6 ms·

Big Day for Amazon EC2: Production, SLA, Windows, and 4 New Capabilities

55 points by jeffbarr 18y ago

deleted 18y ago
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deleted 18y ago
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- andr 18y ago
  365 * (0.05%) = 0.1825 ... days. Or about 4 hours.
- pchristensen 18y ago
  It's 4 hrs, 22 min. 0.05% = 0.0005 .0005 * 365 days = .1825 days
  - ropiku 18y ago
    Mistaken with percents, I'm sorry.
andr 18y ago
OK, Microsoft clearly foreshadowed this: http://i36.tinypic.com/2llnhxk.jpg http://i36.tinypic.com/2llnhxk.jpg
- biohacker42 18y ago
  Weren't there versions of NT that ran on DEC Alpha and EAC MIPS chips? It's all probably Intel at Amazon, but still - fun to think about.
  - DenisM 18y ago
    Yep. I have used both.
siculars 18y ago
"We plan to release an interactive AWS management console. We plan to release new load balancing, automatic scaling, and cloud monitoring services." how will that play with management providers like rightscale. they go on to say : "I think it is important to note that load balancing, automatic scaling, and cloud monitoring will each be true web services, with complete APIs for provisioning, control, and status checking. We'll be working with a number of management tool vendors and developers to make sure that their products will support these new services on a timely basis." small conciliation, but i think it was always a danger that aws would walk up the value add food chain.
- jwilliams 18y ago
  > small conciliation, but i think it was always a danger that aws would walk up the value add food chain. Indeed - there's the rub... When do Amazon reach a point that their offering competes with their own customers?
kirubakaran 18y ago
Windows is now available Introducing 'Cloudy Computing'
lsc 18y ago
the sla only covers network connectivity, not hardware/systems problems? I guess that makes sense, but three and a half nines is a lot easier to get on a network than on PC hardware.
- ezmobius 18y ago
  and it appears that two out of their 3 availability zones have to go down in order for anyone to collect on sla. This effectively makes the sla meaningless afaict.
  - lsc 18y ago
    huh. well, I imagine they still have the credibility edge over small providers. I guess if you really are using it as a cloud (that is, provisioning as needed, and not worrying about it if your existing systems go down) one out of 3 availability zones seems like it would be enough. But then, I bet a lot of people use ec2 like an ordinary VPS provider, which is to say they keep their image up all the time. (this is why I see them as a competitor, even though I rent by the month, not the hour, meaning you can do things with ec2 that you can't do with me. I am working on better provisioning/billing scripts, but I've been talking about it for a while, and it hasn't happened, while I have to say the ec2 system is pretty slick)
  - wmf 18y ago
    From the beginning, Amazon has said that individual EC2 instances are not supposed to be reliable and thus you should build some sort of HA. The SLA covers the case where you'd go down even if you have HA. This does leave the door open for a more reliable cloud provider who takes care of most of the HA for you.
  - mdasen 18y ago
    And all SLAs aren't meaningless? Try reading Joyent's. It includes such gem exceptions as: * scheduled maintenance and emergency maintenance and upgrades * failure of access circuits to the Joyent Network * inability to obtain raw materials, supplies, or power used in or equipment needed for provision of this SLA So, power outages aren't their problem. If the server goes down and they perform emergency maintenance, but can't get the equipment they need for 48 hours that isn't their problem. If the network goes down, that isn't their problem. While Amazon is being a little cheap with their SLA, at least there are circumstances where it could be triggered. That's why I always respected Slicehost's SLA: "Do you offer an SLA? Not for Slices and here’s why: most hosting SLA agreements are just plain silly. They promise things like 99.9% uptime, but downtime excludes: scheduled maintenance, network outages, hardware failures and software trouble. Well what exactly is left to cause downtime? Here’s our SLA: we’ll do our best to keep your machines running smoothly for as long as possible and get them up ASAP should something go wrong." And in over a year I've never had any downtime that wasn't me rebooting the box. /I have no affiliation with Slicehost beyond being a customer.
bigthboy 18y ago
The Windows addition is saying something. I think this clearly represents that Amazon is wanting to stay up with it and is, in a way, preparing for the "Windows Strata" announcement that supposed to come at the developers convention. I'm curious to see how well it all works out, I've never personally thought of Windows Server as much of a "cloud-ready" server O/S... if you will.

55 points by jeffbarr 18y ago

deleted 18y ago

[deleted]

deleted 18y ago

[deleted]

andr 18y ago
365 * (0.05%) = 0.1825 ... days. Or about 4 hours.
pchristensen 18y ago
It's 4 hrs, 22 min. 0.05% = 0.0005 .0005 * 365 days = .1825 days
- ropiku 18y ago
  Mistaken with percents, I'm sorry.

andr 18y ago

OK, Microsoft clearly foreshadowed this: http://i36.tinypic.com/2llnhxk.jpg http://i36.tinypic.com/2llnhxk.jpg

biohacker42 18y ago
Weren't there versions of NT that ran on DEC Alpha and EAC MIPS chips? It's all probably Intel at Amazon, but still - fun to think about.
- DenisM 18y ago
  Yep. I have used both.

siculars 18y ago

"We plan to release an interactive AWS management console. We plan to release new load balancing, automatic scaling, and cloud monitoring services." how will that play with management providers like rightscale. they go on to say : "I think it is important to note that load balancing, automatic scaling, and cloud monitoring will each be true web services, with complete APIs for provisioning, control, and status checking. We'll be working with a number of management tool vendors and developers to make sure that their products will support these new services on a timely basis." small conciliation, but i think it was always a danger that aws would walk up the value add food chain.

jwilliams 18y ago
> small conciliation, but i think it was always a danger that aws would walk up the value add food chain. Indeed - there's the rub... When do Amazon reach a point that their offering competes with their own customers?

kirubakaran 18y ago

Windows is now available Introducing 'Cloudy Computing'

lsc 18y ago

the sla only covers network connectivity, not hardware/systems problems? I guess that makes sense, but three and a half nines is a lot easier to get on a network than on PC hardware.

ezmobius 18y ago
and it appears that two out of their 3 availability zones have to go down in order for anyone to collect on sla. This effectively makes the sla meaningless afaict.
- lsc 18y ago
  huh. well, I imagine they still have the credibility edge over small providers. I guess if you really are using it as a cloud (that is, provisioning as needed, and not worrying about it if your existing systems go down) one out of 3 availability zones seems like it would be enough. But then, I bet a lot of people use ec2 like an ordinary VPS provider, which is to say they keep their image up all the time. (this is why I see them as a competitor, even though I rent by the month, not the hour, meaning you can do things with ec2 that you can't do with me. I am working on better provisioning/billing scripts, but I've been talking about it for a while, and it hasn't happened, while I have to say the ec2 system is pretty slick)
- wmf 18y ago
  From the beginning, Amazon has said that individual EC2 instances are not supposed to be reliable and thus you should build some sort of HA. The SLA covers the case where you'd go down even if you have HA. This does leave the door open for a more reliable cloud provider who takes care of most of the HA for you.
- mdasen 18y ago
  And all SLAs aren't meaningless? Try reading Joyent's. It includes such gem exceptions as: * scheduled maintenance and emergency maintenance and upgrades * failure of access circuits to the Joyent Network * inability to obtain raw materials, supplies, or power used in or equipment needed for provision of this SLA So, power outages aren't their problem. If the server goes down and they perform emergency maintenance, but can't get the equipment they need for 48 hours that isn't their problem. If the network goes down, that isn't their problem. While Amazon is being a little cheap with their SLA, at least there are circumstances where it could be triggered. That's why I always respected Slicehost's SLA: "Do you offer an SLA? Not for Slices and here’s why: most hosting SLA agreements are just plain silly. They promise things like 99.9% uptime, but downtime excludes: scheduled maintenance, network outages, hardware failures and software trouble. Well what exactly is left to cause downtime? Here’s our SLA: we’ll do our best to keep your machines running smoothly for as long as possible and get them up ASAP should something go wrong." And in over a year I've never had any downtime that wasn't me rebooting the box. /I have no affiliation with Slicehost beyond being a customer.

bigthboy 18y ago

The Windows addition is saying something. I think this clearly represents that Amazon is wanting to stay up with it and is, in a way, preparing for the "Windows Strata" announcement that supposed to come at the developers convention. I'm curious to see how well it all works out, I've never personally thought of Windows Server as much of a "cloud-ready" server O/S... if you will.