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> This is just slightly more complex than a static site That's because their product is only slightly more complex than a static site. I wish every project wa

> This is just slightly more complex than a static site That's because their product is only slightly more complex than a static site. I wish every project was as basic as a web server and database but it's pretty rare these days.

rjh29 4y ago
Also pragmatically choosing data centres in one physical location (even though this is a health checking service) rather than immediately going for highly available Aurora Serverless multi-AZ or something that would inflate the bill 10x.
nojito 4y ago
Most saas companies are simple crud apps.
- threeseed 4y ago
  No they aren't. Even seemingly basic ones like Notion hide a lot of complexity. What you're seeing is survivorship bias where the SaaS companies that are doing well are the ones that can provide a simple, clean UI whilst adding the functionality that you need for the product to be useful.
capableweb 4y ago
> I wish every project was as basic as a web server and database but it's pretty rare these days. Is it? What functionality are you thinking about that absolutely require more than that? I find that most ideas even today can be solved with a web server + DB, while developers today like to over-engineer things and think about scaling a service for a million users while they haven't even figured out the value proposition of their product/service yet.
- exdsq 4y ago
  If you’re programming autonomous weapons for fighter jets it tends to require a little more than a web server, or so I’ve heard!
  - capableweb 4y ago
    Well, I'd say it's more rare to work on autonomous weapons for fighter jets than not, wouldn't you agree?
    - exdsq 4y ago
      Depends where you live :)
      - capableweb 4y ago
        Now I'm curious, where do people live where it's more common to write software for any type of weapons compared to software for anything not weapons?
        exdsq 4y ago
        I was being a little facetious, but there are some DoD/military industry towns where the majority of code will be C/C++ based stuff.
  - toqy 4y ago
    I fail to see how AWS helps with that though
- nijave 4y ago
  The last couple places I worked also had a queueing system for async execution/background tasks. A lot of apps use an "AI" or "machine learning" component which usually just means a second heterogeneous internal service. For a little bit larger companies it's pretty common to have a data analytics or data warehouse component. In addition, a web server + database usually require some monitoring system. After you have more than a handful of servers, probably also log aggregation. If you're just a single or handful of people working on something, you probably don't need any of that. Once you get a little bigger (or downtime becomes expensive) those things get tacked on quickly.
skc 4y ago
> I wish every project was as basic as a web server and database but it's pretty rare these days. I feel like the overwhelming majority of web based software projects can be catered for with exactly this setup. If it's rare it's because everybody's drunk the Kool-aid
- threeseed 4y ago
  Maybe in the past, sure. But these days people rely far more on their web apps. Having a 1-2 day outage because your architecture is not highly-available across data centres like this one just doesn't cut it. And multi-day outages are very much real because of the thundering herd effect as companies rapidly try to move between data centres exhausting capacity. And much of the complexity in modern day architectures come from high availability and security.
  - welterde 4y ago
    It's already multi-datacenter, since the servers are distributed across multiple datacenters on the Falkenstein campus (and they also have other locations in their eco-system).
  - nijave 4y ago
    The post mentions he picked multiple Hetzner DCs to put his servers in
    - threeseed 4y ago
      Multiple DCs in the same "park" equivalent to an availability zone. i.e. they would likely be sharing the same power and network infrastructure. So not redundant by any normal definition.
- therealdrag0 4y ago
  Majority by what metric? Solo projects? Enterprise? What? That’s an incredibly broad brush that doesn’t match my experience at all. Could it be you just haven’t been involved in many complicated projects?

rjh29 4y ago

Also pragmatically choosing data centres in one physical location (even though this is a health checking service) rather than immediately going for highly available Aurora Serverless multi-AZ or something that would inflate the bill 10x.

nojito 4y ago

Most saas companies are simple crud apps.

threeseed 4y ago
No they aren't. Even seemingly basic ones like Notion hide a lot of complexity. What you're seeing is survivorship bias where the SaaS companies that are doing well are the ones that can provide a simple, clean UI whilst adding the functionality that you need for the product to be useful.

capableweb 4y ago

> I wish every project was as basic as a web server and database but it's pretty rare these days. Is it? What functionality are you thinking about that absolutely require more than that? I find that most ideas even today can be solved with a web server + DB, while developers today like to over-engineer things and think about scaling a service for a million users while they haven't even figured out the value proposition of their product/service yet.

exdsq 4y ago
If you’re programming autonomous weapons for fighter jets it tends to require a little more than a web server, or so I’ve heard!
- capableweb 4y ago
  Well, I'd say it's more rare to work on autonomous weapons for fighter jets than not, wouldn't you agree?
  - exdsq 4y ago
    Depends where you live :)
    - capableweb 4y ago
      Now I'm curious, where do people live where it's more common to write software for any type of weapons compared to software for anything not weapons?
      - exdsq 4y ago
        I was being a little facetious, but there are some DoD/military industry towns where the majority of code will be C/C++ based stuff.
- toqy 4y ago
  I fail to see how AWS helps with that though
nijave 4y ago
The last couple places I worked also had a queueing system for async execution/background tasks. A lot of apps use an "AI" or "machine learning" component which usually just means a second heterogeneous internal service. For a little bit larger companies it's pretty common to have a data analytics or data warehouse component. In addition, a web server + database usually require some monitoring system. After you have more than a handful of servers, probably also log aggregation. If you're just a single or handful of people working on something, you probably don't need any of that. Once you get a little bigger (or downtime becomes expensive) those things get tacked on quickly.

skc 4y ago

> I wish every project was as basic as a web server and database but it's pretty rare these days. I feel like the overwhelming majority of web based software projects can be catered for with exactly this setup. If it's rare it's because everybody's drunk the Kool-aid

threeseed 4y ago
Maybe in the past, sure. But these days people rely far more on their web apps. Having a 1-2 day outage because your architecture is not highly-available across data centres like this one just doesn't cut it. And multi-day outages are very much real because of the thundering herd effect as companies rapidly try to move between data centres exhausting capacity. And much of the complexity in modern day architectures come from high availability and security.
- welterde 4y ago
  It's already multi-datacenter, since the servers are distributed across multiple datacenters on the Falkenstein campus (and they also have other locations in their eco-system).
- nijave 4y ago
  The post mentions he picked multiple Hetzner DCs to put his servers in
  - threeseed 4y ago
    Multiple DCs in the same "park" equivalent to an availability zone. i.e. they would likely be sharing the same power and network infrastructure. So not redundant by any normal definition.
therealdrag0 4y ago
Majority by what metric? Solo projects? Enterprise? What? That’s an incredibly broad brush that doesn’t match my experience at all. Could it be you just haven’t been involved in many complicated projects?