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> AWS is pretty reliable for the most part In telecom or traditional mainframes, for example, the compute unit itself was expected to be reliable. Individual e

> AWS is pretty reliable for the most part In telecom or traditional mainframes, for example, the compute unit itself was expected to be reliable. Individual elements of AWS are not pretty reliable in that context. Check out the single host EC2 SLA. However, today most large or even medium scale software assumes unreliable individual elements and has redundancy at the program level. For that purpose, AWS core services are pretty reliable.

oceanplexian 5y ago
Way back I used to work in telecommunications at a place that provided POTS service. They are two very completely different worlds. Software engineers act as if 5 9's is a badge of honor, when really it isn't. When you are responsible for something that people use to dial 911 and can make the difference between life and death a few minutes of downtime doesn't cut it.
- bradleyjg 5y ago
  Right, and even five nines would be impressive compared to: AWS will use commercially reasonable efforts to ensure that each individual Amazon EC2 instance (“Single EC2 Instance”) has an Hourly Uptime Percentage of at least 90% of the time in which that Single EC2 Instance is deployed during each clock hour (the “Hourly Commitment”). In the event any Single EC2 Instance does not meet the Hourly Commitment, you will not be charged for that instance hour of Single EC2 Instance usage. This essentially forces the use of distributed computing for even small businesses.
  - ev1 5y ago
    EC2 is absolutely not meant for this, though. Use an abstraction layer like Heroku if you're going to not understand what you're getting into. The amount of times I've had to 'advise' small businesses that are somehow running their small business site off a single EC2 instance's ephemeral boot volume is atrocious.
    - bradleyjg 5y ago
      I don’t have any experience with huroku but what most small businesses need is a (perhaps simulated) reliable box on a fast network. As glorious as the paxos based present is, it’s overkill to the point of distraction for most businesses. The whole attraction of the cloud for them is not needing to hire sysadmins. Replacing that requirement with needing a devops team is even worse.

oceanplexian 5y ago

Way back I used to work in telecommunications at a place that provided POTS service. They are two very completely different worlds. Software engineers act as if 5 9's is a badge of honor, when really it isn't. When you are responsible for something that people use to dial 911 and can make the difference between life and death a few minutes of downtime doesn't cut it.

bradleyjg 5y ago
Right, and even five nines would be impressive compared to: AWS will use commercially reasonable efforts to ensure that each individual Amazon EC2 instance (“Single EC2 Instance”) has an Hourly Uptime Percentage of at least 90% of the time in which that Single EC2 Instance is deployed during each clock hour (the “Hourly Commitment”). In the event any Single EC2 Instance does not meet the Hourly Commitment, you will not be charged for that instance hour of Single EC2 Instance usage. This essentially forces the use of distributed computing for even small businesses.
- ev1 5y ago
  EC2 is absolutely not meant for this, though. Use an abstraction layer like Heroku if you're going to not understand what you're getting into. The amount of times I've had to 'advise' small businesses that are somehow running their small business site off a single EC2 instance's ephemeral boot volume is atrocious.
  - bradleyjg 5y ago
    I don’t have any experience with huroku but what most small businesses need is a (perhaps simulated) reliable box on a fast network. As glorious as the paxos based present is, it’s overkill to the point of distraction for most businesses. The whole attraction of the cloud for them is not needing to hire sysadmins. Replacing that requirement with needing a devops team is even worse.