ClusterHQ is shutting down

What I see is a lot of complex network filesystems, vendor-specific solutions and gateway protocols to expensive SAN solutions, which are already chalk and cheese in terms of features and performance.

Arguably one of the best features of unix-style systems is support for arbitrary mount points, filesystem drivers and (network or local) blockstores. Storage is, essentially, a well-solved problem at the OS level. The fact that this option is marked "single node testing only – local storage is not supported in any way and WILL NOT WORK in a multi-node cluster" raises eyebrows.

By choosing to expose individual remote storage model semantics as Kube-level PV drivers instead of just leaving this to the OS, what I would argue we essentially see here is the legacy of a cluster orchestration system that came out of Google... a system optimized for large, homogenous, dynamic workloads to provide organization-internal IaaS, and not reduced feature-set systems with simpler architectural properties (eg. no multi-client network-aware filesystem locking).

I would argue that, in fact, what many people actually want is simpler, and the current pressure to use 'one size fits all' cluster orchestration systems with a high minimum bar of functionality and nodecount (read: minimum hardware investment) is misplaced. At the very least, there's some legitimacy to this line of thinking.

It would make no sense for every CEO whopse company is a month away from shutdown to be announcing "listen just to let you know, we are a month away from shutdown, but we are trying to find the money to keep going".

For many companies this is the default state of operation and undoubtedly many companies have gone from that state to great success.

What would employees and customers do in the face of such an announcement?

If you have ever been CEO of an ordinary company trying ot build a business then you'd understand.

They would have become full-death experiences if the CEO had said, "Hey everybody, we're near death, just FYI". So in the alternative world where company deaths are always announced well in advance, far more companies would die. Probably not a better world.

I don't know the story here, but in most cases there was some deal on the table that would have saved the company but fell through in the couple of days before the announcement.

Regardless, the right thing is to have enough payroll in reserve for an orderly shutdown and transition plan for customers. It's not clear whether that's happening here -- I hope so.

The word "sorry" does not appear in this post. Instead of apologizing to investors, users, and employees for letting all of them down the CEO writes a contentless self-aggrandizing post.

The CEO also doesn't bother to thank anyone despite being literally and metaphorically indebted to investors, users, and employees for getting as far as they did. [Update: there was "gratitude" - my mistake; sorry]

Besides the self-aggrandizing "we did it first" tone of the whole post, here are a few more parts I'd love to see future farewell posts skip:

> it’s often the pioneers who end up with arrows in their backs

Unless your point is that you were a company who tried to take what wasn't yours and was punished for it... this phrase is awkward-at-best.

> I called these “Friends of ClusterHQ” by the sobriquet “FoCkers”

The use of "sobriquet" doesn't make your adolescent play on words classy.

> The big successes are literally impossible without the many failures. Take a moment to think about that.

What a ridiculous thing to tell your audience that includes employees looking for jobs, investors out of money, and users without a service they may have depended on. Out of those 3 groups only investors care about such things. The other 2 groups are collateral damage to your hubris.