
If I was your cloud provider, I'd never let you down - chillax
http://joyent.com/blog/if-i-was-your-cloud-provider-i-d-never-let-you-down
======
anonymouz
With the lifetime account fiasco still ongoing [1], they should probably shut
up.

[1] Joyent/Textdrive sold lifetime shared hosting accounts for a one time
payment in the beginning. Those accounts would exist "as long as we exists". A
couple of months back they sent an email that they are "discontinuing"
lifetime accounts. After uproar from the community they offered refunds. Many
people (including me) agreed to the refund, but then they decided to make
another 180 degree turn, not paying out the refund. Instead they are now
spinning off a new "Textdrive" that is supposed to "take over" the lifetime
customers. No details about funding/general outlook/etc. of this new company
has been provided so far. Questions to this end are shrugged off as
"everything is perfect, just trust us, ..."

Incidentally, the new Textdrive Forum (discuss.textdrive.com) seems to be down
at the moment...

~~~
UnoriginalGuy
"lifetime" "unlimited" "forever" etc products should always been looked at
sceptically for that reason. Anything that is either finite or requires up-
keep cannot be offered on these terms, it is just impossible.

I actually avoid unlimited products on purpose because I think a lie is a bad
way to start doing business together. Be it web-hosting, broadband, or
anything else. I would prefer they just be up front and then we both know
where we stand (no ambiguity).

~~~
typicalrunt
What Joyent forgot about was that by getting rid of the lifetime account
holders (I was one) they were effectively silencing their greatest word of
mouth sales. I would always recommend their services to others, and I would
purchase many of their other products/services as they came out.

But by pulling out the rug under me[1], it left me distrustful of them. So
let's assume that I got my money's worth, but what Joyent has now lost is the
word of mouth. Even worse, instead of _not_ telling people about Joyent, I
actively turn them away from Joyent.

While Amazon goes down from time to time, at least I have less unknowns with
them. With Joyent, I don't know how they are going to fuck me at the last
minute when they decide to pivot for the umpteenth time.

[1] Not once, but thrice. First, they cancel the lifetime accounts, forcing me
to quickly move to another provider (thank you GAFB and Heroku). Then they say
I can get a refund for the service, which when I asked for it they first
denied that they gave it out and then told me that the offer was rescinded
because the Textdrive service was coming out. Third, they keep calling me
telling me that I need to move, even though if they spent 2 seconds checking
for account activity they would see that no domain routes to them anymore, nor
is any data stored with them.

~~~
jamie
Same here - I'll never recommend them, and have actively discouraged people
from using or investigating them.

They may be great technically, but I always mention their spotty/inconsistent
and poor treatment of me as a customer. Even if I'm not the most lucrative
customer, how you treat every customer is important. You never know who,
dispute being a low-revenue personal user, is a high-revenue business user.

------
comice
If this is gloating about the EC2 outage, then ugh. I can't find out if it is
because the whole of joyent.com is actually down for me
(net::ERR_CONNECTION_TIMED_OUT)

~~~
smcl
Yep, same for me. Delicious irony in my opinion

~~~
kami8845
If a company is actually stupid enough to say "If I was your cloud provider,
I'd never let you down" then I immediately lose all interest in working with
that company. Childish and they obviously have no appreciation for how hard it
is to properly run a hosting company.

~~~
benologist
I'm pretty sure they have a decent idea of what's involved running a hosting
company being as how they're a huge hosting company.

I think what they've done is _great_ , they're appealing to the users by
showing they are users and they'll probably get a crapload of traffic because
of it whether they land Reddit or not. It's already landed them the #1 slot on
HN, a site where AWS staff post AWS updates!

~~~
Jare
In the professional tech world, not ALL exposure is good exposure. With this
post they look like immature kids, and then when their post and entire site
goes down, they look incompetent in front of the very people they want to
convince.

An informative post explaining the hardships of uptime and reliability in
simple words, and how they do their best to keep adding 9's, would have been
so much better.

~~~
dap
[http://joyent.com/blog/network-storage-in-the-cloud-
deliciou...](http://joyent.com/blog/network-storage-in-the-cloud-delicious-
but-deadly) [http://joyent.com/blog/on-cascading-failures-and-amazons-
ela...](http://joyent.com/blog/on-cascading-failures-and-amazons-elastic-
block-store) [http://joyent.com/blog/magical-block-store-when-
abstractions...](http://joyent.com/blog/magical-block-store-when-abstractions-
fail-us)

~~~
Jare
Exactly, they should have done more of that.

------
staunch
My new startup, Uptano (<https://uptano.com>), is a cloud provider (still
hurts me to write "cloud").

..and we've had 100% uptime in our short run so far. Our systems are highly
redundant and as decoupled as possible. Still, I wouldn't for one second claim
that I, or anyone else, could do better than AWS on reliability.

AWS does a great job on reliability. I do think EBS is a terrible technology
that should die in a fiery pit, but they do a damn good job of keeping
everything _up_.

If they really do believe their 99.9999% claim, I'd love to see them make a
bet. How about Reddit gets $1M if they move and it falls below that?

~~~
codewright
Could you please explain the tenancy/virtual servers mechanic of your service?
The copy on the website isn't clear. (Also, OH GOD that font. OH. GOD.)

It's not clear to me whether I'm getting my own server (effectively
dedicated?) for $136/month or not.

Further, what if I don't want multiple-tenants on the hardware? What does it
cost me to effectively treat each physical server a single logical unit? Is
that even possible?

I mostly want a more elastic alternative to dedicated servers. Is your service
along those lines?

~~~
staunch
You're paying for a dedicated machine. Then you run virtual servers on your
machine. You could run just one (treating it much like a regular dedicated
server), or you could run multiple, that's up to you.

There is no scenario in which multiple users share the same hardware. Your
hardware is your own.

The web site will improve ;-)

Feel free to email me with any questions: jake@uptano.com

------
wisty
With a one-line pitch like "HIGH-PERFORMANCE CLOUD INFRASTRUCTURE FOR REAL-
TIME WEB AND MOBILE APPLICATIONS", what could possibly go wrong?

No, I don't hate Joyent. I can't even figure out what they offer. And I don't
see "Python" or "Postgres" or "Redis" in their tech stack page, so what would
reddit (a Python / Postres / Redis site) want with them? They seem to be
mostly node.js / Mongo, which is a nice tech stack but isn't the one reddit is
built on.

Clicking around their dev docs seems to suggest you can install your own stuff
on their "SmartMachines" (are those Linux VMs?), but there's a heavy node.js
bias to the docs.

~~~
codemac
Joyent is some former Sun guys who are still committed to "the OS is a
differentiator". They use Illumos, their fork of OpenSolaris...

I'm pretty sure python, postgres, and redis all run on Solaris, but Joyent's
value add is NOT at the application layer, but in OS features that facilitate
application workloads better. Their SmartMachines (or zones), ZFS, dtrace..
Solaris is an epic environment to develop in.

I probably only know of a few other OS's that are as powerful (IOS XR, OnTap,
Linux..), and only corner cases are more enjoyable to work with (BeOS, plan9,
lispmachine).

Their difficulty in messaging is probably around not wanting to be labelled
"post-Sun", but cloud! internet! not oracle! You should think of them as
providing an OS as a service.

~~~
wisty
OK, so they use "zones" (beefed up multi-user, which should have less overhead
than virtualization) and a fork of OpenSolaris (interesting features, reputed
to be very stable).

I wish they'd just say that, as it makes their "Faster than VM" claim seem a
lot less wild.

Shared hosting is actually more efficient than VMs, but it got a bad rap due
to massively oversold hosts.

~~~
alexhawdon
Sun engineered some amazing stuff but eventually got bought out by a company
with weaker engineers but much, much stronger sales team. After being burned
in this way I could see how a bunch of former Sun staffers might use their
former technology but call someone else in and say 'look, we can't market for
shit - you have a go'.

And that's my guess on why their marketing spiel might seem a little vague to
a tech person.

------
UnoriginalGuy
Wow, that web-site is down, this couldn't possibly be more ironic.

~~~
lostsock
and still down 3 hours later... ouch!

~~~
randomchars
Disable https everywhere.

~~~
Evbn
Why? The desired information has already been conveyed from the https servers:
Joyent can't withstand load.

~~~
eli
Well, or someone forgot to turn on HTTPS. How does the plugin know whether to
redirect a given site anyway?

------
hboon
After TextDrive's lifetime hosting encounters, I'd never trust Joyent again,
cloud or non-cloud.

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4391669>

------
opendomain
I do not want to be a jerk here, but the only reason I joined was the promise
of "lifetime" - they can NOT just cancel our accounts does it does not suit
them. Please contact me webmaster @ opendomain ORG if you would like to join
the class action lawsuit. We already have quite a few people signed up.

------
alanh
It should be “if I _were_ your cloud provider.” It’s a possibility and a wish
of theirs, so it should be expressed in the subjunctive.
[http://grammar.quickanddirtytips.com/subjunctive-verbs-
was-i...](http://grammar.quickanddirtytips.com/subjunctive-verbs-was-i-
were.aspx)

~~~
Raphael
They were referring to a Justin Bieber lyric, "If I was your boyfriend", which
was parodied by the girl who became the Overly Attached Girlfriend meme, which
is popular on Reddit.

------
carson
Anyone remember Joyent's Strongspace service?
[http://www.datacenterknowledge.com/archives/2008/01/21/joyen...](http://www.datacenterknowledge.com/archives/2008/01/21/joyent-
services-back-after-8-day-outage/)

~~~
rsync
They got a free thumper from Sun through the "try and buy" program, loaded it
up with customers, and ... failed to operate it properly. IIRC, it wasn't just
a service outage - some data was irrevocably lost.

ZFS on Solaris was a non-beta, prime time product at that time, so it's not
fair to blame it on "a ZFS thing". Deploying customers on loaner hardware is
scrappy and admirable, in a way, but Sun wasn't giving those away two by two -
there was no redundancy.

The joyent blog, in those days, alternated between enterprise cloud bullshit-
bingo posts and facebook game development. I thought it was a clown operation
back then and I suspect it still is.

~~~
makomk
ZFS was officially a non-beta, prime time product. In practice, apparently
anyone who tested its robustness thoroughly before deploying it found that it
tended to crash and burn at the first hint of trouble exactly like it did for
them.

------
im3w1l
"Unable to connect"

well that was rather ironic..

~~~
TamDenholm
One of those things that is hilarious but not actually funny.

~~~
astrodust
Ha, ha, only serious.

------
djhworld
> Lindsay Shaw is a member of the Joyent Marketing and Communications Team.

This says it all really, just a bit of PR to boost awareness of their
product...and the HN community has taken the bait.

~~~
typicalrunt
While I agree with you that no press is bad press, in the Internet realm you
also have to be aware of keywords. HN comments right now are littered with
none-to-flattering words for Joyent, which then get indexed by Bing/Google and
can hurt the reputation for Joyent.

Worse yet, Joyent's PR may backfire and make them look like naive idiots for
making claims they can't back up...especially when it comes to throwing rocks
at the Amazon juggernaut.

------
Hansi
Ironically the site's SSL is not configured correctly... Doesn't work when
using the "HTTPS Everywhere" extension unless you manually change it to not
opt for HTTPS on the site.

~~~
dchest
Huh? There's no SSL on joyent.com. Their login form, however, has it, on a
different domain: <https://my.joyentcloud.com>.

Not sure how this can be classified as "not configured correctly". It's HTTPS
Everywhere who's incorrect there.

------
zerostar07
I 've been using their vps for years, and they didn't let down (apart from
less than a handful of reboots, the uptime was basically around 400 days). The
thing is they kept their prices unchanged for 4 years which is odd.

------
davidw
If I _were_ a grammar nazi, I'd be quite irate.

~~~
jedschmidt
Don't hate the provider, hate the meme:

<http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/overly-attached-girlfriend>

~~~
mnicole
They're actually referencing the Ryan Gosling meme, not OAG. There's an image
of him right on the page.

------
bslatkin
Uptime comes from how you design and build a system, not which IaaS provider
you choose.

~~~
thejosh
So if your IaaS goes down, that's your fault?

~~~
bslatkin
Yes. You are responsible for replication, failover, disaster recovery, etc.

~~~
praptak
The point of using IaaS is to outsource as least some of the responsibilities.

~~~
tedunangst
No, you outsource the work, not the responsibility.

------
irahul
Umm The blog post is down. If you can't handle traffic to a blogpost, I don't
see how reddit would take your offer about "no downtime" seriously.

~~~
randomchars
It's not a load issue. Disable HTTPS Everywhere.

~~~
irahul
> Disable HTTPS Everywhere.

It wasn't that either. It didn't work for me, and for many other people. See
the thread for simple `curl <http://whatever-joyent`> failing.

------
welebrity
If something "sounds" suspicious, it usually is. I had one of the early "truly
unlimited" mobile data plans w/VZ. They actually honored it until I made the
blunder of changing my plan. I was grandfathered in, but they kept sending me
teasers to get me to switch. Once I did, going back was not an option. They
got what they wanted . . .

------
thejosh
I read a post quite a while ago from the reddit admins bitching out EC2 after
one of the last dramas, I remember they said it would be a huge migration to
migrate all data across to a new provider so they would have to be solid.

I wonder how their current EC2 pricing would compare to Joyent?

~~~
imroot
During the second-to-last Amazon EBS outage (that affected our RDS instances,
I started migrating our database over to Joyent. Before RDS was completely
restored, I had a MySQL instance up and running and our production servers
pointing to the new host via SSH tunneling. As far as pricing goes, they're
competitive with EC2, but, you need to factor in the amount of time that it'll
take to move off of Linux and onto Solaris/SmartOS (which isn't that big of a
deal in the grand scheme of things)...

------
armored
Joyent, you so cray. Thanks for reminding us that "Never" and "Lifetime",
"100% Uptime Guarantee" and "Fanatical Service" are all bullshit indicators.
You've got a good cloud, you don't need to make promises that you can't keep.

------
BraveNewCurency
This from the company that patented the 8-day outage.

[http://www.datacenterknowledge.com/archives/2008/01/21/joyen...](http://www.datacenterknowledge.com/archives/2008/01/21/joyent-
services-back-after-8-day-outage/)

------
ianstallings
Saying you have a more robust cloud than Amazon is laughable. It's really as
simple as that. This is a joke.

------
instakill
Sorry, and I really don't mean to be a grammar nazi, but it's "if I were".
It's a subjunctive.

~~~
dools
Let's add that to the list: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3658860>

------
olalonde
Meanwhile, <http://nodejs.org> is down.
<http://www.downforeveryoneorjustme.com/nodejs.org>

------
ParadisoShlee
"Error 102 (net::ERR_CONNECTION_REFUSED): The server refused the connection."

The page is down.

~~~
grakic
They do not serve https for the site, what else are you expecting to see?

~~~
ParadisoShlee
Notice to those of us running the EFF HTTPS EVERYWHERE... they'll force SSL
and fail.

Not running SSL should be considered a bit of a Faux pas.

------
photorized
Re: "We’ve given our other partners 99.9999% uptime."

That's neither technologically possible nor commercially feasible.

Companies need to stop saying that.

------
jjtheblunt
were, not was. learn english modal verbs and subjunctive before soliciting
business.

------
j_s
Or switch to us-west-2 to immediately solve more than half their problems?

------
RiceJazz
If I were a serious cloud provider, I would check my grammar.

------
tzaman
They should send this open letter to Heroku as well :)

~~~
jaggederest
Historically, running Ruby on Joyent was an exercise in frustration. Heroku
isn't _only_ Ruby these days, but operating as a stable ruby platform is still
a requirement I think.

Among other things: Solaris threading libs with crashy bugs when you pop a new
thread open. Took quite a while to figure that one out.

~~~
patrickgzill
It is perhaps a difference in thread creation semantics, or something like
that. But, Solaris threading has been rock solid for many, many years.

~~~
jaggederest
Not in my direct confirmed experience. pthread lib on Joyent's particularly
weird version of solaris was f'd hard.

------
stratosvoukel
Am I the only one finding the post a bit sexist as well? Since when are
successful 9gag memes like "Overly attached girlfriend" pc?

~~~
robinduckett
Those are reddit memes. Not 9gag memes. 9gag is a content stealing site. See
oatmeal, etc.

------
dobata
because of all the "success" with twitter back in the days

------
jredwards
What, no ent jokes?

------
lolwutreddit
There is no way they can achieve that uptime claim, nor should they try to say
they have 99.9999% aka "six nines". That's 31.5 seconds a year, and even a
well-designed network is going to have that much at some level. I mean, the
VPSes might be distributed across hardware, but a failure of some component
might mean that it's still "up", but _seriously_ degraded during the
transition. How useful is that for "uptime"? It becomes a bragging right. How
about if all routes to a large provider, like Level(3) are down for a reset
period, or are re-routed through Cogent, which is maxed out on all peering
with L3 at 99% packet loss levels? Is that really uptime? Sure, that's out of
their control, but the situation with their own website being down for some
people right now underscores that lofty claims are meant to be broken.

Now that they're beating that Joyent drum a little more: watch them fall down
under a DoS attack that Amazon could bat away at this point. I'm by no means
supporting Amazon, but Joyent is still a small company with big claims. I
predict they will fall apart when Sun stops making hardware, and when their
engineers argue over whatever trendy "wrong way to do it" Node-type
technologies that they're jacking off over next.

~~~
wisty
When you are talking about "X nines, in retrospect, from a small sample" it's
meaningless, and they know it. All it means is, they've had 100% uptime,
because they've been lucky enough to avoid a crash. And by 100% uptime, I'm
sure that's "100% of crashes weren't in our opinion our fault".

------
IheartApplesDix
Why is this the top post?

