3 ms·

That presumes you can only have 1 partition at a time. That is not the case. You can optimize for good behavior when you end up with 2 disconnected graphs. It’s

That presumes you can only have 1 partition at a time. That is not the case. You can optimize for good behavior when you end up with 2 disconnected graphs. It’s absolutely the case that a graph with N nodes can end up with N separate groups. Conceptually, imagine a single switch that connects all of them together and that switch dies. You can engineer cloud services to be resilient. AWS has done a great job of that in my personal experience. But worst cases can still happen. If you have an algorithm that runs in n*log(n) most of the time but 2^n sometimes, it can still be super useful. You have to prepare for the bad case though. If you say it’s been running great so far and we don’t worry about it, fine, but that doesn’t mean it can’t still blow up when it’s most inconvenient. It only means it hasn’t yet.

cryptonector 2y ago
Again, a partition that leaves you with no quorum anywhere is like the cloud being down.
- pessimizer 2y ago
  A partition that leaves you with no quorum anywhere is like the cloud being down if you value consistency over availability.
  - cryptonector 2y ago
    Yes, but again, TFA says that you will trust the cloud will be up long enough that you would indeed prefer consistency. My goodness. So many commenters here today are completely ignoring TFA and giving lessons on CAP -- lessons that are correct, but which completely ignore that TFA is really arguing that clouds move the needle hard in one direction when considering the CAP trade-offs, to the point that "the CAP theorem is irrelevant for cloud systems" (which was this post's original title, though not TFA's).
    - pyrale 2y ago
      The issue people are pointing is that the author conflates "Cloud is good enough for my needs" with "CAP is no longer relevant".The point is especially annoying considering that the author works at a cloud vendor and not a cloud user.
- robertlagrant 2y ago
  > Again, a partition that leaves you with no quorum anywhere is like the cloud being down. What does this mean? What is the cloud being down? The cloud isn't a single thing; it's lots of computers in lots of data centres.
  - NavinF 2y ago
    It means there will be an article on the front page declaring the outage
- Spivak 2y ago
  Huh? You can create partitions in ways other than issues with the underlying network. You can mess up firewall rules for example and find yourself with no quorum.

cryptonector 2y ago

Again, a partition that leaves you with no quorum anywhere is like the cloud being down.

pessimizer 2y ago
A partition that leaves you with no quorum anywhere is like the cloud being down if you value consistency over availability.
- cryptonector 2y ago
  Yes, but again, TFA says that you will trust the cloud will be up long enough that you would indeed prefer consistency. My goodness. So many commenters here today are completely ignoring TFA and giving lessons on CAP -- lessons that are correct, but which completely ignore that TFA is really arguing that clouds move the needle hard in one direction when considering the CAP trade-offs, to the point that "the CAP theorem is irrelevant for cloud systems" (which was this post's original title, though not TFA's).
  - pyrale 2y ago
    The issue people are pointing is that the author conflates "Cloud is good enough for my needs" with "CAP is no longer relevant".The point is especially annoying considering that the author works at a cloud vendor and not a cloud user.
robertlagrant 2y ago
> Again, a partition that leaves you with no quorum anywhere is like the cloud being down. What does this mean? What is the cloud being down? The cloud isn't a single thing; it's lots of computers in lots of data centres.
- NavinF 2y ago
  It means there will be an article on the front page declaring the outage
Spivak 2y ago
Huh? You can create partitions in ways other than issues with the underlying network. You can mess up firewall rules for example and find yourself with no quorum.