5 ms·

Is it me or are big provider outages getting more common these days?

that_guy_iain 5y ago
I think they're reasonable common it's just becoming more of a think to notice.
scrollaway 5y ago
As time passes, the more big cloud providers there are, and the more complex they individually get (more products). Assuming the chance of an outage is actually static. If there is one (highly reliable and trusted) provider with five products one year, and three providers with ten products the next year, the chance of you seeing an outage has gone way up because of surface area.
- querez 5y ago
  Except that Google services don't run within GCP, but apart from it (mostly on Borg I'd guess).
  - scrollaway 5y ago
    The above applies to cloud as understood by techies just as b2c cloud as understood by laypeople.
  - jsty 5y ago
    Their internal platform is likely analogous in terms of accumulating complexity (and a bit of cruft) over time though
  - nefitty 5y ago
    If anyone else is curious, Borg is Google's cluster management software: https://kubernetes.io/blog/2015/04/borg-predecessor-to-kubernetes/ https://kubernetes.io/blog/2015/04/borg-predecessor-to-kuber...
- deepstack 5y ago
  More reason to promote for self-host, and decentralised systems like smtp, matrix.org, ActivityPub. The idea of having all the data and server concentrated in a few player such as google, amazon, ccp is not reliable for the digital operation of the planet.
  - altgoogler 5y ago
    Disclaimer: am Googler. Self-hosting is a good option, especially when mixed with multi-cloud offerings. The big rub is that it's really hard to approach the same level of availability the cloud offerings already give you. Depending on work-load, self-hosting is typically more expensive. This is why the SRE book talks about availability budget. You can't have 100% uptime, so how much do you want to pay to get close to it?
  - kertoip_1 5y ago
    The question is: should we trust small, underfunded, hobbyist servers more than large corporations that have a money-driven reason to maintain high quality of services?
    - riffic 5y ago
      for the average end user: heck no. for those with budgets to hire server administrators (or pay for third-party managed services)? yes. second category includes almost anyone with a large following like institutional users. hell the incumbent social media service operators can white-label their existing software and sell this as a service.
      - deepstack 5y ago
        Not really many open source project such as nextcloud, mattermost are easy to host your self, or the hosting provider provide it as an app.
      - fragmede 5y ago
        Yes. Like some sort of workspace? Google could make one. I wonder what they'd call it?
sva_ 5y ago
Almost like bad weather. Perhaps we'll have cloud outage forecasts at some point.
yunohn 5y ago
There’s always this question on every “X is down” post on HN. Quite boring commentary tbh.
afc 5y ago
I think it's just you, probably recency bias. I recall the days of Gmail being globally down for hours, more than once (3 times, IIRC), back in 2009.
- The-Bus 5y ago
  I also can't think of the last time I saw Twitter's Failwhale, which almost became their default mascot at one point. (Yes, I know they discontinued it, but I haven't seen the service "over capacity" in some time. I say this as a casual web user of it, not an active account holder or app user).
  - riffic 5y ago
    Twitter had a global outage this year (April 16). Facebook had an October outage. This happens quite regularly with distributed and complex systems.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
riffic 5y ago
ask anybody who researches complex and distributed systems and see what they say.

I think they're reasonable common it's just becoming more of a think to notice.

As time passes, the more big cloud providers there are, and the more complex they individually get (more products). Assuming the chance of an outage is actually static. If there is one (highly reliable and trusted) provider with five products one year, and three providers with ten products the next year, the chance of you seeing an outage has gone way up because of surface area.

querez 5y ago
Except that Google services don't run within GCP, but apart from it (mostly on Borg I'd guess).
- scrollaway 5y ago
  The above applies to cloud as understood by techies just as b2c cloud as understood by laypeople.
- jsty 5y ago
  Their internal platform is likely analogous in terms of accumulating complexity (and a bit of cruft) over time though
- nefitty 5y ago
  If anyone else is curious, Borg is Google's cluster management software: https://kubernetes.io/blog/2015/04/borg-predecessor-to-kubernetes/ https://kubernetes.io/blog/2015/04/borg-predecessor-to-kuber...
deepstack 5y ago
More reason to promote for self-host, and decentralised systems like smtp, matrix.org, ActivityPub. The idea of having all the data and server concentrated in a few player such as google, amazon, ccp is not reliable for the digital operation of the planet.
- altgoogler 5y ago
  Disclaimer: am Googler. Self-hosting is a good option, especially when mixed with multi-cloud offerings. The big rub is that it's really hard to approach the same level of availability the cloud offerings already give you. Depending on work-load, self-hosting is typically more expensive. This is why the SRE book talks about availability budget. You can't have 100% uptime, so how much do you want to pay to get close to it?
- kertoip_1 5y ago
  The question is: should we trust small, underfunded, hobbyist servers more than large corporations that have a money-driven reason to maintain high quality of services?
  - riffic 5y ago
    for the average end user: heck no. for those with budgets to hire server administrators (or pay for third-party managed services)? yes. second category includes almost anyone with a large following like institutional users. hell the incumbent social media service operators can white-label their existing software and sell this as a service.
    - deepstack 5y ago
      Not really many open source project such as nextcloud, mattermost are easy to host your self, or the hosting provider provide it as an app.
    - fragmede 5y ago
      Yes. Like some sort of workspace? Google could make one. I wonder what they'd call it?

sva_ 5y ago

Almost like bad weather. Perhaps we'll have cloud outage forecasts at some point.

yunohn 5y ago

There’s always this question on every “X is down” post on HN. Quite boring commentary tbh.

afc 5y ago

I think it's just you, probably recency bias. I recall the days of Gmail being globally down for hours, more than once (3 times, IIRC), back in 2009.

The-Bus 5y ago
I also can't think of the last time I saw Twitter's Failwhale, which almost became their default mascot at one point. (Yes, I know they discontinued it, but I haven't seen the service "over capacity" in some time. I say this as a casual web user of it, not an active account holder or app user).
- riffic 5y ago
  Twitter had a global outage this year (April 16). Facebook had an October outage. This happens quite regularly with distributed and complex systems.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

riffic 5y ago

ask anybody who researches complex and distributed systems and see what they say.