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Parler's Spec WishList for Hosting Providers

38 points by moonka 6y ago

8bitsrule 6y ago
Maybe they have a couple of sugar daddies that can afford that. Whoever they might be.
- kevin_thibedeau 6y ago
  There's a supposed billionaire out there looking for something to do soon.
  - tgv 6y ago
    The Kochs were always looking for that kind of thing.
  - blackrock 6y ago
    Maybe he can run for president?
- moonka 6y ago
  I believe the Mercer family has invested heavily. https://www.cnn.com/2020/11/15/media/rebekah-mercer-parler/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2020/11/15/media/rebekah-mercer-parler/i...
throwaway4good 6y ago
What is going on here? Seems like a lot of tech but maybe it is normal for a Twitter like social app?
- calciphus 6y ago
  Standard Twitter rule - reply to the top thread with your marketing message. Act surprised when people point out that it is off-topic. How would you like to learn about investing in crypto?
- raverbashing 6y ago
  They're being extremely inefficient Also see the story about how they used to have sequential integer IDs as primary keys (sigh)
cbg0 6y ago
While most hosting providers won't touch them for political and/or moral reasons, it does seem like if they had the capital for it, owning their hardware and colocating it would be much cheaper long-term (assuming there is a long-term for their platform). Also, it seems like an obscene amount of RAM is required for such a platform, and I'd assume for most hot content that RAM would be relevant, but given their scale I think they could get by with a lot less.
einszwei 6y ago
Wow, those are some hefty server requirements. Those resources should be able to support a DAU in atleast millions - if not 10s of millions. What was parler's DAU at their peak?
- jart 6y ago
  "In December 2020, Parler had around 2.3 million daily active users." "As of January 2021, Parler reported having 15 million total users." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parler https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parler
- meibo 6y ago
  Apparently, from what I hear, they never bothered to move the codebase past "the concept you show to your boss to get feedback" and kept bolting on features. (They also used a free trial of Okta for identity management of their whole userbase, if that's any indicator) Probably assumed they would get away with just adding more hardware, even though I guess that bit wasn't their downfall in the end.
elwoopsmurt 6y ago
Ruby is hard to scale yeah.
- styluss 6y ago
  Is it a Rails app?
  - throwaway4good 6y ago
    According to the job ads I can find, they use Go: https://lensa.com/golang-developer-jobs/henderson/jd/4790155a0c69a6d934a3ec41da8e0042 https://lensa.com/golang-developer-jobs/henderson/jd/4790155...
    - utf_8x 6y ago
      I'd assume they only use Go for something on the side... I don't think it's physically possible to make Go this inefficient...
      - davismwfl 6y ago
        Let me introduce you to some programmers I have had to clean up after. Any language can be made into an inefficient pile of shit. I'm sure you've seen the same. That said, I agree with your point they aren't using Golang widely, and it looks like from the job ads they primarily use node.js and are moving towards Golang. I have no real hard facts for that other than just reading the job ads (if you click their name in the link above it shows many open positions).
        utf_8x 6y ago
        > Let me introduce you to some programmers I have had to clean up after. Any language can be made into an inefficient pile of shit. I'm sure you've seen the same. touché
  - epse 6y ago
    The security articles said it's WordPress..
banana_giraffe 6y ago
Assuming I'm reading this right, that's 40x i3.metal 70x db.r5.24xlarge 300x m5.2xlarge Or, assuming my napkin math is right, $900k/mo at list prices, not counting bandwidth costs, things like S3 and EBS. No one at this scale pays list prices, but still, ouch.
heipei 6y ago
Saw this, I was wondering what they mean by PSQL Cluster where they need 70(!) instances. Is this just replication or also sharding of some kind? Also, everyone always talks about instance cost first, but consider this: 100-120gb Internet egress per minute comes out at another $200k-$300k per month.
alkonaut 6y ago
What’s all this hardware for? Storing and serving tiny tweets can’t need this? Is there something non-obvious in their service that could use a huge fraction of the hardware? Media transcoding? If I were them I’d try to get back up as soon as possible with 10% that hardware even if it meant e.g no access outside the US or no media transcoding at all or whatever MVP version they can create.
lykr0n 6y ago
That's ... not that much. ~6/7 racks of servers. Any good sized centrally located DC would be able to meet those requirements, but you'd need to drop a couple mill up front for the servers.

38 points by moonka 6y ago

8bitsrule 6y ago

Maybe they have a couple of sugar daddies that can afford that. Whoever they might be.

kevin_thibedeau 6y ago
There's a supposed billionaire out there looking for something to do soon.
- tgv 6y ago
  The Kochs were always looking for that kind of thing.
- blackrock 6y ago
  Maybe he can run for president?
moonka 6y ago
I believe the Mercer family has invested heavily. https://www.cnn.com/2020/11/15/media/rebekah-mercer-parler/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2020/11/15/media/rebekah-mercer-parler/i...

throwaway4good 6y ago

What is going on here? Seems like a lot of tech but maybe it is normal for a Twitter like social app?

calciphus 6y ago
Standard Twitter rule - reply to the top thread with your marketing message. Act surprised when people point out that it is off-topic. How would you like to learn about investing in crypto?
raverbashing 6y ago
They're being extremely inefficient Also see the story about how they used to have sequential integer IDs as primary keys (sigh)

cbg0 6y ago

While most hosting providers won't touch them for political and/or moral reasons, it does seem like if they had the capital for it, owning their hardware and colocating it would be much cheaper long-term (assuming there is a long-term for their platform). Also, it seems like an obscene amount of RAM is required for such a platform, and I'd assume for most hot content that RAM would be relevant, but given their scale I think they could get by with a lot less.

einszwei 6y ago

Wow, those are some hefty server requirements. Those resources should be able to support a DAU in atleast millions - if not 10s of millions. What was parler's DAU at their peak?

jart 6y ago
"In December 2020, Parler had around 2.3 million daily active users." "As of January 2021, Parler reported having 15 million total users." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parler https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parler
meibo 6y ago
Apparently, from what I hear, they never bothered to move the codebase past "the concept you show to your boss to get feedback" and kept bolting on features. (They also used a free trial of Okta for identity management of their whole userbase, if that's any indicator) Probably assumed they would get away with just adding more hardware, even though I guess that bit wasn't their downfall in the end.

elwoopsmurt 6y ago

Ruby is hard to scale yeah.

styluss 6y ago
Is it a Rails app?
- throwaway4good 6y ago
  According to the job ads I can find, they use Go: https://lensa.com/golang-developer-jobs/henderson/jd/4790155a0c69a6d934a3ec41da8e0042 https://lensa.com/golang-developer-jobs/henderson/jd/4790155...
  - utf_8x 6y ago
    I'd assume they only use Go for something on the side... I don't think it's physically possible to make Go this inefficient...
    - davismwfl 6y ago
      Let me introduce you to some programmers I have had to clean up after. Any language can be made into an inefficient pile of shit. I'm sure you've seen the same. That said, I agree with your point they aren't using Golang widely, and it looks like from the job ads they primarily use node.js and are moving towards Golang. I have no real hard facts for that other than just reading the job ads (if you click their name in the link above it shows many open positions).
      - utf_8x 6y ago
        > Let me introduce you to some programmers I have had to clean up after. Any language can be made into an inefficient pile of shit. I'm sure you've seen the same. touché
- epse 6y ago
  The security articles said it's WordPress..

banana_giraffe 6y ago

Assuming I'm reading this right, that's 40x i3.metal 70x db.r5.24xlarge 300x m5.2xlarge Or, assuming my napkin math is right, $900k/mo at list prices, not counting bandwidth costs, things like S3 and EBS. No one at this scale pays list prices, but still, ouch.

heipei 6y ago

Saw this, I was wondering what they mean by PSQL Cluster where they need 70(!) instances. Is this just replication or also sharding of some kind? Also, everyone always talks about instance cost first, but consider this: 100-120gb Internet egress per minute comes out at another $200k-$300k per month.

alkonaut 6y ago

What’s all this hardware for? Storing and serving tiny tweets can’t need this? Is there something non-obvious in their service that could use a huge fraction of the hardware? Media transcoding? If I were them I’d try to get back up as soon as possible with 10% that hardware even if it meant e.g no access outside the US or no media transcoding at all or whatever MVP version they can create.

lykr0n 6y ago

That's ... not that much. ~6/7 racks of servers. Any good sized centrally located DC would be able to meet those requirements, but you'd need to drop a couple mill up front for the servers.