5 ms·

What's an example of an intractable problem you ran into on GCP?

pishpash 8y ago
Maintenance windows that don't cause downtime? This was even discussed here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16871931 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16871931 Read the last description: "amateur and unprofessional." The same thing happens for Kubernetes Engine. Does Google internally run their Cadillac infra like this? Of course not. The conclusion is either they don't care about their external cloud or that team can't ship basic features.
- jpatokal 8y ago
  I'm not sure I follow you here: for GCE, there are no "maintenance windows", the vast majority of maintenance is carried out via live migration and the user doesn't even notice. Yes, on rare occasion there's an unplanned failure (host error) and the VM has to be restarted elsewhere, but this is the only option for maintenance at AWS. Mandatory disclaimer: I work at GCP.
  - asey 8y ago
    One example fitting GP description would be Cloud SQL maintenance windows. Unavoidable downtime as far as I know (even with HA)
  - pishpash 8y ago
    As asey correctly points out, the link I posted talks about the Cloud SQL maintenance window, not about Compute Engine. That there is unavoidable downtime even with HA has been a problem known for seven months at this point. A Cloud SQL TL even sought feedback here with people telling that person this is a "dealbreaker" and another saying it doesn't even make sense to have built HA for a low probability event (zone outage) before dealing with this much higher probability event: https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=flamingcow https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=flamingcow This is pretty strong customer feedback. What happened with this feedback, anything? The bigger picture here about GCP, preceded by Google's long reputation, is that customer feedback means nothing. Googlers are probably still building what they feel like building, and that is why AWS continues to trot ahead despite being less polished. They ship things that work and they know what their customers want.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- ikiris 8y ago
  FWIW if you're depending on something to be up in a single availability zone, you're already doing cloud wrong.

Maintenance windows that don't cause downtime? This was even discussed here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16871931 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16871931 Read the last description: "amateur and unprofessional." The same thing happens for Kubernetes Engine. Does Google internally run their Cadillac infra like this? Of course not. The conclusion is either they don't care about their external cloud or that team can't ship basic features.

jpatokal 8y ago
I'm not sure I follow you here: for GCE, there are no "maintenance windows", the vast majority of maintenance is carried out via live migration and the user doesn't even notice. Yes, on rare occasion there's an unplanned failure (host error) and the VM has to be restarted elsewhere, but this is the only option for maintenance at AWS. Mandatory disclaimer: I work at GCP.
- asey 8y ago
  One example fitting GP description would be Cloud SQL maintenance windows. Unavoidable downtime as far as I know (even with HA)
- pishpash 8y ago
  As asey correctly points out, the link I posted talks about the Cloud SQL maintenance window, not about Compute Engine. That there is unavoidable downtime even with HA has been a problem known for seven months at this point. A Cloud SQL TL even sought feedback here with people telling that person this is a "dealbreaker" and another saying it doesn't even make sense to have built HA for a low probability event (zone outage) before dealing with this much higher probability event: https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=flamingcow https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=flamingcow This is pretty strong customer feedback. What happened with this feedback, anything? The bigger picture here about GCP, preceded by Google's long reputation, is that customer feedback means nothing. Googlers are probably still building what they feel like building, and that is why AWS continues to trot ahead despite being less polished. They ship things that work and they know what their customers want.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
ikiris 8y ago
FWIW if you're depending on something to be up in a single availability zone, you're already doing cloud wrong.