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If you wrote software to take advantage of monster physical servers, it will almost certainly fail to run efficiently in the cloud. I find this statement kind

If you wrote software to take advantage of monster physical servers, it will almost certainly fail to run efficiently in the cloud. I find this statement kind of incredible when the solution for the terrible I/O of EC2 is to spin up ranks and ranks of virtual machines, trying to make up the difference in aggregate. That is efficiency? When I have a problem with I/O, I improve I/O: A gorgeous cluster of Nimble SANs with some supporting local Fusion IO cards. When I have a problem with memory or caching servers, I add memory or caching servers (just got a relatively low cost dev server with 192GB...just incredible). When I need more processing power, I add more processing power. Just added some Xeon E5s to the mix, and boy do they set new thresholds of power. That's the world of controlling my own hardware. This story is really one about restrictions forcing a more efficient platform. Yet you don't need restrictions to have an efficient platform, and the two are only loosely correlated. This is the story of the alcoholic cheering on prohibition without which they couldn't contain themselves.

fehguy 15y ago
And when you need another data center, you shell out major coin. That's what we needed to avoid. At some point, even your finest physical server has limits. If you can split the work up into smaller pieces that execute in "parallel" fashion, you have a more scalable architecture. This holds true in VMs as well as physical servers. Think map reduce, twitter blender, or nearly any parallel system. Rope is strong because it has many threads.
- huggyface 15y ago
  Rope is strong because it has many threads. Rope made out of wet tissue paper is not strong. Rope made out of threaded rebar is very strong. You are presenting a somewhat absurd dichotomy -- that having good servers precludes parallel operations or scalability. I thought we had discarded that sort of silly foundation a few years ago.

fehguy 15y ago

And when you need another data center, you shell out major coin. That's what we needed to avoid. At some point, even your finest physical server has limits. If you can split the work up into smaller pieces that execute in "parallel" fashion, you have a more scalable architecture. This holds true in VMs as well as physical servers. Think map reduce, twitter blender, or nearly any parallel system. Rope is strong because it has many threads.

huggyface 15y ago
Rope is strong because it has many threads. Rope made out of wet tissue paper is not strong. Rope made out of threaded rebar is very strong. You are presenting a somewhat absurd dichotomy -- that having good servers precludes parallel operations or scalability. I thought we had discarded that sort of silly foundation a few years ago.