More Uptime Problems For Amazon Cloud 183
1sockchuck writes "An Amazon Web Services data center in northern Virginia lost power Friday night during an electrical storm, causing downtime for numerous customers — including Netflix, which uses an architecture designed to route around problems at a single availability zone. The same data center suffered a power outage two weeks ago and had connectivity problems earlier on Friday."
Infrastructure (Score:5, Insightful)
We need to invest trillions in roads, water, and electrical infrastructure to keep this country going.
If you let the basic building blocks of civilization rot, don't be surprised when everything else follows suit.
What, you thought "cloud" meant "no outage"? (Score:5, Insightful)
Cloud computing is nothing more than 1960s timesharing services with modern operating systems. Unless you design for resilience, you're not resilient to problems.
Re:Seems like anything takes down the cloud... (Score:5, Insightful)
It seems that recently, anything can take down the cloud, or at least cause a serious disruption for any of the major cloud providers. I wonder how many more of these it takes before the cloud-skeptics start winning the debates with management a lot more often.
I think it's more because a cloud outage affects thousands of customers, so it has more visibility. When Amazon has problems, the news is reported on Slashdot. When a smaller collocation center has an accidental fire suppression discharge taking hundreds of customers offline, it doesn't get any press coverage at all.
But the biggest takeaway from this is - never put all of your assets in one region. No matter how much redundancy Amazon builds into a region, a local disaster can still take out the datacenter. That's why they have Availability zones *and* regions. I have some servers in us-east-1a and they weren't affected at all. If they were down, I could bring up my servers in us-west within about an hour. (I could even automate it, but a few hours or even a day of downtime for these servers is no big deal)
Re:Infrastructure (Score:4, Insightful)
war is the basic building block of our particular civilization. if we waste money on your frivolities, how will we afford war & keep war machine shareholder value?
Re:Largest non-hurricane related power outage ever (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Infrastructure (Score:1, Insightful)
Governments don't engage in war to make sure bullets sell. They engage in war to gain control of the natural resources the other country has.
The distinction is subtle, but significant.
Re:Infrastructure (Score:2, Insightful)
I would say Laos would argue otherwise... The most bombed country in the world because America felt like it and had a lot of extra stock! Oh and they were officially a neutral country.
GO USA!
Re:Infrastructure (Score:2, Insightful)
Dude, if you think a datacenter in Northern Virginia was plopped down here because of the insanely attractive price of real estate or energy, or because of the business-friendly tax rates you're out of your freaking mind. Datacenters are built here because of pre-existing backbone access. Period.
Stupid: Military is Insurance (Score:3, Insightful)
What are you, 14? Democracies don't like War, because they don't like their sons, fathers, brothers, and husbands getting killed. It generally takes quite a lot to motivate Democracies into war, because of the hatred of casualties. Even when it is the best option. Example: going to war against Hitler in 1934, or 1936, or in 1938.
Out here in the real world, the sum total of human experience suggests a strong military is like insurance or a seat belt. You hope you never have to use it, but its a godsend if you need it. Indeed having a strong military deters attacks. Nobody goes down to Venice Beach to pick fights with body builders, or down to the Gracie's gym to start fights.
Like insurance, working out, eating right, avoiding bad areas, a strong military is a pain in the ass. It costs a lot. It is a pain and non-productive to maintain. And sure, you could save a lot by going without auto or health insurance. You could eat more cheaply at McDonalds than cooking healthy meals at home. Its cheaper to live in the ghetto than a nice area.
As far as market value of defense stocks, the market capitalization of Lockheed Martin is 28.27 Billion, of Apple Computer 546.08 Billion. The market value of L'Oreal at 54.83 billion is about twice that of Lockheed Martin, suggesting lipstick pays a lot more than military avionics. Defense firms since their inception have been very cyclical, made relatively little money, and are merging like crazy as war spending winds down. But unless you're going to change human nature with Harry Potter's magic wand, carrying otherwise unprofitable defense firms is worth it because making drones, airplanes, missiles, tanks, ships, and helicopters to kill well-armed enemies is a very narrow engineering niche with knowledge quickly lost.
As soon as your computer runs on unicorn farts and rainbows, we can all forget about dominance in the Persian Gulf and other oil areas. Until then, I'd prefer to drive to work and run the AC not live like a dirty smelly hippie. That AC making life bearable in 118F Kansas? Runs on oil not tree-hugging and drum circles.