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Introducing Cloud Spanner, a Global Database Service

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Re: Introducing Cloud Spanner, a Global Database Service

#421

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Its pretty much a monopoly, now that Google seems to have officially closed the book on ever supporting postgresql. Uh, how? I wouldn't be surprised to see a Cloud SQL-like managed Postgres service from Google. While there's obviously some overlap in the potential market for any relational datastore service, Spanner doesn't really overlap with a cloud Postgres service as much as Cloud SQL does.

I would be. its been years and google and has been building out various pieces of infrastructure around mysql - including cloud spanner. the issue is that the migration path of self hosted mysql to cloud sql to spanner is pretty well defined. I dont see postgresql being strategically important or relevant to google for anything. if I was a startup deciding on my database, there's a lot less compelling reasons to choo…

You keep saying this - have you actually talked to them? Find some PMs and send a few emails. Postgres is definitely in progress.

Re: Introducing Cloud Spanner, a Global Database Service

#422
post #387

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you ever read about how Netflix tried to run their own hardware but can't because they have so much data in AWS that it would basically bankrupt them to extract it? Where did you read this? You can have Amazon send you a truck full of hard drives. I doubt it costs more than Netflix can afford.

Nevermind, I misremembered the story I read about them. They moved the main site to AWS with the huge omission of their movie streaming system. Their own Open Connect servers are far cheaper to use for this becuase of massive AWS outbound data costs. Also, the truck is for data in, not data out. Getting data out of AWS is far more expensive than putting it in. That's the lock in.

The Open Connect servers are for the edges, not the core.

They cache popular content close to the users, they don't manage their catalog at the edges.

Re: Introducing Cloud Spanner, a Global Database Service

#423

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> with the Availability being five 9s or better (less than one failure in 10^6) Anyone know how exactly this is defined for them? (Time? Queries? Results?)

Well, this is what the spanner website says if you read the fine print: >> This feature is not covered by any SLA So I would guess that you don't get _any_ guarantess. Not five nines and not even one nine.

Currently yes, but that's because it's in Beta.

Re: Introducing Cloud Spanner, a Global Database Service

#424

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Helpful feedback, we do have a development plan for $99, but it's not really intended for production workloads. If you only have 10 GB of data we'd heavily recommend going with something like RDS or Heroku Postgres. At that amount of data single node Postgres works great.

RDS is not single node - its multi-AZ replicated. And that's what we are paying 300$ instead of 99$ for. Imagine.. RDS is literally the ONLY place where you can buy a 10 GB data multi-AZ replicated, snapshotted and managed postgresql. Its pretty much a monopoly, now that Google seems to have officially closed the book on ever supporting postgresql.

RDS is only multi-AZ if you want it to be (and are willing to pay twice as much).

Re: Introducing Cloud Spanner, a Global Database Service

#425

I was like YES!!! Then I read for a single node it is 90 cents per hours then I was like NO!!! so absolute minimal cost for me is $648/month? I was hoping there was like a dev version. Maybe I didn't read the fine print?

I was thinking the same thing! Maybe it's better to look into some smaller service which offer e.g. PostgreSQL as a Service like https://www.elephantsql.com/plans.html or https://www.databaselabs.io/pricing/ (I'm sure they are even more, just done a quick googling). Does somebody has experience with such services?

PostGres at least offers full text indexing. I couldn't find that on Cloud Spanner.

Re: Introducing Cloud Spanner, a Global Database Service

#427

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The availability is "only" 99.999%, which IMO is still really high! (I work for Google Cloud)

Where does it say that? Does google cloud spanner guarantee three nines uptime? On the spanner page it says: >> This feature is not covered by any SLA ;) ;)

Once Cloud Spanner leaves beta, it will be covered by an SLA. GCP Alpha/Beta products don't have SLAs for the most part.

Re: Introducing Cloud Spanner, a Global Database Service

#428
post #33

The team here at Quizlet did a lot of performance testing on Spanner with one of our MySQL workloads to see if it's an option for us. Here are the test results: https://quizlet.com/blog/quizlet-cloud-spanner

I'm curious about how you have MySQL configured. If the query cache is enabled you will see MySQL plateau. There's also the all important innodb_buffer_pool_size and innodb_flush_log_at_trx_commit. See this for more info https://www.percona.com/blog/2013/09/20/innodb-performance-o...

We typically do yearly performance audits with Percona to ensure our databases are optimally configured. We disable the query cache. We set innodb_buffer_pool_size based on a % of total memory (as MySQL will use more than that in total, much for allocating connection structs and things like that). We set innodb_flush_log_at_trx_commit to 0 which is not ideal for data integrity but gives us more performance. In practice, because of Google's Live Migration technology we have never experienced a crash due to hardware on our master nodes (LM will run an emergency migration for any server that has hardware that is detected to be going bad before it becomes a problem) and disks are abstracted away even further. Our main risk is the kernel crashing or MySQL crashing which we've been fortunate enough to not happen on our masters. Spanner provides ACID compliance by default with all the scaleability and performance we get out of it.

Re: Introducing Cloud Spanner, a Global Database Service

#429
post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Curious: is there any company in the world that could replicate its breadth, performance, and reliability in the next decade? Could any government? Has any government? My impression is that, infrastructure wise, Google is genuinely in a class of size one.

Its probably a class size of 2, with Amazon. Beyond those two though, no one else is close.

What? Close to what? There are many many companies with lots of network infrastructure. Google and Amazon are not by themselves.

Re: Introducing Cloud Spanner, a Global Database Service

#430
post #419

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm saying I doubt they will ever offer it precisely because it will conflict with their paid offerings. The fact that it takes its hardware is a great excuse to not give your customers the option. I know GPS time sources have been available forever but a fault tolent database needs a backup. The US GPS is incredibly reliable but there have been multiple issues with both Glonass and Galilio. It sounds like Google has…

Yes, they clearly say that they use atomic clocks in addition, but that's commercially available as well. Atomic clock for frequency stability short- to mid-term, GPS to keep it synced to global time. E.g. in many cases, mobile-phone base stations contain just such a setup, and the data-center versions should fit in a few HE.

And then all you need is a team of 12 full time SREs to manage it.
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