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Because they didn't seem to know any of the simple and nice ideas from distributed systems to solve pain points of managing space, since adding, removing nodes,
by zzzcpan 7y ago
Because they didn't seem to know any of the simple and nice ideas from distributed systems to solve pain points of managing space, since adding, removing nodes, sharding/partitioning is something you have to figure out pretty much from the start.
- Annatar 7y agoDistributed systems and write arbitration on the same file are still terra incognita. This has never been solved because no one, and I really mean literally no one has been able to solve write arbitration to the same file or even the same block from multiple sources at the same time yet. Especially not in a generic way. Which node's update is the correct one in that instance? There is an entire world of computer science research waiting there. I'm sorry to have to write this, I really am, but you have no idea what the problems of the systems you are referring to are. It would be enough for me to cut off electricity to one or even all of your systems and then you would see all hell break loose on your "simple and nice distributed system ideas". You are just blissfully unaware of all the issues because you assume the network and the hardware are infallible and apparently you gave no thought to write arbitration in a true clustering filesystem. You have no idea what lurks beneath the surface and how fragile your "simple and nice distributed ideas" are, especially when implemented in software.
- zzzcpan 7y agoFlagged your comment for this. You should at least glance over my comment history on distributed computing before attacking me on things you don't understand.
- Annatar 7y agoI do not care who you are. Your comments on this thread made it crystal clear that you are not familiar with the subject matter: for you distributed has a very narrow meaning of a sharded key-value store, you've succeeded in making that clear. "Cloud", except that's not it. And whether you "flagged" my comment or not, that's irrelevant to me.
- zzzcpan 7y agoIt doesn't have that meaning to me. But in the context of a failed cloud company of Sun refugees the only experience in distributed systems that matters is the experience Sun refugees didn't and couldn't have. For some reason you are claiming absolutely irrelevant things to any of that. And, of course, resorting to personal attacks.
- Annatar 7y agoPersonal attacks? Did someone else make outrageous claims logged into your account, or was it you? Don't resort to that and take responsibility for yourself!
- dang 7y agoWe've asked you repeatedly to stop posting like this to HN. If you keep posting flamey comments we're going to have to ban you. I don't want to do that, so would you please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and follow the rules strictly from now on?
- dang 7y agoWould you please not post personally abrasive comments or do flamewar on HN? Not cool. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- notacoward 7y ago> Distributed systems and write arbitration on the same file are still terra incognita. That's far too aggressive a response for someone who's being sloppy with terminology themselves. "Distributed" covers many different scales. You also use "clustering filesystem" as though it's a synonym, which it very much is not. Among those who have actually built both, like me, distributed and cluster filesystems are very different things. It's fine if you think "true" distributed systems means global scale, but if you're not even explicit (let alone correct) about it you should hardly be condemning others for using definitions closer to general usage. And you definitely shouldn't be pretending to read people's minds with claims about what they "gave no thought" to or "have no idea" about. P.S. Since I can't reply to your comment below which was quite rightly flagged into oblivion, no, I didn't have anything to do with GFS.