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It seems to be often the main database that on failure catches startups on the wrong foot. The GitLab incident comes to mind. The easiest way to run a database

It seems to be often the main database that on failure catches startups on the wrong foot. The GitLab incident comes to mind. The easiest way to run a database is to set it up as a SPoF. You want to be serious and set everything up with redundancy, but then in case of problems it is just too easy to mess something up by doing the wrong thing when switching back or promoting a stale replica or something. I don't even know if there are proper hosted replicated SQL-ACID databases-as-a-service available one would consider using for financial services and similar use cases. There seems to be merit in paying DBAs proper money to handle these things.

jdavis703 9y ago
Why aren't the cloud offerings from Google, AWS, etc good enough? My understanding is that their infrastructure is PCI compliant, and there are a few banks already on this infrastructure. Is this simply a case of NIH syndrome, or are there regulations that prevent this?
deleted 9y ago
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wonderous 9y ago
"SPoF (single point of failure) is a part of a system that, if it fails, will stop the entire system from working."
jjirsa 9y ago
You can run a bank without ACID SQL ING uses Cassandra, which has no single point of failure, has been around for almost a decade, and would have made gitlab’s mistake a nonissue (and almost certainly would have made this one a nonissue as well - single instance failures don’t matter and linear scalability is a thing)
- grzm 9y ago
  Interesting. Do you have a reference of how (in what contexts) ING uses Cassandra?
  - jjirsa 9y ago
    I met one of their architects at a few Cassandra summits (2014 and 2015), so their talks should be online Here’s one: https://academy.datastax.com/resources/ing-groep-nv-exploiting-hotel-cassandra https://academy.datastax.com/resources/ing-groep-nv-exploiti... And another https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=-sD3x8-tuDU https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=-sD3x8-tuDU
- eru 9y ago
  I love ING (or at least they Australian version). I just hope they would update their security to something saner than a four digit pin. (And bad as it is, that's already better than British retail banks, though.)

jdavis703 9y ago

Why aren't the cloud offerings from Google, AWS, etc good enough? My understanding is that their infrastructure is PCI compliant, and there are a few banks already on this infrastructure. Is this simply a case of NIH syndrome, or are there regulations that prevent this?

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

wonderous 9y ago

"SPoF (single point of failure) is a part of a system that, if it fails, will stop the entire system from working."

jjirsa 9y ago

You can run a bank without ACID SQL ING uses Cassandra, which has no single point of failure, has been around for almost a decade, and would have made gitlab’s mistake a nonissue (and almost certainly would have made this one a nonissue as well - single instance failures don’t matter and linear scalability is a thing)

grzm 9y ago
Interesting. Do you have a reference of how (in what contexts) ING uses Cassandra?
- jjirsa 9y ago
  I met one of their architects at a few Cassandra summits (2014 and 2015), so their talks should be online Here’s one: https://academy.datastax.com/resources/ing-groep-nv-exploiting-hotel-cassandra https://academy.datastax.com/resources/ing-groep-nv-exploiti... And another https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=-sD3x8-tuDU https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=-sD3x8-tuDU
eru 9y ago
I love ING (or at least they Australian version). I just hope they would update their security to something saner than a four digit pin. (And bad as it is, that's already better than British retail banks, though.)