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Congrats on the launch and good press! I wish you the best of luck. There is probably a decent number of people who would like to avoid dealing with the datab

by modoc 18y ago

Congrats on the launch and good press! I wish you the best of luck. There is probably a decent number of people who would like to avoid dealing with the database infrastructure directly. However, this launch raises a question for me, with regards to funding and YCombinator. Obviously I'm only seeing what's in the video, but it looks like you have a provisioning system, and a web interface (like an enhanced phpMyAdmin). I assume there's backups, failover, monitoring, etc... in the background as well. Why did you need funding for this? What did you gain from YCombinator? Perhaps I'm downplaying your efforts due to ignorance on how your system really works, but it seems pretty straightforward to build. I don't use EC2, but I'm pretty sure I could build a web app that creates new databases, an enhanced version of phpMyAdmin, and my standard monitoring/backup stuff that I do already, in a couple of days. My understanding is the "cloud" aspect of EC2 makes scaling the new db instances out much easier (than if I did it myself using dedicated servers). So I'm not sure why you felt you needed investors, months of dedicated full time work, exposure to VCs, etc...? My intent isn't to be snarky or put down your accomplishments, but clearly I'm missing either the complexity and effort to build your solution, or I'm missing some key ingredient that YC provided that made your startup easier/possible/etc...

justinsb 18y ago
If you really could have built it in a few days, you should come work for FathomDB! I would point out that doing this properly on EC2 is an order of magnitude harder than doing it on dedicated hardware; the assumption on EC2 has to be that things will fail and you have to build accordingly. The simplicity of the web-based GUI and the offering hides the complexity going on under the surface. But that's the whole point of FathomDB: you just use the database, and you don't see (or care about) the hoops we're jumping through to make it all work.
- modoc 18y ago
  It sounds like my ignorance of EC2 led me to believe that your service was simpler than it really is. I meant no offense.
- timf 18y ago
  "doing this properly on EC2 is an order of magnitude harder than doing it on dedicated hardware; the assumption on EC2 has to be that things will fail and you have to build accordingly" I don't follow, how is that different from dedicated hardware where you also have to assume failure will happen? If anything I'd argue it's the opposite (but ultimately note that I think both take some work). But I say that it's perhaps the opposite because on EC2, you have EBS: "volumes that operate with 20 GB or less of modified data since their most recent Amazon EBS snapshot can expect an annual failure rate (AFR) of between 0.1% – 0.5%, where failure refers to a complete loss of the volume. This compares with commodity hard disks that will typically fail with an AFR of around 4%" And neither failure rate involves RAID which you can of course do with both EBS (mdadm) and disks to go for lower AFR projections.
rms 18y ago
YC gives you some money, moral support, and connections galore. Why not YC? Also see http://www.paulgraham.com/equity.html http://www.paulgraham.com/equity.html

by modoc 18y ago

justinsb 18y ago

If you really could have built it in a few days, you should come work for FathomDB! I would point out that doing this properly on EC2 is an order of magnitude harder than doing it on dedicated hardware; the assumption on EC2 has to be that things will fail and you have to build accordingly. The simplicity of the web-based GUI and the offering hides the complexity going on under the surface. But that's the whole point of FathomDB: you just use the database, and you don't see (or care about) the hoops we're jumping through to make it all work.

modoc 18y ago
It sounds like my ignorance of EC2 led me to believe that your service was simpler than it really is. I meant no offense.
timf 18y ago
"doing this properly on EC2 is an order of magnitude harder than doing it on dedicated hardware; the assumption on EC2 has to be that things will fail and you have to build accordingly" I don't follow, how is that different from dedicated hardware where you also have to assume failure will happen? If anything I'd argue it's the opposite (but ultimately note that I think both take some work). But I say that it's perhaps the opposite because on EC2, you have EBS: "volumes that operate with 20 GB or less of modified data since their most recent Amazon EBS snapshot can expect an annual failure rate (AFR) of between 0.1% – 0.5%, where failure refers to a complete loss of the volume. This compares with commodity hard disks that will typically fail with an AFR of around 4%" And neither failure rate involves RAID which you can of course do with both EBS (mdadm) and disks to go for lower AFR projections.

rms 18y ago

YC gives you some money, moral support, and connections galore. Why not YC? Also see http://www.paulgraham.com/equity.html http://www.paulgraham.com/equity.html