5 ms·

it will never. databases are hard and people are idiots. nevermind something as hard as SQL optimization and index design -- there are LOTS of people out ther

it will never. databases are hard and people are idiots. nevermind something as hard as SQL optimization and index design -- there are LOTS of people out there who think creating a new logical database for every new customer is a good idea, resulting in 2000+ databases on a system when there should be 4. people who think HA is a waste of money because nothing has ever failed on them. cheapskates who will under-spec deployments and then yell at you when it doesn't fit their data. people are stupid. do not underestimate the stupidity of your average tech industry "professional". this is why i think there should be a traditional engineering certification process for this stuff. also, i simply don't buy the assertion that any ops or dev can be automated in any meaningful way. the only thing it's doing is making it easier for morons to shoot themselves in the foot by ignoring the experts and then run to the same experts like a little child when everything catches on fire. see: recent story of a guy who deleted 1500 systems at once. oops. are we all doing more, or less work than 5 years ago? has all this cloud and deployment tech made any less work for anyone, or destroyed any jobs? lol no. i repeat emphatically LOL NO. such a claim is just absurd in my view. anyone who claims such a nonsensical statement has never done actual ops work where you get called if shit goes south. the smartest thing amazon ever did was simply give people a button to push to give them more money when they're faced with their own overwhelming stupidity. ain't nobody to blame but yo'self then.

leesalminen 11y ago
> there are LOTS of people out there who think creating a new logical database for every new customer is a good idea, resulting in 2000+ databases on a system when there should be 4. I'm genuinely curious as to why you feel this way?
- beachstartup 11y ago
  see? LOTS.
- bpchaps 11y ago
  An ungodly amount of reasons. The ability to manage that many, for one. Those poor devops folk who have to deal with that. On a more technical side as an example, the number of open files can only be so high. You really start to hit the limit when you do things like that, which is when the most interesting kinds application crashes happen. "Just increase the file count." results in "Our report shows that an OldServer did not include a necessary open file limit config change. Engineer #582 has been fired."
  - leesalminen 11y ago
    CLI tooling has solved a lot of the problems that arise from many. Scripts for migration, host transfer, creation and deletion took some time to build out, but do work fine. I suppose we are lucky to have a very consistent workload per logical database. This allowed us to calculate our costs ahead of time. We found that we could keep DB costs at ~$1/customer/month. For a B2B SaaS product we were satisfied with that cost.
- joncampbelldev 11y ago
  My personal preference for a single multi-tenanted schema as opposed to 2000+ schemas is: Unless you require per customer customisations (which is a fast way to ensure you have an upper limit on the number of customers you can support) there is no need to duplicate. Use a single schema where every table with per-customer data has a tenant id column. Most decent RDBMS have a good way to ensure isolated locks across tenant ids e.g. MySQL partitions.
  - leesalminen 11y ago
    Understood. Currently, I manage several hundred logical databases for a B2B SaaS product. This has the potential to grow to several thousand over the course of years. My customers enjoy that (arbitrary) piece of mind that their data is logically separated from all else. I enjoy not having to remember to include a tenant_id clause. Our traffic pattern is quite steady per hour of day and per customer. That, plus using RDS for horizontal scaling (fixed # of logical DBs per host) allowed us to take this route. I suppose the decision is a matter of circumstance and preference, but I don't think this is necessarily "wrong" to do.
    - beachstartup 11y ago
      it's going to work fine until it doesn't. that's not going to be a good day. smart people can rationalize anything.
ben_jones 11y ago
On the flip side, learning resources will continue to improve. Now days all one would have to do is google "database optimizations" and immediately see things like indices etc. Furthermore if they're using a framework, which most are, the search becomes "how to speed up django" which leads to a lovely documented page hand holding you through whatever you need to do.

leesalminen 11y ago

> there are LOTS of people out there who think creating a new logical database for every new customer is a good idea, resulting in 2000+ databases on a system when there should be 4. I'm genuinely curious as to why you feel this way?

beachstartup 11y ago
see? LOTS.
bpchaps 11y ago
An ungodly amount of reasons. The ability to manage that many, for one. Those poor devops folk who have to deal with that. On a more technical side as an example, the number of open files can only be so high. You really start to hit the limit when you do things like that, which is when the most interesting kinds application crashes happen. "Just increase the file count." results in "Our report shows that an OldServer did not include a necessary open file limit config change. Engineer #582 has been fired."
- leesalminen 11y ago
  CLI tooling has solved a lot of the problems that arise from many. Scripts for migration, host transfer, creation and deletion took some time to build out, but do work fine. I suppose we are lucky to have a very consistent workload per logical database. This allowed us to calculate our costs ahead of time. We found that we could keep DB costs at ~$1/customer/month. For a B2B SaaS product we were satisfied with that cost.
joncampbelldev 11y ago
My personal preference for a single multi-tenanted schema as opposed to 2000+ schemas is: Unless you require per customer customisations (which is a fast way to ensure you have an upper limit on the number of customers you can support) there is no need to duplicate. Use a single schema where every table with per-customer data has a tenant id column. Most decent RDBMS have a good way to ensure isolated locks across tenant ids e.g. MySQL partitions.
- leesalminen 11y ago
  Understood. Currently, I manage several hundred logical databases for a B2B SaaS product. This has the potential to grow to several thousand over the course of years. My customers enjoy that (arbitrary) piece of mind that their data is logically separated from all else. I enjoy not having to remember to include a tenant_id clause. Our traffic pattern is quite steady per hour of day and per customer. That, plus using RDS for horizontal scaling (fixed # of logical DBs per host) allowed us to take this route. I suppose the decision is a matter of circumstance and preference, but I don't think this is necessarily "wrong" to do.
  - beachstartup 11y ago
    it's going to work fine until it doesn't. that's not going to be a good day. smart people can rationalize anything.

ben_jones 11y ago

On the flip side, learning resources will continue to improve. Now days all one would have to do is google "database optimizations" and immediately see things like indices etc. Furthermore if they're using a framework, which most are, the search becomes "how to speed up django" which leads to a lovely documented page hand holding you through whatever you need to do.