
GitHub is moving to Rackspace - mojombo
http://github.com/blog/493-github-is-moving-to-rackspace
======
Maciek416
> We’re growing at a rate of over 400 new users and 1000 new repositories
> every day and these rates are only increasing with time

Crazy. Interesting how the repo growth is faster than the new user growth.
That's a lot of projects :)

The point-by-point listing of requirements in this post almost reads like an
outline of what EY cannot do. I know that the split is supposedly amicable (on
the surface), but this doesn't look so great for EY.

Also interesting is how the requirements of a given application gradually
shatter through various ceilings of performance requirements, one notable one
here being the following:

> The benefits of running bare metal are obvious and have been empirically
> proven. We need to have the option to run bare metal when it is appropriate
> to the task at hand

~~~
sachinag
The split probably was amicable, frankly. No one disputes that Rackspace can
do things that EY can't at this point. People outgrow things all the time. You
start just accepting PayPal, and then you add credit cards when enough users
want that. You start with an AIR app, but go to dedicated Windows/Mac/Linux
apps when you have enough users on each that are worth it.

There's been nothing that I've read - anywhere - that would suggest that
someone else shouldn't use EY for their Rails app.

~~~
dcurtis
Except for the incredible price of EY, of course.

It's probably coincidence, but I noticed that all of those other beginning
technologies you mention are cheaper than the next step up. Not so with Engine
Yard.

It's like buying a Porsche, realizing you need more seats, and then switching
to a nice, reliable, high-end Civic.

~~~
sachinag
Wait, Rackspace is more expensive than their EngineYard costs, which were
_free_.

And, actually, processing credit cards yourself is cheaper than PayPal, but
there's the setup step that takes time and up-front costs.

And your last analogy is really faulty, Dustin. If you need more seats, your
_needs have changed_. Then you re-evaluate the options based on your new
criteria. That's what Github did.

Man, I thought I got through to you during our train ride. :)

~~~
pjhyett
You're correct that Rackspace is more expensive than our current arrangement
with Engine Yard, but it would have been quite the opposite had we elected to
stay.

------
gcv
_...we’ll finally be leaving our shared file system behind. We’ve far exceeded
the normal IO tolerances of GFS..._

Which GFS? Red Hat Global File System
(<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_File_System>)? GlusterFS
([http://www.gluster.com/community/documentation/index.php/Glu...](http://www.gluster.com/community/documentation/index.php/GlusterFS))?
Something else?

~~~
mojombo
RedHat GFS. It works great for low and medium IO situations, but can cause
sporadic issues on high IO installations like ours, and we aren't able to
attach any more servers to it without further impacting performance.

------
yan
Github is hosted by 10 virtual machines. I expected this to be much more.

------
fizx
"If you want something done right, do it yourself." still applies to
deployment, apparently. I wonder if/when the "cloud" will grow up. Any bets on
how many years until rolling your own deployment infrastructure seems silly?

~~~
ajkirwin
It will ALWAYS be better to do it yourself.

~~~
fnid
That is far from true. There are lots of things to do to get a site up and
running that don't require managing infrastructure.

If you spend time "doing it yourself," then you don't spend a lot of time _and
money_ on other parts of the business or the site. There is a scalability path
that includes cloud computing.

If you have a large complex site like GitHub with an architecture that isn't
conveniently accommodated by your cloud host and you can do it yourself, then
it may be better.

Never say never and never say always.

~~~
sunkencity
It's a lot cheaper to run on your own hardware, but maybe there's a scale
issue here as well -- if you're big enough you might get a cheaper price per
unit.

~~~
fnid
Still not always true. It's not _a lot_ cheaper to run on your own hardware.
Have you factored in shipping costs, depreciation, infrastructure management
time, distractions, opportunity costs, colocation costs, interest.

These things add up.

Imagine comparing a $10/mo hosting account with a colocated server for
$100/mo.

There are a plethora of scenarios that don't warrant owning or running your
own hardware.

~~~
lsc
I obviously don't have numbers for rackspace's dedicated servers, but their
15.5GiB slice is $800 a month. Are they going to charge less for dedicated
than for virtual hosts? You can get a server with 8 cores and 16Gib ram for
under $2K from places like serversdirect.com, or building from parts. I build
from parts, and generally end up paying $1500 for a 32GiB ram box. co-location
is another $150/month or so. (my costs are closer to $75/month for a dual-
socket box, but I have two full racks)

Unless you screwed up assembling the thing, the chances of something other
than a drive failing are pretty small. I mean, not zero; don't count on
hardware... I'm just saying, even if you have to get a $150/hr guy in to fix
your bad hardware, that just doesn't happen very often. way less than once per
server. Way less than once per every 10 servers (assuming you didn't screw up
the assembly, and that you rotate out the server after 3 years.)

So yeah, there are many situations where it makes sense to rent, especially if
you can't use 8 cores/ 32GiB ram of capacity. but if you use a whole server
(32GiB ram/8 core; go virtual until you need that capacity, I say.) the cost
advantages of owning hardware yourself are overwhelming. Sure, there are
reasons to rent... I'm just saying, owning ends up costing you a /lot/ less
money.

~~~
sunkencity
Yep, my experience with EC2 is that it gets pricey fast, and that the slower
instances aren't really that speedy. The sweet spot is probably where you
don't need critical performance (like a database box with a really fast RAID
array).

My solution is to run most stuff in a colo on dell boxes running the linux-
vserver kernel patch, sort of a cheap mans cloud solution.

------
strlen
I'm very curious about the move to shared nothing storage. Could any future
blog psots be made on that topic?

~~~
mojombo
Don't worry, I'll be making some technical blog posts down the road explaining
in excruciating detail exactly how I've done the federated architecture.

------
Tichy
Any comments from Engine Yard?

~~~
trevorturk
They have a blog post and have some comments in this HN thread as well:
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=817864>

