3 ms·

Restart?! ouch

basilikum 10mo ago
HN is a pretty simple, efficient monolithic web application. Some updates might need a restart. It's OK for some web requests to fail during that time. HN isn't life critical with sixtuple nine uptime requirements.
- sallveburrpi 10mo ago
  Tbh like 99% of web apps aren’t critical - most of them are for buying something or providing infrastructure to make it easier to buy something anyway. It’s fine if your online shop is down for a few minutes (of course the business won’t see it like that but it’s true)
  - basilikum 10mo ago
    A sales site being down might lose you a sale. But the simplicity might save you so muh more than that loses you. And often the complexion of high availability infrastructure results in more downtime than it prevents. For stuff like HN, I like the peek behind the scenes it provides. It's all just software written by some humans and way too often people take themselves and their shitty software way too serious.
  - brightbeige 10mo ago
    B&H is doing fine financially and brings their webstore down for each and every Sabbath, even if that happens to be a Black Friday. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12183263 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12183263
- lomase 10mo ago
  Steam, +130 million users, biggest gamming store, multi billion dolar company, is offline every week for a few minutes. 99.999999 is so overated.
- uyzstvqs 10mo ago
  It could probably be done with a simple if statement, but I'm guessing that dang enjoys the tradition of doing it manually every year.
dang 10mo ago
I'd rather restart once (ok, twice) a year than keep that code around in production. It only affects traffic for about 10 seconds.
kelnos 10mo ago
I feel like this obsession with zero downtime has gotten a bit silly. Sure, for some things it's damn near required (though I imagine that's fewer things than most people think), but it 100% does not matter even a little bit if HN is unavailable for 10 seconds or so.
- jagged-chisel 10mo ago
  Everyone went right for “downtime” - no, that’s not an issue. I would have expected a configuration change, which wouldn’t require a restart but might indeed result in downtime. Or even a configuration change that some control system notices and does restart the service. It’s the manual, hands-on connotation (maybe only in my mind) of telling someone a restart is involved. Automate this stuff - don’t want the code in the server all year? Fine, have a process rebuild and relaunch on a schedule that makes sense. Might have downtime, but definitely have less hands-on.

Restart?! ouch

HN is a pretty simple, efficient monolithic web application. Some updates might need a restart. It's OK for some web requests to fail during that time. HN isn't life critical with sixtuple nine uptime requirements.

sallveburrpi 10mo ago
Tbh like 99% of web apps aren’t critical - most of them are for buying something or providing infrastructure to make it easier to buy something anyway. It’s fine if your online shop is down for a few minutes (of course the business won’t see it like that but it’s true)
- basilikum 10mo ago
  A sales site being down might lose you a sale. But the simplicity might save you so muh more than that loses you. And often the complexion of high availability infrastructure results in more downtime than it prevents. For stuff like HN, I like the peek behind the scenes it provides. It's all just software written by some humans and way too often people take themselves and their shitty software way too serious.
- brightbeige 10mo ago
  B&H is doing fine financially and brings their webstore down for each and every Sabbath, even if that happens to be a Black Friday. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12183263 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12183263
lomase 10mo ago
Steam, +130 million users, biggest gamming store, multi billion dolar company, is offline every week for a few minutes. 99.999999 is so overated.
uyzstvqs 10mo ago
It could probably be done with a simple if statement, but I'm guessing that dang enjoys the tradition of doing it manually every year.

dang 10mo ago

I'd rather restart once (ok, twice) a year than keep that code around in production. It only affects traffic for about 10 seconds.

kelnos 10mo ago

I feel like this obsession with zero downtime has gotten a bit silly. Sure, for some things it's damn near required (though I imagine that's fewer things than most people think), but it 100% does not matter even a little bit if HN is unavailable for 10 seconds or so.

jagged-chisel 10mo ago
Everyone went right for “downtime” - no, that’s not an issue. I would have expected a configuration change, which wouldn’t require a restart but might indeed result in downtime. Or even a configuration change that some control system notices and does restart the service. It’s the manual, hands-on connotation (maybe only in my mind) of telling someone a restart is involved. Automate this stuff - don’t want the code in the server all year? Fine, have a process rebuild and relaunch on a schedule that makes sense. Might have downtime, but definitely have less hands-on.