6 ms·

> damnit, fine we'll pretend to be a tape library IIRC, they may not be pretending. It's not public knowledge what storage medium AWS glacier is built on, but

> damnit, fine we'll pretend to be a tape library IIRC, they may not be pretending. It's not public knowledge what storage medium AWS glacier is built on, but many speculate it is actually tape.

capableweb 4y ago
Well, they do call it "virtual tapes", would be weird (maybe even illegal? False/misleading advertisement?) if they ended up storing it on physical tapes anyways. Edit: found in another thread here, the inventor linked the patent (https://image-ppubs.uspto.gov/dirsearch-public/print/downloadPdf/10013166 https://image-ppubs.uspto.gov/dirsearch-public/print/downloa...) which confirms it's virtual tapes, not actual tapes.
- dragonwriter 4y ago
  > Well, they do call it "virtual tapes", would be weird (maybe even illegal? False/misleading advertisement?) if they ended up storing it on physical tapes anyways. No, just like it is not weird and definitely not illegal for the things they call “virtual machines” to end up being run on actual machines.
  - capableweb 4y ago
    If you purchase a service describing it as "isolated virtual machines" and it ends up just being processes on a computer without any virtualization, wouldn't you call that at least misleading?
    - dragonwriter 4y ago
      Well, yes, because the “isolated” is false, not because the “virtual machine” abstraction is realized on a real machine.
      - capableweb 4y ago
        Right. If it says "Virtual machines" and it isn't, you wouldn't call that at least misleading?
        iamtedd 4y ago
        I think you're misunderstanding the scenario. What if each 'virtual' machine is actually bare metal i.e.: every EC2 instance is actually a separate computer? There's still isolation, there's just no virtualisation abstraction.
        xboxnolifes 4y ago
        What if your goal was to test virtual machine feature and performance parity to real machine? Is that not misleading?
  - adrianmonk 4y ago
    Also virtual memory backed by physical memory, virtual credit card numbers for a real credit card, and virtual desktops displayed on real desktops.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- theamk 4y ago
  It would be "virtual tape" over S3 API over whatever technology AWS uses for glacier over physical tape. They physical tapes, if any, would be many layers down.
adamsb6 4y ago
My knowledge is a decade old, so they very well may be using tape now, but were not originally. At announcement time Glacier was using super dense racks of hard disks but only powering a subset of them. This led to some tape-like behaviors, like your restore request might take a long time to process because your data was likely stored on disks that weren't powered on and you'd need to wait for them to come online.
- dastbe 4y ago
  i'd (probably apocryphally) heard at announcement it was just s3 under the hood to support customers while they built the dataplane out :)

> damnit, fine we'll pretend to be a tape library IIRC, they may not be pretending. It's not public knowledge what storage medium AWS glacier is built on, but many speculate it is actually tape.

capableweb 4y ago

Well, they do call it "virtual tapes", would be weird (maybe even illegal? False/misleading advertisement?) if they ended up storing it on physical tapes anyways. Edit: found in another thread here, the inventor linked the patent (https://image-ppubs.uspto.gov/dirsearch-public/print/downloadPdf/10013166 https://image-ppubs.uspto.gov/dirsearch-public/print/downloa...) which confirms it's virtual tapes, not actual tapes.

dragonwriter 4y ago
> Well, they do call it "virtual tapes", would be weird (maybe even illegal? False/misleading advertisement?) if they ended up storing it on physical tapes anyways. No, just like it is not weird and definitely not illegal for the things they call “virtual machines” to end up being run on actual machines.
- capableweb 4y ago
  If you purchase a service describing it as "isolated virtual machines" and it ends up just being processes on a computer without any virtualization, wouldn't you call that at least misleading?
  - dragonwriter 4y ago
    Well, yes, because the “isolated” is false, not because the “virtual machine” abstraction is realized on a real machine.
    - capableweb 4y ago
      Right. If it says "Virtual machines" and it isn't, you wouldn't call that at least misleading?
      - iamtedd 4y ago
        I think you're misunderstanding the scenario. What if each 'virtual' machine is actually bare metal i.e.: every EC2 instance is actually a separate computer? There's still isolation, there's just no virtualisation abstraction.
        xboxnolifes 4y ago
        What if your goal was to test virtual machine feature and performance parity to real machine? Is that not misleading?
- adrianmonk 4y ago
  Also virtual memory backed by physical memory, virtual credit card numbers for a real credit card, and virtual desktops displayed on real desktops.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
theamk 4y ago
It would be "virtual tape" over S3 API over whatever technology AWS uses for glacier over physical tape. They physical tapes, if any, would be many layers down.

adamsb6 4y ago

My knowledge is a decade old, so they very well may be using tape now, but were not originally. At announcement time Glacier was using super dense racks of hard disks but only powering a subset of them. This led to some tape-like behaviors, like your restore request might take a long time to process because your data was likely stored on disks that weren't powered on and you'd need to wait for them to come online.

dastbe 4y ago
i'd (probably apocryphally) heard at announcement it was just s3 under the hood to support customers while they built the dataplane out :)