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on the intent question, you said: > Yep. Amazon (GCP, Azure) are making bank off the idea that you can just pay opex to run in multiple regions and lay off you

on the intent question, you said: > Yep. Amazon (GCP, Azure) are making bank off the idea that you can just pay opex to run in multiple regions and lay off your SREs, but if you really wanted high availability (and not just some service credits when things go wrong) you would spend the engineering effort to go multi-provider. That is not AWS's intent. And its FUD to suggest that somehow cloud vendors want to make money out of reliability. For example, in AWS, a webapp with a single Region approach using multiple AZs will give you higher availablility, but similar costs to a single AZ approach.

reallydude 7y ago
> the idea that you can just pay opex to run in multiple regions and lay off your SREs, > That is not AWS's intent. Yet that's what all their produced literature describes. > its FUD to suggest that somehow cloud vendors want to make money out of reliability. It's literally a selling point. Not sure how mentioning it is FUD. It's FUD (and rightly so) to point out that your cross-platform solution is likely less production-ready and reliable than AWS (in total) as a single point of failure.
- jasonlotito 7y ago
  > Yet that's what all their produced literature describes. No, it's not. I've read it. The Well Architected stuff is actually really good about not being AWS only. These are generally good principals to keep in mind regardless of which provider you go with. And that's how it's written, and that's how AWS teaches it in person (I've actually been through their Well Architected course). Yes, they use AWS tooling to teach it, but nothing about it requires AWS. So, no. You are completely wrong. > It's literally a selling point. Not sure how mentioning it is FUD. Because the pricing AWS has doesn't necessarily increase cost with increase reliability. Suggesting that you need to spend more money to increase reliability is FUD. > It's FUD (and rightly so) to point out that your cross-platform solution is likely less production-ready and reliable than AWS (in total) as a single point of failure. That's not what was pointed out. Rather, it was pointed out that you can get high reliability without resorting to multi-cloud and higher costs. For you to continue suggesting otherwise, you first have to start off by explaining why you think high availability can't be obtained using a single cloud provider.
  - klodolph 7y ago
    > Because the pricing AWS has doesn't necessarily increase cost with increase reliability. Suggesting that you need to spend more money to increase reliability is FUD. I do not understand this statement. In general, it costs more to increase the reliability of a system. This includes both infrastructure cost and engineering cost. I also do not understand why this could be FUD. I don’t have any fear, uncertainty, or doubt when I pay more for better services. This is normal and expected. Conversely this means that I can save money if I identify components of my system with lower demands for infrastructure reliability.
  - reallydude 7y ago
    > The Well Architected stuff While that is the topic, that is not what I was referencing. "produced literature" is a bit more expansive than that and casually accessible (eg https://media.amazonwebservices.com/architecturecenter/AWS_ac_ra_ftha_04.pdf https://media.amazonwebservices.com/architecturecenter/AWS_a...). If you're going to reply about how someone is wrong, please have the courtesy to digest the statements made. Lashing out with non-sequitors is not constructive, when you could take a statement in good faith and consider you misinterpreted it.
nixgeek 7y ago
You appear to be speaking on behalf of Amazon Web Services but don’t mention this relationship or your company contact information in your HN profile. Is this normal and allowed at AWS, or do you just not have a Social Media Policy? You have said you work on the AWS Well-Architected team in your other comments, but it feels like strong statements about intent of a company should be attributable to an employee directly, and not an anonymous internet handle. Others from AWS like @jeffbarr and @_msw_ seem to be much more transparent when making statements about Amazon.
- FigmentEngine 7y ago
  I generally keep my profiles for work and personal seperate on social media. When I cross that division I disclose if I have some interest that would influence my statements. My work handle on twitter is @WellArchitected, and linked in is https://www.linkedin.com/in/philipfitzsimons/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/philipfitzsimons/ I'm not in the superstar league of @jeffbarr and @_msw_
klodolph 7y ago
> That is not AWS's intent. To clarify, I’m not talking about intent or “wants” in any way. (If you are speaking of AWS’s intent, do you have some kind of privileged knowledge of what AWS “wants” to do?) > And its FUD to suggest that somehow cloud vendors want to make money out of reliability. Let’s forget about what AWS “wants”. I think that AWS deserves to make money for making reliable services, and that it is right to pay them more money to get more reliability. This is not FUD, this is how business works. When I am working with a cloud provider to host my services, I am not trying to extract the most favorable terms possible—I want a deal where both parties are making money. If AWS is not making money from reliability, then that means, conversely, that I can’t buy it from them (more or less—this is a simplification). And you can see that reliability is all over AWS’s marketing materials, because reliability is important to AWS’s customers. > For example, in AWS, a webapp with a single Region approach using multiple AZs will give you higher availablility, but similar costs to a single AZ approach. Reliability is more than just a collection of IaaS products wired together. The fact that two particular configurations have similar price points is not informative. Single-region, multi-AZ is great for a large percentage of customers. When that’s not enough, you pay more money, and you should do some modeling of system availability because there are plenty of categories of errors that will now prevent you from reaching those higher availability targets.
quirmian 7y ago
> For example, in AWS, a webapp with a single Region approach using multiple AZs will give you higher availablility, but similar costs to a single AZ approach. Whether your costs are similar or not depends on the amount of inter-AZ traffic, which is charged for.

reallydude 7y ago

> the idea that you can just pay opex to run in multiple regions and lay off your SREs, > That is not AWS's intent. Yet that's what all their produced literature describes. > its FUD to suggest that somehow cloud vendors want to make money out of reliability. It's literally a selling point. Not sure how mentioning it is FUD. It's FUD (and rightly so) to point out that your cross-platform solution is likely less production-ready and reliable than AWS (in total) as a single point of failure.

jasonlotito 7y ago
> Yet that's what all their produced literature describes. No, it's not. I've read it. The Well Architected stuff is actually really good about not being AWS only. These are generally good principals to keep in mind regardless of which provider you go with. And that's how it's written, and that's how AWS teaches it in person (I've actually been through their Well Architected course). Yes, they use AWS tooling to teach it, but nothing about it requires AWS. So, no. You are completely wrong. > It's literally a selling point. Not sure how mentioning it is FUD. Because the pricing AWS has doesn't necessarily increase cost with increase reliability. Suggesting that you need to spend more money to increase reliability is FUD. > It's FUD (and rightly so) to point out that your cross-platform solution is likely less production-ready and reliable than AWS (in total) as a single point of failure. That's not what was pointed out. Rather, it was pointed out that you can get high reliability without resorting to multi-cloud and higher costs. For you to continue suggesting otherwise, you first have to start off by explaining why you think high availability can't be obtained using a single cloud provider.
- klodolph 7y ago
  > Because the pricing AWS has doesn't necessarily increase cost with increase reliability. Suggesting that you need to spend more money to increase reliability is FUD. I do not understand this statement. In general, it costs more to increase the reliability of a system. This includes both infrastructure cost and engineering cost. I also do not understand why this could be FUD. I don’t have any fear, uncertainty, or doubt when I pay more for better services. This is normal and expected. Conversely this means that I can save money if I identify components of my system with lower demands for infrastructure reliability.
- reallydude 7y ago
  > The Well Architected stuff While that is the topic, that is not what I was referencing. "produced literature" is a bit more expansive than that and casually accessible (eg https://media.amazonwebservices.com/architecturecenter/AWS_ac_ra_ftha_04.pdf https://media.amazonwebservices.com/architecturecenter/AWS_a...). If you're going to reply about how someone is wrong, please have the courtesy to digest the statements made. Lashing out with non-sequitors is not constructive, when you could take a statement in good faith and consider you misinterpreted it.

nixgeek 7y ago

You appear to be speaking on behalf of Amazon Web Services but don’t mention this relationship or your company contact information in your HN profile. Is this normal and allowed at AWS, or do you just not have a Social Media Policy? You have said you work on the AWS Well-Architected team in your other comments, but it feels like strong statements about intent of a company should be attributable to an employee directly, and not an anonymous internet handle. Others from AWS like @jeffbarr and @_msw_ seem to be much more transparent when making statements about Amazon.

FigmentEngine 7y ago
I generally keep my profiles for work and personal seperate on social media. When I cross that division I disclose if I have some interest that would influence my statements. My work handle on twitter is @WellArchitected, and linked in is https://www.linkedin.com/in/philipfitzsimons/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/philipfitzsimons/ I'm not in the superstar league of @jeffbarr and @_msw_

klodolph 7y ago

> That is not AWS's intent. To clarify, I’m not talking about intent or “wants” in any way. (If you are speaking of AWS’s intent, do you have some kind of privileged knowledge of what AWS “wants” to do?) > And its FUD to suggest that somehow cloud vendors want to make money out of reliability. Let’s forget about what AWS “wants”. I think that AWS deserves to make money for making reliable services, and that it is right to pay them more money to get more reliability. This is not FUD, this is how business works. When I am working with a cloud provider to host my services, I am not trying to extract the most favorable terms possible—I want a deal where both parties are making money. If AWS is not making money from reliability, then that means, conversely, that I can’t buy it from them (more or less—this is a simplification). And you can see that reliability is all over AWS’s marketing materials, because reliability is important to AWS’s customers. > For example, in AWS, a webapp with a single Region approach using multiple AZs will give you higher availablility, but similar costs to a single AZ approach. Reliability is more than just a collection of IaaS products wired together. The fact that two particular configurations have similar price points is not informative. Single-region, multi-AZ is great for a large percentage of customers. When that’s not enough, you pay more money, and you should do some modeling of system availability because there are plenty of categories of errors that will now prevent you from reaching those higher availability targets.

quirmian 7y ago

> For example, in AWS, a webapp with a single Region approach using multiple AZs will give you higher availablility, but similar costs to a single AZ approach. Whether your costs are similar or not depends on the amount of inter-AZ traffic, which is charged for.