4 ms·

If I was Rackspace, I'd be at Reddit/Wired's headquarters already.

pbhjpbhj 16y ago
Didn't Jedburg say that they could reduce the failure by spending with Amazon. I wonder if Rackspace really want this particular traffic burden. It seems that if Reddit choose not to pay for the load they need then you get lot's of bad press for it ... perhaps I'm seeing it wrong. Rubbish analogy: Kinda like if I was doing a haulage business and you called out for a wheelbarrow to carry some elephants, then when the barrows broke we got bad press despite. If you'd paid for a heavy animal transport package ... OK it's all going wrong, you get the idea.
- jedberg 16y ago
  No, I said that we have spent all we can, and at this point we need development. However, in this case, the outage is not because of any issues with our setup, but with Amazon.
  - pbhjpbhj 16y ago
    >"we have spent all we can" So is it a financial constraint with Amazon? Would you be suffering the same sorts of outages regardless of the technology on the backend or does AWS basically suck?
    - rm445 16y ago
      You have the wrong end of the stick, because you're missing the history of the story. Reddit have a weird budget when it comes to staffing costs versus operating costs due to their parent company's policies as a media comapny - so they have a decent budget but are massively understaffed. Statements like the one you're quoting are in that context. Let's say you have an unlimited operating budget - you can come up with all kinds of wonderful plans for massive redundancy and zero downtime. But you can't make that happen if you're not allowed to hire any engineers or sysadmins! As far as I'm aware reddit are paying Amazon mucho dinero but still having irredeemable problems with the storage product, EBS. They are stuck on an unreliable service without the manpower to move off. That's the story, as far as I can piece together from comments here and on reddit.
      - pbhjpbhj 16y ago
        Ah, you see from what I read on reddit I understood that the staff shortage was simply part of Conde Nast's unwillingness to spend money on reddit and that constant downtime issues were another facet of that same problem. It's not making money and those looking after reddit don't want to ruin it with a huge money grab - instead taking a soft approach, first just begging for money, then adding in a subscription model (freemium anyone?) and more subtle advertising by way of sponsored reddits (/r/yourCompany'sProduct type stuff). I understand they've been hit with more staff problems just recently despite having a new [systems?] engineer start with them. So in your view EBS is the problem regardless of finance? That was the nut I was attempting to crack. TBH I didn't expect someone at reddit to stick their neck out and say "yeah Amazon sucks" but they might have confirmed that the converse was true and they were simply lacking the necessary finance to support the massive userbase they have.
ulope 16y ago
Rackspace (and really all the "popular" US hosters) seem ridiculously expensive compared to hosting prices we have in Germany (see e.g. http://www.hetzner.de/en/hosting/produktmatrix/rootserver-produktmatrix-eq http://www.hetzner.de/en/hosting/produktmatrix/rootserver-pr... this is one of the biggest root server hosters in Germany). Is this really so or are Racksoace and co. Just "boutique" offerings?

Didn't Jedburg say that they could reduce the failure by spending with Amazon. I wonder if Rackspace really want this particular traffic burden. It seems that if Reddit choose not to pay for the load they need then you get lot's of bad press for it ... perhaps I'm seeing it wrong. Rubbish analogy: Kinda like if I was doing a haulage business and you called out for a wheelbarrow to carry some elephants, then when the barrows broke we got bad press despite. If you'd paid for a heavy animal transport package ... OK it's all going wrong, you get the idea.

jedberg 16y ago
No, I said that we have spent all we can, and at this point we need development. However, in this case, the outage is not because of any issues with our setup, but with Amazon.
- pbhjpbhj 16y ago
  >"we have spent all we can" So is it a financial constraint with Amazon? Would you be suffering the same sorts of outages regardless of the technology on the backend or does AWS basically suck?
  - rm445 16y ago
    You have the wrong end of the stick, because you're missing the history of the story. Reddit have a weird budget when it comes to staffing costs versus operating costs due to their parent company's policies as a media comapny - so they have a decent budget but are massively understaffed. Statements like the one you're quoting are in that context. Let's say you have an unlimited operating budget - you can come up with all kinds of wonderful plans for massive redundancy and zero downtime. But you can't make that happen if you're not allowed to hire any engineers or sysadmins! As far as I'm aware reddit are paying Amazon mucho dinero but still having irredeemable problems with the storage product, EBS. They are stuck on an unreliable service without the manpower to move off. That's the story, as far as I can piece together from comments here and on reddit.
    - pbhjpbhj 16y ago
      Ah, you see from what I read on reddit I understood that the staff shortage was simply part of Conde Nast's unwillingness to spend money on reddit and that constant downtime issues were another facet of that same problem. It's not making money and those looking after reddit don't want to ruin it with a huge money grab - instead taking a soft approach, first just begging for money, then adding in a subscription model (freemium anyone?) and more subtle advertising by way of sponsored reddits (/r/yourCompany'sProduct type stuff). I understand they've been hit with more staff problems just recently despite having a new [systems?] engineer start with them. So in your view EBS is the problem regardless of finance? That was the nut I was attempting to crack. TBH I didn't expect someone at reddit to stick their neck out and say "yeah Amazon sucks" but they might have confirmed that the converse was true and they were simply lacking the necessary finance to support the massive userbase they have.

ulope 16y ago

Rackspace (and really all the "popular" US hosters) seem ridiculously expensive compared to hosting prices we have in Germany (see e.g. http://www.hetzner.de/en/hosting/produktmatrix/rootserver-produktmatrix-eq http://www.hetzner.de/en/hosting/produktmatrix/rootserver-pr... this is one of the biggest root server hosters in Germany). Is this really so or are Racksoace and co. Just "boutique" offerings?