux alternatives, and where would you find documentation for all these things. It's understandable that you searched the SmartOS wiki, but the Oracle Solaris documentation would have been better if you were not familiar with Solaris.

Joyent has to make the experience better by streamlining documentation, not by compromising its core values that make SmartOS great. The quality of the Solaris documentation is great, it's just not organized how Linux people expect it to be and they don't know where to find it.

Re: Comparing Amazon EC2 to Joyent SmartOS

#32

Post by rplnt » Mon, Nov 19, 2012, 11:22 AM UTC

I never used any cloud computing but hell that's slow. Just tried the "sort five million numbers" on my desktop and it took under 5 seconds (something above 5 in VM). I tried it in python though.. but I imagine ruby's performance would be about the same in this regard.

Re: Comparing Amazon EC2 to Joyent SmartOS

#33

Post by 4ad » Mon, Nov 19, 2012, 11:24 AM UTC

latchkey wrote: post #24

bcantrill wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For whatever it's worth, we are very actively working to make SmartOS a more hospitable environment to those coming from other systems. I'm not sure if you're interested in the details here (after all, it sounds like you might have spent longer on the HN comment than on the "30 seconds" with SmartOS), but if you provision the default base smartos64 image (currently version 1.6.3), "top" is available via pkgsrc ("pkgi…

As a new customer, I feel like Joyent needs to focus on simplifying things quite a bit. I want to run NodeJS on a server. I install the aptly titled 'SmartMachine Node.js' product and expect it to be the right version and the basic tools installed to get the job done. Instead, I get this morass of oh, you didn't install the right machine or oh, node is in some other directory now. Can you see how that might be distra…

The things you are complaining about -- top vs. prstat, dtrace, upstart vs. smf, clear and comprehensive documentation vs. man pages written in an afternoon or blog posts on the internet, apt vs. ips -- these are things that are objectively better on Solaris in a quantifiable way. If they make you feel like you're working with Windows 98, I don't think the problem is with the tools, but somewhere else.

A few days ago there was an article about Linux monoculture. It's even worse than that, it's an Ubuntu monoculture.

Re: Comparing Amazon EC2 to Joyent SmartOS

#34

Post by nikcub » Mon, Nov 19, 2012, 11:38 AM UTC

twotwotwo wrote: post #2

- No one pick a host based on a single microbenchmark, please. Game out what your app would need to achieve your target performance level with what each host offers. Amazon still might lose (sounds like that happened with TripAdvisor) but at least you've made your decision a sane way. - For the best price, you'd want to use a reserved instance if this is a webserver, and perhaps a spot instance if it's a batch/HPC ta…

> sounds like that happened with TripAdvisor

is this a reference to another post or story? I Googled and couldn't find it

Re: Comparing Amazon EC2 to Joyent SmartOS

#35

Post by adamlindsay » Mon, Nov 19, 2012, 11:52 AM UTC

An AWS micro is designed for burstable CPU loads, i.e. Websites. Performing a CPU intensive task will never do well. Amazon even says this in their own documentation.

The second fault I have is that articles like this, is that they only every look at the OnDemand price, which most people using AWS seriously don't pay. AWS has reserved pricing and spot both of which will dramatically drop the pricing. Maybe not as inexpensively as Joyent, but much much closer.

Re: Comparing Amazon EC2 to Joyent SmartOS

#36

Post by moe » Mon, Nov 19, 2012, 11:54 AM UTC

I don't understand why Joyent clings to a dead operating system. Are they planning to single-handedly keep solaris alive?

Cloud computing is a commodity. Many (most?) customers use multiple clouds in parallel. Learning and maintaining the intricacies of a niche OS in this environment is a nonsensical proposition.

And for what? For a few percentage points on a CPU benchmark? Seriously?

Re: Comparing Amazon EC2 to Joyent SmartOS

#37

Post by ksec » Mon, Nov 19, 2012, 11:55 AM UTC

I have been asking, and wondering why would anyone want to use AWS. It is insanely expensive. It is Slow on CPU, Slow on I/O, Low on Bandwidth, Low on memory, and Zero Support. Compared to many other alternatives that gives you 3 – 4 times the on all the above plus better support for the same price. Even their High CPU and Memory plan is still on the expensive side, only the High I/O SSD offers some value. AWS works great when you are in the mid range of expanding, then you can calculate your usage and book their server in advance using Reserved Instances. Instagram and Netflix as example. But that is hassle you have to put though, there are alternatives that are priced and perform just as well without using Reserved Instances. And once you got past the mid range, a managed dedicated server and some instant cloud severs should be much more cost effective.

Apart from being forced by VC ( because they are heavily invested in Amazon ) i could not understand why startup are choosing AWS at all.

Re: Comparing Amazon EC2 to Joyent SmartOS

#38

Post by statictype » Mon, Nov 19, 2012, 12:02 PM UTC

ksec wrote: post #37

I have been asking, and wondering why would anyone want to use AWS. It is insanely expensive. It is Slow on CPU, Slow on I/O, Low on Bandwidth, Low on memory, and Zero Support. Compared to many other alternatives that gives you 3 – 4 times the on all the above plus better support for the same price. Even their High CPU and Memory plan is still on the expensive side, only the High I/O SSD offers some value. AWS works…

I have been asking, and wondering why would anyone want to use AWS

It's dead-simple to get started.

It's widely known. I can convince my CTO to use Amazon for cloud-hosting. He's never heard of Rackspace or Joylent - people who are serious about running their infrastructure on the cloud will research and know about them but for quick experimenting and companies just getting their feet wet, Amazon has a big edge here.

Re: Comparing Amazon EC2 to Joyent SmartOS

#39

Post by porker » Mon, Nov 19, 2012, 12:43 PM UTC

Loic wrote: post #20

nickporter wrote: post #3

Anybody else want to share their experience with Joyent versus EC2? I'm considering doing the switch as my EC2 bill is getting a little expensive.

If you serve the US market Joyent is maybe good, if you serve the EU market you have way better deals with EU providers. Joyent have some servers in EU but they are just collocating. EC2 is available worldwide for good latency. Joyent love micro benchmarks because they allow one customer to grab a lot of CPU in burst, but if you are one of the other customers on the same hardware node, it is better to have a bit slow…

Loic, any pointers you can give (here or off-list) for the EU providers with way better deals? Thanks!

Re: Comparing Amazon EC2 to Joyent SmartOS

#40

Post by tszming » Mon, Nov 19, 2012, 12:57 PM UTC

For a more detailed comparison, see: Is Joyent Really 14X Faster than EC2 and Azure the "Fastest Cloud"? (tl;dr - EC2 isn't that bad) http://blog.cloudharmony.com/2011/11/many-are-skeptical-of-c...

To me, the weakest part of AWS is always on the technical support - you have no right to create a ticket to them unless you pay for the support fee (as contrast to Joyent /Rackspace/Linode), even you have discovered a bug in their system!

On the other hand, I also agree with @latchkey that SmartOS /Ubuntu is an important factor when we are choosing the platform - for a lot of people, ease of use and larger community is more important than cutting edge features like dtrace and zfs.