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You're comparing apples to oranges. Flask is software of which all instances run independent of each other while Cloudflare is SaaS where all its sites depend

You're comparing apples to oranges. Flask is software of which all instances run independent of each other while Cloudflare is SaaS where all its sites depend on the same service. If Cloudflare goes down, so does a significant portion of the web. Flask cannot have an outage like Cloudflare. All they can do is push a faulty update, but even then you can rollback or stay on the old version.

tetha 3y ago
> If Cloudflare goes down, so does a significant portion of the web. Flask cannot have an outage like Cloudflare. All they can do is push a faulty update, but even then you can rollback or stay on the old version. This is what was on the tip of my tongue. I'd argue you're missing the portion of control in this whole discussion, and how much process you can place in front of a component change. If I have a flask dependency, I have a lot of control over this dependency. If flask screws up badly, I have many options: I can update. I can not update. I can downgrade. In fact, I could fork flask internally and fix it on my own and either be a good citizen and open up a PR, or I could be something else. I can test all of this in any number of environments before it hits a customer, and even more stages before it hits all customers. With Cloudflare - or any number of Hosters as well, like AWS, Azure, Google Cloud, I have very little control. If I use Cloudflare as a CDN and Cloudflare goes down, I might not have the capacities at my upstream server to handle the load from all my customers, so I am down as long as Cloudflare is down. I wouldn't have the footprint available necessary to replace AWS in our own private DCs, even if we pooled all spare capacities - and then I'd still have to find a way to exfil our data from a downed AWS. (Which, yes, we have, but it'll take long hours) And no matter how much I test, if my hoster fucks up, I'm immediately fucked as well, no matter what processes I might have. The only process around this would be provider independence, which is really expensive and a lot of effort even if you just have a luke-warm standby.
- robertlagrant 3y ago
  You can multihost your static site; you don't have to only use Cloudflare. You can have more than one CDN. Nothing is centralising you or funnelling you somewhere you don't want to go. And you can do these things in parallel, unlike the Flask example, which you pretty much have to commit to using solely.

tetha 3y ago

> If Cloudflare goes down, so does a significant portion of the web. Flask cannot have an outage like Cloudflare. All they can do is push a faulty update, but even then you can rollback or stay on the old version. This is what was on the tip of my tongue. I'd argue you're missing the portion of control in this whole discussion, and how much process you can place in front of a component change. If I have a flask dependency, I have a lot of control over this dependency. If flask screws up badly, I have many options: I can update. I can not update. I can downgrade. In fact, I could fork flask internally and fix it on my own and either be a good citizen and open up a PR, or I could be something else. I can test all of this in any number of environments before it hits a customer, and even more stages before it hits all customers. With Cloudflare - or any number of Hosters as well, like AWS, Azure, Google Cloud, I have very little control. If I use Cloudflare as a CDN and Cloudflare goes down, I might not have the capacities at my upstream server to handle the load from all my customers, so I am down as long as Cloudflare is down. I wouldn't have the footprint available necessary to replace AWS in our own private DCs, even if we pooled all spare capacities - and then I'd still have to find a way to exfil our data from a downed AWS. (Which, yes, we have, but it'll take long hours) And no matter how much I test, if my hoster fucks up, I'm immediately fucked as well, no matter what processes I might have. The only process around this would be provider independence, which is really expensive and a lot of effort even if you just have a luke-warm standby.

robertlagrant 3y ago
You can multihost your static site; you don't have to only use Cloudflare. You can have more than one CDN. Nothing is centralising you or funnelling you somewhere you don't want to go. And you can do these things in parallel, unlike the Flask example, which you pretty much have to commit to using solely.