
Scalr: The Auto-Scaling Open-Source Amazon EC2 Effort - utnick
http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/04/03/scalr-the-auto-scaling-open-source-amazon-ec2-effort/
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sah
I was disappointed to read that Scalr requires its own machine images. I'd
prefer a generic component that I could hook up to my own existing images.
(Which aren't even web servers...)

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lpgauth
Seems like a good idea, but why isn't Amazon providing this by default? It
SHOULD be part of the service they offer.

Also, how well does SCALR actually work?

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hwork
I actually think this is a task better suited as a layer for the interim. As
per their new features last week, Amazon is clearly focused on the really hard
stuff. What they should probably be announcing next is a guarantee of S3 and
EC2 placement within a specific data center. Then things get really
interesting. Maybe Amazon could integrate this project in their services at
some point... but for now, it seems best on its own.

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gojomo
Re: "What they should probably be announcing next is a guarantee of S3 and EC2
placement within a specific data center. Then things get really interesting."

This appears to be what their new 'availability zones' feature provides.

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hwork
The availability zones do guarantee EC2 placement within specific data
centers, but from what I've heard, do not guarantee S3 placement. Because so
many web services are tightly coupled with EC2 and S3, this presents a
dilemma. If I'm wrong though, please correct.

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iamelgringo
I was wondering how long something like this would take to build. If you can
configure something like this to be specific for say... media streaming, you
can say "goodbye" to all those content delivery networks.

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wmf
I thought half the benefit of CDNs was reduced latency, which AWS does not
provide.

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lux
I keep hearing comments about AWS and latency, but I haven't used it (yet!) so
I don't have any first-hand experience. I've seen that S3 can provide direct
public links, but are there latency issues that make these too slow for
general purpose content serving?

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wmf
I'll elaborate a little. A CDN is supposed to serve content from a server very
close to each user, like in the same city. Thus CDNs must have many servers in
many cities. AWS does not have many locations, thus because of the speed of
light it cannot have latency as low as a good CDN. This is not a problem with
AWS; it wasn't designed as a CDN.

Do you need a CDN for "general purpose content serving"? Probably not.

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lux
Thanks for the reply, that makes total sense. I suppose CDN services should be
compatible with AWS anyway, so they wouldn't be mutually exclusive. Each for
its purpose :)

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bdr
This could be one of those new layers of abstraction that accelerates the
entire field.

