

Amazon cloud accused of network slowdown - mqt
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/01/15/amazon_ec2_latency/

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akamaka
It's pretty disappointing how these types of stories get parroted around the
web, without any valuable research added.

As an EC2 user, I'd like to see less words and more measurements. Amazon has
dozens of datacenters, probably each containing dozens or hundreds of
independent sub-nodes, but we don't have any data regarding who is affected.
In fact, Cloudkick hasn't given us any information regarding how they sampled
their data.

I know that my EC2 instance isn't experiencing latency problems, so is it
possible that a small number of nodes have developed problems, and that is
skewing the average?

Anyone with some useful information, please share!

~~~
moe
I'm not sure if it's useful (and it's only a guess) but I think there are two
mechanisms at work here:

1\. Minor technical problems at Amazon affecting [at least] a few vocal
customers

2\. Rackspace running a PR campaign in favor to their newly launched cloud
product

I'm not sure to what degree these two are connected but the timing seems a bit
suspicious, with a bunch of pseudo-benchmarks (paid by rackspace) cropping up
almost at the same time as these reports about EC2 problems.

As a matter of fact there has always been some variance in EC2 instance
performance, as anyone who has run more than a few nodes can confirm. It's the
nature of the beast.

None of the reports I have seen provided convincing data for serious large-
scale problems. A peek on a few hundred instances simply doesn't cut it when
amazon is said to be running around a million of them. To add a datapoint of
my own; we are running almost a hundred 24/7 instances here for batch media
processing and I can't see a difference in performance between now and
November'09.

And even if the reports are true I'm not exactly worried. Amazon is the first
and largest cloud operator, so it's just natural that they hit scaling
barriers before others do. If there are problems they will fix them and move
on.

Ofcourse all this sounds much more exciting when you wrap it up under a
sensational headline, along with a few meaningless but colorful graphs...

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nettdata
I think the article's headline is a bit unfair.

I read that and thought that they were/are manipulating the network in some
way to slow it down, similar to ISP's that traffic shape torrenting clients to
minimize the effect on their networks.

It could very well be that an increase in demand has meant a higher
utilization of available hardware, and response times have slowed down as a
result.

It could be that they're trying new, higher-density configurations to maximize
ROI.

It could very well be that they're prioritizing the higher-paying customers,
which seems reasonable (to me, anyway).

Sure, response times have apparently slowed down, regardless, but the headline
could sound less "evil" or intentional, I guess.

Still, it'd be interesting to know what's really going on, rather than hear
the generic "no over-capacity issues here" mantra from them, or the thundering
silence when asked specifically about response times.

~~~
pquerna
I don't really care if they are doing any of the above, that is certinally
their rights as a Business to optimize their infrastructure, but the problem
is all about their lack of communication about the latency issues.

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jcsalterego
Go Cloudkick!

