> we started working on path to multi cloud.
Is this microsoft stating that they aren't able to get acceptable reliability from Azure? (I mean, I think a lot of us have heard that, but it's interesting to hear it from microsoft themselves).
> we started working on path to multi cloud.
Is this microsoft stating that they aren't able to get acceptable reliability from Azure? (I mean, I think a lot of us have heard that, but it's interesting to hear it from microsoft themselves).
It’s pretty damning. But as someone who has used Azure, I buy it.
Pretty damming that two Microsoft subsidiaries - GitHub and LinkedIn - either shelved their forced migration to Azure or are looking at non-Azure options.
I think this is more tailored towards enterprise clients that lose money when Github is down, that would probably help with retention.
You’d think they could have had the existing GitHub on whatever continue as is (maybe for paying customers) while all the AI new inrush goes to the Azure setup.
Yeah that's a top tier enterprise plan feature if I have ever seen ut
Seems pretty sensible to not rely on a single provider for their large complex system?
Man, you should have been there 6 months ago when they decided to start tearing down GitHub's own data centers and move everything exclusively to Azure. Seems they themselves realized this after they started moving, but imagine if you could have helped them realize this before they even started :)
Made me think. Why not convert Github datacenters into Azure datacenters that have Github as their sole customer?
Then it's up to Azure how they will manage this
That sounds like the worst of both worlds? The Azure devision that can't even reliably can't provide decent infrastructure products based on their own data center trying to do the same one a bespoke data center.
> Seems they themselves realized this after they started moving
I guess most people at Github knew exactly it makes no sense but they didn't really have a choice. Maybe some voiced their statement, got "we hear you" in response and were told to proceed anyway.
Yeah, I don't know how it went down, but I also know exactly how it went down:
Microsoft Execs: Everyone needs to move to Azure!
GitHub developers: But Azure is not gonna be able to handle our load, we literally have our own data centers!
Microsoft Execs: Sure, but you're Microsoft now, please publish blog post about how in half a year you'll be 100% on Azure.
Few months later...
GitHub Developer: We've tried our best, users are leaving in droves and Azure can't keep up!
Microsoft Execs: Ok fine, you can use something else too, but only if you mainly use Azure and continue publishing blog posts about how great Azure is.
Azure is the MS Teams of clouds.
This isn't a mom and pop shop. They have locations all over the world: https://datacenters.microsoft.com/
There's no intrinsic reason they should be vulnerable to themselves.
+1. Multi-cloud is typically done for vendor independence.
But Github don't have that rationale.
That website (for me) uses Cloudflare via WPEngine, which also isn't Azure
I mean, amazon (shopping, along with prime video e.t.c.) runs on AWS.
It was more "we built AWS to run our stuff and figured out we can sell it too".
While Azure feels like Temu clone of Cloud
actually incorrect. They figured they could sell unused hardware retail didn't need during non-peak, and retail could become more scalable. They went off in a corner with uncle andy for a year or 2 and built the basics. Like 10 years later retail was actually using AWS and not something that pretended it wasn't on aws. MAWS (being on aws not bare metal) was like a 2012-2015 thing and took for ever for NAWS (native aws) to happen that wasn't apollo, tho amazon still loves apollo in many places. Kinda a dirty secret, retai wasn't on aws until after aws was really popular.
When I was at AWS, retail was not yet running on AWS. Has that changed?
Prime video does use some AWS services, but live and on-demand are two entirely different beasts.
Really? I thought retail was. It's been almost a decade since I worked at prime video but I think everything was running on AWS. (Some things didn't use brazil etc, but I think all the servers etc. were on AWS)
It's a distinction without a difference. All new development is nAWS (native AWS) legacy is mAWS (not sure about the acronym) which is still AWS under the hood and is mostly just a pool of EC2 instances with preconfigured networks. Nothing made in the last five or six years is on maws, and amazon is a micro service shop so things are always being built new. If you joined today there's a good chance you'd join a team without any maws infra
MAWS is “Move to AWS”, the name of the internal campaign to get legacy services into a somewhat-retrofitted AWS environment. It was a single VPC at one point.
I just finished a nearly five year stint at amazon and didn't realize there was pre-maws stuff still around. Never encountered any of it. I was like two months from my yellow badge but, uh, life is really better outside amazon.
many parts of AWS are not on AWS, and there's reasons to have bare metal but it's not as common and aws gives you good access in most cases.
Prime video uses a non-AWS CDN when I watch football on it here in the UK
The BBC were unable to find a single CDN that could serve the UK during its peak football matches. https://www.bbc.co.uk/webarchive/https%3A%2F%2Fwww.bbc.co.uk...
that's called load balancing and regional availability. many companies do multi-cdn. in fact it's smart to use multiple CDNs so you can do better in contract time. Twitch uses IVS but we have failover to other CDNs for very large events.
I'd believe it - CloudFront always felt a bit like AWS ticking a box ("we have a CDN") rather than being a good to use product.
There was somewhat recently a post here about how priorities, pressure, and management subverted Dave Cutler's vision for Azure (which was to have near zero human involvement) - my Google fu isn't strong enough to find it. Supposedly, someone running over or opening a serial to a rack/VM is now typical operational procedure.
This one?
https://isolveproblems.substack.com/p/how-microsoft-vaporize...
That's the one!
Amazing read. Thanks to both of you for finding that.
> I later researched this further and found that no one at Microsoft, not a single soul, could articulate why up to 173 agents were needed to manage an Azure node, what they all did, how they interacted with one another, what their feature set was, or even why they existed in the first place.
This reads like a description of the SLS-based (aka Senate Launch System) Artemis program, which somehow ended up deciding that the insane Lunar Gateway should be a thing.
Destin (SmarterEveryDay on YouTube) [0] called out the entire nutball scheme to NASA, at NASA. This includes the SLS/Orion/Lunar Gateway insanity, and calling out the number of unknown, but very large number, of on-orbit refuelings that Starship would need to get to the moon.
In that video's comments, I believe there is someone who worked on the Orion-related system, who says ~"Yeah, we thought the delta-v was too low, we could have increased it, but no one was speaking with each other at a whole system level."
The mission drift at large orgs, gov and corp, is a huge problem that might one day be solved?
[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OoJsPvmFixU
Large orgs aim to produce some type of output. Their entire existence stems from a "perverse incentive."[1] Governments produce bills and laws, corps produce short-term profits, etc. I am pretty sure that preventing this type of waste consumes significantly more energy than creating the waste - e.g. the agile manifesto, the rework book.
Jobs was probably a good example of this. In my opinion, his image of an innovator is vastly exaggerated. What he did do well was to not invent things. E.G. liquid glass would have never seen the light of day under him: he was adept at saying "no" and preventing waste - Apple is now at the whims of anyone with the next stupid idea, the ideal example of wasteful behavior.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perverse_incentive
perhaps https://isolveproblems.substack.com/p/how-microsoft-vaporize... ?
Show HN timing matters more than people think. Monday-Thursday, 9-11am Pacific, is when the front page has the most engaged readers. Weekend posts get less competition but also less engagement.
> multi-cloud
XXXXL size project. May not ever deliver. But if it fails, it will only do so after years grinding through people, resources, etc.
The entire concept of multi cloud is amusing if you think what cloud originally was supposed to be. They could call them meta clouds (might infringe trademarks), and with the current growth trajectory of AI generated code eventually multi-meta-clouds, renamed to beyond-clouds, and then multi-beyond-clounds. I see no limits.