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Introducing Cloud Spanner, a Global Database Service

cloudplatform.googleblog.com

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Re: Introducing Cloud Spanner, a Global Database Service

#321

Post by hueving »

cjmcqueen wrote: post #171
ocdtrekkie wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The parent comment doesn't seem to specify "consumer level" and the loss of businesses having their own infrastructure is equally troubling. Everyone is putting a lot of eggs in a very small number of baskets.

I would disagree about the character of the situation. This isn't about people putting eggs in a few baskets, it's that it's more efficient to have centralized chicken coops instead of every family in the world owning their own chickens. Now, you could play with that analogy further and see some issues as well, but I don't think the issue here is centralized failure; all these data centers/"clouds" are at least good.…

>focusing on core business and not supporting functions.

Having a devops team with the necessary expertise in Google Cloud or AWS is still a supporting function. You've just traded one skill (managing physical servers) for another (managing proprietary virtual resources).

Re: Introducing Cloud Spanner, a Global Database Service

#322

Post by fritzo »

richdougherty wrote: post #269

Some interesting stuff in https://cloud.google.com/spanner/docs/whitepapers/SpannerAnd... about the social aspects of high availability. 1. Defining high availability in terms of how a system is used: "In turn, the real litmus test is whether or not users (that want their own service to be highly available) write the code to handle outage exceptions: if they haven’t written that code, then they are assuming high avai…

> perceived safety ... driving

I became a way better winter driver when I started intentionally fishtailing in snow and ice (in low risk situations).

Re: Introducing Cloud Spanner, a Global Database Service

#323

Post by [deleted] »

rattray wrote: post #136
snikch wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Amazon's Aurora databases seem to be solving the same problem, and are MySQL or Postgres compatible to boot.

While Aurora doesn't provide true horizontal scalability, the same-node scalability seems so strong it might allow many companies to stay single-node for quite a while. For example, see this benchmark: http://2ndwatch.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/Graph-3.jpg from this article: http://2ndwatch.com/blog/benchmarking-amazon-aurora/ Thoughts?

[deleted]

Re: Introducing Cloud Spanner, a Global Database Service

#325

Post by tyingq »

ChuckMcM wrote: post #89

Congratulations to the Spanner team for becoming part of the Google public cloud! And for those wondering, this is why Oracle wants billions of dollars from Google for "Java Copyright Infringement" because the only growth market for Oracle right now is their hosted database service, and whoops Google has a better one now. It will be interesting if Amazon and Microsoft choose to compete with Google on this service. If…

>the only growth market for Oracle right now is their hosted database service, and whoops Google has a better one now

It could end up that way, but lacking INSERT and UPDATE will likely limit this to a niche market for now.

Re: Introducing Cloud Spanner, a Global Database Service

#326

Post by rodgerd »

hinkley wrote: post #318
ChuckMcM wrote: post #89

Congratulations to the Spanner team for becoming part of the Google public cloud! And for those wondering, this is why Oracle wants billions of dollars from Google for "Java Copyright Infringement" because the only growth market for Oracle right now is their hosted database service, and whoops Google has a better one now. It will be interesting if Amazon and Microsoft choose to compete with Google on this service. If…

It seems like Oracle could have a play here, working on adapting cloud infrastructure tools for managing on-premises data centers. That keeps them in play for customers who can't put their data in the cloud and those that haven't because they're already Oracle customers. This pendulum swings. We're pretty near the apex now. A little work on ergonomics and these tools could be turn-key, and back we go to decentralized…

> It seems like Oracle could have a play here, working on adapting cloud infrastructure tools for managing on-premises data centers.

That's what the ExaDatas are supposed to be.

Re: Introducing Cloud Spanner, a Global Database Service

#327

Post by rpranav »

justinhj wrote: post #304
hosh wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I write software as a developer. This is how I earn my livelihood. Four years ago, I determined that while development work might seem to be near the top of the food chain, there will at some point where my work will be replaced by AIs. This is not so different from how word processors replaced the specialist job of typesetters. Word processors make "good enough" typesetting. You can still find typesetters practicing…

Anything that you can easily specify and describe in detail can be automated. In practise the world is filled with computers that need programming to cope with ever changing chaotic actions of our users. Personally I'm long on software developers, despite being very excited by how AI has blown up lately.

Agree. I remember someone advising me against getting a degree in computer science, back in 2000. Argument was -- look at MS Word. what else you want to add to this? It has more features than you need.

Not a fair argument against the point made above, however, I believe we will find the next big challenge for software to solve as soon as traditional problems are commoditized/automated and considered solved. Also, just knowing how to code is not going to be enough. You must complement it with domain expertise to solve challenging unsolved real world problems.

Re: Introducing Cloud Spanner, a Global Database Service

#328

Post by euyyn »

hueving wrote: post #321
cjmcqueen wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would disagree about the character of the situation. This isn't about people putting eggs in a few baskets, it's that it's more efficient to have centralized chicken coops instead of every family in the world owning their own chickens. Now, you could play with that analogy further and see some issues as well, but I don't think the issue here is centralized failure; all these data centers/"clouds" are at least good.…

>focusing on core business and not supporting functions. Having a devops team with the necessary expertise in Google Cloud or AWS is still a supporting function. You've just traded one skill (managing physical servers) for another (managing proprietary virtual resources).

But hopefully a smaller team, and one that keeps diminishing in size over the years if the trend continues. At least for the same level of service (in availability, security, etc.).

Re: Introducing Cloud Spanner, a Global Database Service

#329

Post by dreamfactory2 »

cjmcqueen wrote: post #171
ocdtrekkie wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The parent comment doesn't seem to specify "consumer level" and the loss of businesses having their own infrastructure is equally troubling. Everyone is putting a lot of eggs in a very small number of baskets.

I would disagree about the character of the situation. This isn't about people putting eggs in a few baskets, it's that it's more efficient to have centralized chicken coops instead of every family in the world owning their own chickens. Now, you could play with that analogy further and see some issues as well, but I don't think the issue here is centralized failure; all these data centers/"clouds" are at least good.…

> The Cloud is about businesses focusing on core business and not supporting functions

Yep, it inevitably trends towards commodity infrastructure. As such it will require regulation (and eventually even some form of nationalisation in some cases)

Re: Introducing Cloud Spanner, a Global Database Service

#330

Post by euyyn »

hueving wrote: post #296
euyyn wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's like being sad about the emergence of banks, because everybody's money is being kept in a small number of vaults instead of under each one's mattress.

Creating 3 massive banks that the entire world gets to choose from would be terrible.

Not sure the banks:mattresses and cloud-companies:IT-companies ratios are that different.
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