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Quote: "This is a Beta release of Nearline Storage. This feature is not covered by any SLA or deprecation policy and may be subject to backward-incompatible cha

by weitzj 12y ago

Quote: "This is a Beta release of Nearline Storage. This feature is not covered by any SLA or deprecation policy and may be subject to backward-incompatible changes." So should I believe in Google's good-will? I would be fine trying out some services, which are in Google Beta. But my valuable data? They should have a SLA right from the start to gain the user's trust.

fixermark 12y ago
It's probably something that could be deployed in the "nice to have" category: use it as a cache for your offline data to provide quick recovery of things you would previously have needed to go all the way to offline to retrieve. But if something goes wrong, you still have the offline data to recover from.
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
libria 12y ago
If we place too many restrictions on how companies should offer preview releases, they'll just stop entirely. Are you suggesting that even those comfortable taking on risk to get a sneak peak should be forced to wait for general availability?
- texthompson 12y ago
  Nobody is placing restrictions, but it's understandable if people are skeptical.
  - pbreit 12y ago
    Praise be the skeptical! It allows the courageous easy advantages. SLAs are almost worthless. And, really, has Google ever retired something like this (i.e., not an acquisition, not Google Reader, etc)?
    - aros 12y ago
      What do you mean by "SLAs are almost worthless?" And what do you mean by "something like this?" Google has retired plenty of products over the years. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Google_products http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Google_products Whether or not those fit your definition of "something like this" is up to you, I guess.
    - juliangregorian 12y ago
      Easy there Ayn Rand.
    - pbreit 12y ago
      ReplyTo aros: The two main criteria I would have are: 1) not an acquisition and 2) important development/developer service. I can't think of any and didn't see any after a cursory look at the list. I think SLAs are literally worthless since I don't think they encourage even slightly more effort in minimizing whatever issues the customer is concerned about. No one wants servers to go down, no one wants to shut down a service. That a few Google bucks might be on the line would have zero impact.
- pfortuny 12y ago
  No, one simply should wait for companies to offer services with guarantees for one's own data, if the data is important. Just that.
  - VikingCoder 12y ago
    If they lose your data, yes, that's one thing. But if the 3 seconds becomes 6 seconds... Or the price goes up... Or they announce they're end-of-life'ing the product... Just move your data somewhere else. Sure, it'd be inconvenient (and maybe expensive) to move. So, you balance all of that out in your mind, and maybe this is the right service for you, and maybe it's not.
    - bigiain 12y ago
      I'm not even sure it'd be "expensive to move". Are people _really_ considering using this (or Glacier/rsync.net/whatever) as their _only_ copy of their data? I can't imagine looking my boss/customers in the eye and saying "We're going to have multiple terabytes of mission critical business data, and it's all going to live _only_ on AWS/Google/Cloud-service-de-jour!" If I lose my AWS Glacier stored data (or Amazon bump the prices intolerably), I'll upload it to a competitor _from my local copies_... Admittedly, I've only had to deal with storage topping out in the tens of terabytes range, so I've never needed to go beyond a dozen or two consumer-grade drives to keep a pair of rsynced copies locally - but I think that same kind of techniques scale all the way out to building your own Backblaze style storage pod if needed.
      - VikingCoder 12y ago
        In a word: yes. You're thinking about data that can't be lost, or your customers are screwed. Not all data is like that. Log files come to mind. They're _nice_ to archive for a long time, but in many businesses, they're certainly not _critical_ to archive for a long time. Intermediate files, too. You retain the original files in secured storage. But because the intermediate files are large and expensive to re-create, you keep them here in AWS.
- sitkack 12y ago
  think of the poor poor companies!
isaacdl 12y ago
It seems like this is why they have the clause that you quoted. They aren't yet comfortable guaranteeing reliability or backwards compatibility (i.e. what "beta" means). If these things are crucially important to you, there's a pretty good chance you shouldn't be using it for your "valuable data".
crdoconnor 12y ago
It seems most useful as a place for redundant, encrypted backup. You don't really need it to be reliable (or safe) to store an encrypted online version of ~500gb of family photos that you have on an external hard disk. You just want cheap and fast.
dragonwriter 12y ago
In beta, your build the tools to use the service with your data, but don't use it for mission critical data until you have an SLA, etc., that you are comfortable with for that purpose. And if you aren't comfortable even investing development efforts against a beta, don't. Different customers have different risk tolerances, and the fact that an early access product doesn't meet yours doesn't mean it shouldn't be available for those whose risk tolerances it is suitable for.
jlebar 12y ago
> But my valuable data? Surely the whole point of not having an SLA (and indeed the whole point of calling it a "beta") is so that you don't trust it with your valuable data. I'm sure it will have an SLA soon enough.
- jacquesm 12y ago
  I don't have a whole lot of worthless data.
  - jlebar 12y ago
    Then it sounds like you should wait for the proper release, as this beta test is not for you.
  - hobarrera 12y ago
    I do. It's called test data. I use it when I develop tools to interact with a service before it reaches maturity and before it get an SLA. Once it has an SLA, I can use my tool to work with valuable data.
  - Dylan16807 12y ago
    Do you have data you would like to have an extra copy of, but it wouldn't kill you to lose that single copy?
outworlder 12y ago
No. Also, you shouldn't believe in ANY single backup solution. Don't place all your eggs in the same basket.
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
anigbrowl 12y ago
You shouldn't be trusting your production data to anything in beta. The whole point of open beta testing is to pool the technical risk. So use it, but don't rely on it. If you can't afford to use it in parallel with some existing system, then don't use it.
foxylad 12y ago
If your data really is that valuable, any compensation promised by an SLA is likely to be meaningless. Far better to use multiple redundant solutions, and although Nearline is only beta* it offers us an easy and cheap way to increase storage diversity. *How long did we all rely on Gmail while it was beta?

by weitzj 12y ago

fixermark 12y ago

It's probably something that could be deployed in the "nice to have" category: use it as a cache for your offline data to provide quick recovery of things you would previously have needed to go all the way to offline to retrieve. But if something goes wrong, you still have the offline data to recover from.

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

libria 12y ago

If we place too many restrictions on how companies should offer preview releases, they'll just stop entirely. Are you suggesting that even those comfortable taking on risk to get a sneak peak should be forced to wait for general availability?

texthompson 12y ago
Nobody is placing restrictions, but it's understandable if people are skeptical.
- pbreit 12y ago
  Praise be the skeptical! It allows the courageous easy advantages. SLAs are almost worthless. And, really, has Google ever retired something like this (i.e., not an acquisition, not Google Reader, etc)?
  - aros 12y ago
    What do you mean by "SLAs are almost worthless?" And what do you mean by "something like this?" Google has retired plenty of products over the years. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Google_products http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Google_products Whether or not those fit your definition of "something like this" is up to you, I guess.
  - juliangregorian 12y ago
    Easy there Ayn Rand.
  - pbreit 12y ago
    ReplyTo aros: The two main criteria I would have are: 1) not an acquisition and 2) important development/developer service. I can't think of any and didn't see any after a cursory look at the list. I think SLAs are literally worthless since I don't think they encourage even slightly more effort in minimizing whatever issues the customer is concerned about. No one wants servers to go down, no one wants to shut down a service. That a few Google bucks might be on the line would have zero impact.
pfortuny 12y ago
No, one simply should wait for companies to offer services with guarantees for one's own data, if the data is important. Just that.
- VikingCoder 12y ago
  If they lose your data, yes, that's one thing. But if the 3 seconds becomes 6 seconds... Or the price goes up... Or they announce they're end-of-life'ing the product... Just move your data somewhere else. Sure, it'd be inconvenient (and maybe expensive) to move. So, you balance all of that out in your mind, and maybe this is the right service for you, and maybe it's not.
  - bigiain 12y ago
    I'm not even sure it'd be "expensive to move". Are people _really_ considering using this (or Glacier/rsync.net/whatever) as their _only_ copy of their data? I can't imagine looking my boss/customers in the eye and saying "We're going to have multiple terabytes of mission critical business data, and it's all going to live _only_ on AWS/Google/Cloud-service-de-jour!" If I lose my AWS Glacier stored data (or Amazon bump the prices intolerably), I'll upload it to a competitor _from my local copies_... Admittedly, I've only had to deal with storage topping out in the tens of terabytes range, so I've never needed to go beyond a dozen or two consumer-grade drives to keep a pair of rsynced copies locally - but I think that same kind of techniques scale all the way out to building your own Backblaze style storage pod if needed.
    - VikingCoder 12y ago
      In a word: yes. You're thinking about data that can't be lost, or your customers are screwed. Not all data is like that. Log files come to mind. They're _nice_ to archive for a long time, but in many businesses, they're certainly not _critical_ to archive for a long time. Intermediate files, too. You retain the original files in secured storage. But because the intermediate files are large and expensive to re-create, you keep them here in AWS.
sitkack 12y ago
think of the poor poor companies!

isaacdl 12y ago

It seems like this is why they have the clause that you quoted. They aren't yet comfortable guaranteeing reliability or backwards compatibility (i.e. what "beta" means). If these things are crucially important to you, there's a pretty good chance you shouldn't be using it for your "valuable data".

crdoconnor 12y ago

It seems most useful as a place for redundant, encrypted backup. You don't really need it to be reliable (or safe) to store an encrypted online version of ~500gb of family photos that you have on an external hard disk. You just want cheap and fast.

dragonwriter 12y ago

In beta, your build the tools to use the service with your data, but don't use it for mission critical data until you have an SLA, etc., that you are comfortable with for that purpose. And if you aren't comfortable even investing development efforts against a beta, don't. Different customers have different risk tolerances, and the fact that an early access product doesn't meet yours doesn't mean it shouldn't be available for those whose risk tolerances it is suitable for.

jlebar 12y ago

> But my valuable data? Surely the whole point of not having an SLA (and indeed the whole point of calling it a "beta") is so that you don't trust it with your valuable data. I'm sure it will have an SLA soon enough.

jacquesm 12y ago
I don't have a whole lot of worthless data.
- jlebar 12y ago
  Then it sounds like you should wait for the proper release, as this beta test is not for you.
- hobarrera 12y ago
  I do. It's called test data. I use it when I develop tools to interact with a service before it reaches maturity and before it get an SLA. Once it has an SLA, I can use my tool to work with valuable data.
- Dylan16807 12y ago
  Do you have data you would like to have an extra copy of, but it wouldn't kill you to lose that single copy?

outworlder 12y ago

No. Also, you shouldn't believe in ANY single backup solution. Don't place all your eggs in the same basket.

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

anigbrowl 12y ago

You shouldn't be trusting your production data to anything in beta. The whole point of open beta testing is to pool the technical risk. So use it, but don't rely on it. If you can't afford to use it in parallel with some existing system, then don't use it.

foxylad 12y ago

If your data really is that valuable, any compensation promised by an SLA is likely to be meaningless. Far better to use multiple redundant solutions, and although Nearline is only beta* it offers us an easy and cheap way to increase storage diversity. *How long did we all rely on Gmail while it was beta?