
Google App Engine Broken For 4 Hours And Counting - peter123
http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/07/02/google-app-engine-broken-for-4-hours-and-counting/
======
jacquesm
this is a bit like flying vs driving. If you're in the drivers seat you have
control - you hope - and your destiny is in your own hands, if you're in a
plane it is someone else driving (unless you are an airline pilot). The
accident rate is lower for planes per mile flown but if it goes wrong then it
usually does so in ways that make the headlines. Still, more people die
driving than flying.

When the 'cloud' goes down (or at least some part of it) then you'll notice
this immediately because of the large number of sites going down all at once.
But when you compare it with the accumulated downtime of all those users had
they not been 'cloud users' but hosted on their own kit then it is very well
possible that the balance is still in favour of hosting in the cloud.

~~~
nickb
Nice analogy but like all analogies, it's too simplistic and flawed. You left
out one important and critical part: the hypothetical passenger in your
example is tied to a specific plane/airline. If you don't like your pilot or
plane type, you cannot move to a different airline or request a different
plane or a different pilot since you're chained to the specific plane.

Due to Google App Engine's API lock-in, you're stuck with them as a
provider... quite possibly forever due to heavy BigTable dependency.

Even though I'm a huge fan of cloud computing, I'd rather use a strategy that
uses platforms/planes that are built from reusable parts and allow you to
switch your plane/airline provider as you please. Don't like Delta? Just go to
AA counter and you don't have to change your luggage, clothing etc.

Until there's a second, GAE-compatible, ISV provider that offers full
compatibility with GAE, I'd avoid GAE like a plague.

~~~
drcode
I'm sorry sir, but if my pilot is stuck in a thunderstorm and I don't think he
knows what he's doing, I can't "request a different plane."

~~~
jerf
It's a _metaphor_ , not a description or some sort of iron law of physics. If
I was on Google App Engine right now _and_ there was a competitor that I could
switch too, then I damn well could be up, especially if I took the opportunity
to keep both options actively available for myself. No matter how hard
"switching planes in midair" might be, it's just a metaphor.

------
fauigerzigerk
The bad thing is we can do nothing but wait. The good thing is we don't have
to do anything but wait ;-)

------
drcode
Now fixed again, as per my own app and as per
[http://groups.google.com/group/google-appengine-downtime-
not...](http://groups.google.com/group/google-appengine-downtime-
notify/browse_thread/thread/f7596d1d0bd0f0f9?hl=en)

~~~
drcode
Not sure why I was downvoted: It just got fixed a few minutes ago, as stated
on the link and as per my own app.

------
defied
At least their communication is good: [http://groups.google.com/group/google-
appengine-downtime-not...](http://groups.google.com/group/google-appengine-
downtime-notify/browse_thread/thread/f7596d1d0bd0f0f9?hl=en&pli=1)

~~~
jbox
I disagree. The GAE status page was down for hours:
<http://code.google.com/status/appengine>

What's the point of having a status page it's only up as long as your service?
We shouldn't have to hunt around a Google Group for information about what's
going on.

------
jpeterson
What's the point of hosting in a cloud if there's still a single point of
failure like this? I realize that it's currently free, but I thought one of
the main advantages of moving to the cloud was redundancy and fault tolerance.

------
tybris
Cloud outages may not be frequent, but they sure are noticeable.

------
bryanwoods
I'm so tired of reading about web servers/services going down.

~~~
jrockway
You are supposed to say something clever like, "Too bad TechCrunch isn't
hosted on App Engine..."

------
peter123
This is worse than the 8-hr outage of S3 sometime ago... most apps could still
respond without S3 static assets. If your entire app is hosted on AppEngine,
you're screwed for 4 hrs and counting...

~~~
slig
> This is worse than the 8-hr outage of S3 sometime ago

I don't think so. Javascript files hosted os s3 would hang the page loading
and without css/images the app would be useless too.

~~~
peter123
But you could quickly recover by hosting those JS files yourself and relinking
them. If your app is coupled tightly with AppEngine APIs, then there is
nowhere else you can host your app.

~~~
tlrobinson
Theoretically you could fire up AppScale on EC2:
<http://code.google.com/p/appscale/>

~~~
drusenko
What about your data? Most web applications have persistent data of some sort
that is vital to the user experience -- without it, you don't have much of a
site.

[Edit: And keeping a hot copy of that data is a lot harder than it sounds]

~~~
danw
GAE still had read-only access to data so it would be possible to backup and
move elsewhere

------
ezmobius
multi-tenant architectures are the geocities of cloud computing. This is the
main problem with something like gae, if they have an internal problem it
takes down their entire cloud and all the apps with it.

~~~
grandalf
which means that a lot more people are mad and it gets fixed sooner. Have you
ever had a problem with cable tv or phone service that just effects your home?
It can take weeks. If it effects a whole city, it is fixed within hours.

------
drcode
hmm... My appengine site is running just fine

Update: Actually, my app is in the "read only mode" they described... the
moment I tried to update anything it went to hell :)

------
andrewljohnson
I concur, my blog on App Engine is down.

