
Au Revoir - zapita
https://blog.docker.com/2018/03/au-revoir/
======
mrb
I remember being introduced to Solomon in Dec 2008 (a friend of a friend) and
he came to my apartment in Los Angeles a few months later to demo his
"dotCloud" project. He told me how he was using Mercurial to have a version-
controlled repository of an entire root filesystem (including char and block
device special files under /dev; he had to extend Mercurial to add support for
them). I found this pretty cool and I could see the potential. He could check
out multiple copies, make different changes, merge them, etc. It was basically
a revision-controlled VM/container/system image. I was working on somewhat
related technology at the time,
[http://qemudo.sourceforge.net/?](http://qemudo.sourceforge.net/?), a web-
interface to QEMU virtual machines where whole VMs could be created in <1
second by using copy-on-write disk images (QCOW.) Everyone I showed this to
back in 2006-2008 was dumbfounded. The idea that VM creation could be a
_lightweight_ operation was brand new back then. Normally it involved copying
a multi-gigabyte disk image. All the pieces of the tech stack were available
to do this, but no well-polished product that combined them together existed.

Of course dotCloud ended up being a precursor of Docker itself, and took the
idea of "lightweight easy-to-create container" to an even higher level. shykes
if you are reading this, hi!

------
chrisvalleybay
I love the art made for the post. It's so emotional and powerful. The letter
told the story, but the image made me feel the story. So simple, but yet so
powerful.

Also, @solomonstre has changed his Twitter profile picture. This is brilliant
communication. He lets everyone know that he has moved on to other things,
just from his profile picture. I think this is very interesting and clever.

~~~
Chico75
Docker hired a famous french comic book artist for all their graphics:
[https://twitter.com/laurelcomics](https://twitter.com/laurelcomics)

~~~
a3_nm
I really enjoyed this long comic by Laurel
[https://commeconvenu.com/](https://commeconvenu.com/). It's available online,
but only in French I'm afraid... It's the story of how she came to the US for
a startup with her boyfriend and how they found themselves in a more and more
difficult situation with their cofounders. It's gripping, hilarious at times,
and the art is outstanding.

~~~
rjaco31
Wow, thanks for the link. That was a very interesting read & sad story.

------
hartator
It always amazes me how you can convince a founder/CEO is not right man for
the job, and slowly push him away.

Companies that succeed are driven by burning vision, not by day-to-day
operation people. It might make feel the companies run smoother for some time,
but day-to-day executives are harmful to a company core vision leading to
boring companies if they manage to sustain profitability in the long run at
all.

~~~
geofft
> _Companies that succeed are driven by burning vision, not by day-to-day
> operation people._

What is the evidence for this? We can throw anecdotes like Apple on one side
and Unilever on the other, sure, but is there any study saying e.g. "Of these
100 promising companies founded in 1990, x% of the founder-led ones were
successful by 2010 whereas y% of the outside-CEO-led ones were?"

Making a bold claim like "Companies that succeed have X cool-sounding
behavior" is the realm of business books in airport bookstores. It would be
nice to take a more data-driven approach.

~~~
kornish
Noam Wasserman (Harvard, USC) studies exactly this in a paper called "Rich vs
King". As you can guess from the name, the conclusion is that bringing in
outside generally management maximizes the expected value of equity.

[https://hbr.org/2008/02/the-founders-dilemma](https://hbr.org/2008/02/the-
founders-dilemma)

~~~
geofft
Thanks!

One thing the article brings up is that "success" may not be synonymous with
"financial success". If you have a specific burning vision for a thing that
should exist in the world, it might not be the most profitable thing, and the
founder staying on is probably a good way for exactly that product to exist -
but an outside CEO might choose to compromise the product vision and
significantly expand the potential market in doing so.

~~~
kornish
Very true!

I suspect involuntary founder replacement is much more common in venture-
funded companies. While your, my, and the founder's definitions of success may
not be synonymous with "financial success", many VCs and their LPs may not
feel the same. Obviously it's tricky to fully generalize, but the point is
that VC can be expensive if founder and investor motivations aren't closely
aligned.

------
habosa
Kinda funny that the page is down ... you'd think for a company that helps
everyone scale their services this would not be a problem :-)

~~~
jjoe
I'm not sure resource scaling is what's needed here. Just good ol' caching.
Shameless plug: I built Cachoid[0] for caching as a service (leveraging
Varnish mainly) to help with situations like this.

[0] [https://www.cachoid.com/](https://www.cachoid.com/)

~~~
slifin
I understand that this is a shameless plug but I've met teams where the first
response to any performance problem is caching

If you're reading this and have performance issues look at caches as a last
resort, first figure out why things are slow

I'm assuming a traditional stack here but use mysql jet profiler, or SQL
equivalent first, then your languages profiler xhprof?

If your queries are slow or impossible make sure your tables are normalised
and indexed, make sure opcache is on and xdebug off

Mysql out of the box is very conservative with its resources, the limits can
often be raised and the web server can often be configured to be faster, make
sure you're sending the correct http cache headers

There's so many things to consider with performance Please don't denormalise
your data slap it in redis/ use varnish and call it a day

No cache is free, eventually you have to pay the pied piper when you do make
sure you can afford to have never used the cache at all

Some of my hardest bugs have come from out of sync caches & trying to build
performant data architecture around systems that had data stuffed into a redis
black hole aged for years..

~~~
jedberg
I dunno, I'd say solve your customer pain first, then mess around with your
profiler. If throwing up a cache solves your immediate problem, by all means
throw up a cache.

Just make sure it's your first step, not your last step.

------
ojosilva
The author Solomon Hykes, user shykes, announced DotCloud's Docker was going
opensource here on HN almost exactly 5 years ago on March 26th, 2013.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5445387](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5445387)

Aside for the near coincidence, I find reading historical first release posts
very enlightening!

I'd be happy if any of you would share first-reaction posts and chatter and
more on Solomon's marketing-first approach on making Docker a tremendously
successful opensource project.

------
bmelton
Like a lot of tech folks, I've only interacted with Solomon on the internet,
but in probably every interaction, I've come away from it feeling smarter, or
more capable, going all the way back to the very early days of Dotcloud.

I understand the realities of working in a corporation, and the demands on
C-level executives, but it's hard to imagine any company that is improved by
his departure from it.

Fare well, Solomon. Eager to see what you've got planned next.

~~~
chrisjc
Very excited to see how this new C-group executes.

Probably one of the best departure messages I've ever seen.(especially with
that image)

------
chatmasta
Four months ago on HN, an anonymous account posted "SHykes has left Docker"
[0].

[0]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15650335](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15650335)

~~~
0xmohit
Another au revoir post [0] by Jérôme Petazzoni (also mentioned in shykes's
post) a little over a month back.

[0] [https://jpetazzo.github.io/2018/02/17/seven-years-at-
docker/](https://jpetazzo.github.io/2018/02/17/seven-years-at-docker/)

------
jf
I was able to get the page to load, here's the text of thet post: "Today I’m
announcing my departure from Docker, the company I helped create ten years ago
and have been building ever since. A founder’s departure is usually seen as a
dramatic event. Sadly, I must report that reality is far less exciting in this
case. I’ve had many roles at Docker over the years, and today I have a new,
final one – as an active board member, a major shareholder and, I expect, a
high maintenance Docker user. But I will no longer be part of day-to-day
operations. Instead, after obsessing for so many years over my own ideas, I am
rediscovering the joys of putting myself at the service of others – my
friends, my family, and the brilliant entrepreneurs I’ve been lucky enough to
advise and invest in over the years. Over the coming months I plan to use my
experience to help them in any way I can.

This transition is simply another chapter in a long story of change, growth,
hard work… and a lot of luck.

Ten years ago, I quit my job, returned to live with my mother in Paris and,
together with my friends Kamel Founadi and Sebastien Pahl, started a company
called Dotcloud. Our goal was to harness an obscure technology called
containers, and use it to create what we called “tools of mass innovation”:
programming tools which anyone could use. I was 24 and had no idea what I was
doing. We needed a CEO, so that became my new role.

Five years ago, Dotcloud reinvented itself as Docker, around a battle-hardened
core of five people: Eric Bardin, Sam Alba, Jerome Petazzoni, Julien Barbier
and myself. Soon growth was off the charts, and we hired an experienced CEO to
help us sustain it. I was 29 and eager to do my part. Docker needed a CTO, so
that became my new role.

Today, as I turn 34, Docker has quietly transformed into an enterprise
business with explosive revenue growth and a developer community in the
millions, under the leadership of our CEO, the legendary Steve Singh. Our
strategy is simple: every large enterprise in the world is preparing to
migrate their applications and infrastructure to the cloud, en masse. They
need a solution to do so reliably and securely, without expensive code or
process changes, and without locking themselves to a single operating system
or cloud. Today the only solution meeting these requirements is Docker
Enterprise Edition. This puts Docker at the center of a massive growth
opportunity. To take advantage of this opportunity, we need a CTO by Steve’s
side with decades of experience shipping and supporting software for the
largest corporations in the world. So I now have a new role: to help find that
ideal CTO, provide the occasional bit of advice, and get out of the team’s way
as they continue to build a juggernaut of a business. As a shareholder, I
couldn’t be happier to accept this role.

As a founder, of course, I have mixed emotions. When you create a company,
your job is to make sure it can one day succeed without you. Then eventually
that one day comes and the celebration can be bittersweet.

It’s never easy for a founder to part ways with their life’s work. But I
realize how incredibly lucky I am to have this problem. Most ideas never
materialize. Most software goes unused. Most businesses fail in their first
year. Yet here we are, one of the largest open-source communities ever
assembled, collectively building software that will run on millions of
computers around the world. To know that your work was meaningful, and that a
vibrant community of people will continue building upon it…. can any founder
ask for anything more?

I want to thank from the bottom of my heart every member of the Docker team
and community, past and present, for making Docker what it is today. Thanks to
you, this founder’s bittersweet moment is mostly sweet. We have built
something great together. I look forward to seeing where you will take it
next.

Happy hacking,

Solomon"

~~~
throwaway84742
Having read this I wonder what really went down. I get that his shares are
fully vested, but personally I would not walk away from such a role at a
company with this kind of growth and mind share.

~~~
dahdum
He’s put his heart and soul into the company for 10 years, is wildly
successful, and doesn’t think he’s the best person for this next phase.

I don’t think any back alley drama needs to have happened.

~~~
k__
Maybe he doesn't want to be that person?

Founding a company is much different from running it.

I'd consider founding exiting for the first years, but later rather boring.

------
throw2016
Docker is a reflection of some of the side effects of HN. Self driving cars
and AI are other tech being pushed in a misleading way. All these aggressively
promote SV funded companies without proper technical scrutiny.

The lack of scrutiny means questionable technical decisions and complicated
tool chains that add layers of complexity with little benefit are passed on to
users with little knowledge of the trade-offs involved.

In a way the original promise of containers of being simple and portable have
been completely lost to complicated wrappers like Docker and Kubernetes and
words like devops that promise a lot but deliver an out of control web of
complexity.

Google and Facebook have an army of networking, storage (they even hired the
btrfs developer), security and scalability experts. It's not 2 engineers doing
devops.

This also sets perverse incentives. Wrappers like Docker and Kubernetes
monopolize all the attention and funding while the core open source projects
that they are critically dependent on like LXC, Aufs, Overlayfs, Btrfs,
Dnsmasq, Nginx, Keepalived, Consul, Quagga, Bird, open source networking tech,
container tech in the kernel, apps are all hidden from view.

Docker initially wrapped the LXC project without proper credit and there was a
lot of misinformation about what LXC is, with zero pushback here. Many
commentators even today are not clear about containers and think Docker
invented containers. And this after thousands of posts about containers here.

~~~
jchiu1106
> Wrappers like Docker and Kubernetes ...

How's Kubernetes a wrapper? Wrapper on what? The ones you listed are
dependencies. What projects don't have dependencies?

> Docker initially wrapped the LXC project without proper credit ...

Docker hasn't been a wrapper for lxc for a long time (at least 3+ years, which
is a long time in tech world). Also, the debian package at the time was called
lxc-docker.

> Many commentators even today are not clear about containers and think Docker
> invented containers.

Misguided people are always going to be the majority, especially in the tech
world. People actually working with these technologies, they will bother to
figure out the differences.

------
sytse
Thanks Solomon for creating the inflection point of the container revolution.

I'm a bit puzzled about where docker as a company has to go. But the
enthusiasm that was unleashed is without par.

~~~
rhacker
I'm going to second this - docker has literally opened up pathways that very
well be underpinning 80% of all new projects.

Because of Docker I can bootstrap new employee's working environment in 5
minutes - everything is a container except they thing they are changing,
commit, see.

~~~
pas
We still use Vagrant - because it's cross platform. And run docker inside
that.

------
mattlong
Back in 2011, Solomon was nice enough to get lunch with me along with a few
other DotClouders to talk me through some scaling issues my startup was
stressing over. They were all super knowledgeable and helpful. We were able to
get a handle on things thanks to their advice. Thanks so much and best of
luck!

------
segmondy
I'm only interested in 2 things. a) Is he happy, was the journey worth it? b)
How much money did he make?

So long as he is happy and he didn't expose himself to any financial ruin.
It's all good.

------
danvoell
Very well written. It has to be tough to walk away from something with as much
trajectory. It also takes someone very self-aware to know when they are
helping and where their talents can be better utilized.

------
haylem
Solomon being French - and considering the title - my brain automatically
played tricks on me and as I read his post's title I pictured him saying "Au
Revoir" in its most famous form in France:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0obJfkU9xB4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0obJfkU9xB4)
. :D

(It's the official good bye of former French president Valery Giscard
d'Estaing as he left office, and it's been used over and over again as a comic
element.)

My hat tip to shykes. We studied in the same engineering school and he was
part of the teaching assistants' panel doing the interviews for the new batch
of candidates I was in. When I met him that day, he was in charge of testing
my conversational English level and this interview (amongst others) convinced
me to go for this school. He was also one of my tutors/teachers in the first
few months, and I eventually became part of the same teaching team. Great guy
all around, talented technician and a great educator.

I think he entirely deserves the praise for creating dotCloud and Docker, no
matter what people may say about the underlying technology and the lackluster
Docker activity lately.

He's turned it into a great product and company, with impacts and snow-ball
effects all over the IT landscape.

------
iamwil
Back in 2011, Solomon offered his team to help us out with some background job
pool issue--mostly Paul. Thanks, and hope you planted enough little seeds
along the way that you're able to get back to doing what you do best--making
seedlings grow.

------
borncrusader
I hope it's not the case of enterprise bullying. I still believe Docker has
the potential to grow into a much larger enterprise company if only it can
navigate through the treacherous waters.

------
passivepinetree
I'm getting a 504 Gateway timeout. Is the HN hug of death really affecting
such a huge site?

~~~
sciurus
blog.docker.com runs Wordpress, and the domain points directly at an ELB.
Unless they are running some caching layer (behind that ELB but in front of
their wordpress processes), they may have to scale out a lot in order to
handle traffic spikes, and they may be limited in their ability to do that by
DB capacity.

~~~
passivepinetree
Interesting. Thank you for the clarification!

------
fargo
"Our goal was to harness an obscure technology called containers"

Was that really the goal? My impression was that dotcloud was just a hosting
company

~~~
nickstinemates
yes

------
gk1
Another source: [http://www.eweek.com/enterprise-apps/docker-founder-
solomon-...](http://www.eweek.com/enterprise-apps/docker-founder-solomon-
hykes-announces-exit-from-docker-inc)

------
rileytg
cached link:
[https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:vBSgkE...](https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:vBSgkEL1hLMJ:https://blog.docker.com/2018/03/au-
revoir/+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us)

------
ridruejo
What Solomon is doing, walking away from the company he helped create, is
probably one of the hardest decisions an entrepreneur may need to take. Good
luck with everything!

------
misterbowfinger
_As a founder, of course, I have mixed emotions. When you create a company,
your job is to make sure it can one day succeed without you. Then eventually
that one day comes and the celebration can be bittersweet._

I've seen this before firsthand and it always looks painful. It's easy to look
at something from afar and think, "why not just let it go?" But seeing the
pain of letting go time and time again makes it seem far more difficult....

------
wpasc
docker ps -a SOLOMON HYKES Exited(0) 1 day ago

Sad to see him go, so so grateful for his work!

------
magic_beans
Unintentionally hilarious that the Docker blog of all companies should have
received the ol’ reddit hug of death...

------
jaytaylor
Honest question:

How common is it for a company to flourish after the original sole founder
leaves?

Having seen founders forced out by the board first-hand multiple times, I've
yet to see things really take off after the departure of such a key player.

I'm curious if, on average, it's really the right move.

------
damm
It's too bad but this is unfortunately how things work. You may start the
company and as you get more and more people on the board that are not on your
team your voice gets quieter.

Until the people on the board vote to replace you and the silence is
deafening.

Brutal what business has come to

------
discussedbefore
This guy led Docker's marketing-first approach here on HN:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=shykes](https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=shykes)

[https://hn.algolia.com/?query=author:shykes%20docker&sort=by...](https://hn.algolia.com/?query=author:shykes%20docker&sort=byDate&type=comment)

I put CloudFlare in a similar boat, but CloudFlare seems more tech-savvy
(apart from one giant screw-up that cemented marketing-first for me).

I'll always be sad that marketing wins.

~~~
c_r_w
What does that mean, "marketing-first approach?" Is this a common distinction
in the Hacker News culture?

~~~
discussedbefore
If I had to pick a more common phrase to research on HN, it would be "growth
hacking". By marketing-first I mean growth hacking/PR is priority #1.

I'm not saying anything against this person professionally or personally, it
is more a textbook example of marketing hustle as key to financial success. I
prioritize technology ahead of marketing, and am currently struggling to flip
this around.

PS. I didn't know Docker was YCS10, so props to YC for connecting with this
person early. Growth hacking definitely fits into the YC culture.

~~~
sah2ed
> I prioritize technology ahead of marketing, and am currently struggling to
> flip this around.

May I ask why you feel strongly about a technology-first approach?

I can think of someone that tried your exact approach, but it didn't end well.
He happens to be a member of this community [0] and he wrote a great blog post
[1] introspecting as to the reasons why technology-first approaches don't work
in the world we live in.

If you've not read it, I encourage you to do so.

[0]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=coffeemug](https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=coffeemug)

[1] [http://www.defmacro.org/2017/01/18/why-rethinkdb-
failed.html](http://www.defmacro.org/2017/01/18/why-rethinkdb-failed.html)

~~~
discussedbefore
I just love tech a lot more than marketing, probably primarily because I'm
much better at tech!

I'm glad that RethinkDB seems to be headed toward a happy ineding as a
community, and thanks for the pointer to the write up.

------
matt12345678
Wow. These kinds of communications typically seem trite. But this one
genuinely resonated with me. I'm glad things worked out for him. And thanks
for Docker!

------
matchagaucho
Am I the only one reading a K8S concession into every Docker headline lately?

I made a big bet on Docker a few years ago, so I know personally that's been
the case.

------
nunez
Does this mean that Docker as a company is stable enough to function without
one of its co-founders? Or does that mean that VC is taking it over?

------
zapita
It looks like their blog crashed under the load... Here's the full text below.

Today I’m announcing my departure from Docker, the company I helped create ten
years ago and have been building ever since. A founder’s departure is usually
seen as a dramatic event. Sadly, I must report that reality is far less
exciting in this case. I’ve had many roles at Docker over the years, and today
I have a new, final one – as an active board member, a major shareholder and,
I expect, a high maintenance Docker user. But I will no longer be part of day-
to-day operations. Instead, after obsessing for so many years over my own
ideas, I am rediscovering the joys of putting myself at the service of others
– my friends, my family, and the brilliant entrepreneurs I’ve been lucky
enough to advise and invest in over the years. Over the coming months I plan
to use my experience to help them in any way I can.

This transition is simply another chapter in a long story of change, growth,
hard work… and a lot of luck.

Ten years ago, I quit my job, returned to live with my mother in Paris and,
together with my friends Kamel Founadi and Sebastien Pahl, started a company
called Dotcloud. Our goal was to harness an obscure technology called
containers, and use it to create what we called “tools of mass innovation”:
programming tools which anyone could use. I was 24 and had no idea what I was
doing. We needed a CEO, so that became my new role.

Five years ago, Dotcloud reinvented itself as Docker, around a battle-hardened
core of five people: Eric Bardin, Sam Alba, Jerome Petazzoni, Julien Barbier
and myself. Soon growth was off the charts, and we hired an experienced CEO to
help us sustain it. I was 29 and eager to do my part. Docker needed a CTO, so
that became my new role.

Today, as I turn 34, Docker has quietly transformed into an enterprise
business with explosive revenue growth and a developer community in the
millions, under the leadership of our CEO, the legendary Steve Singh. Our
strategy is simple: every large enterprise in the world is preparing to
migrate their applications and infrastructure to the cloud, en masse. They
need a solution to do so reliably and securely, without expensive code or
process changes, and without locking themselves to a single operating system
or cloud. Today the only solution meeting these requirements is Docker
Enterprise Edition. This puts Docker at the center of a massive growth
opportunity. To take advantage of this opportunity, we need a CTO by Steve’s
side with decades of experience shipping and supporting software for the
largest corporations in the world. So I now have a new role: to help find that
ideal CTO, provide the occasional bit of advice, and get out of the team’s way
as they continue to build a juggernaut of a business. As a shareholder, I
couldn’t be happier to accept this role.

As a founder, of course, I have mixed emotions. When you create a company,
your job is to make sure it can one day succeed without you. Then eventually
that one day comes and the celebration can be bittersweet.

It’s never easy for a founder to part ways with their life’s work. But I
realize how incredibly lucky I am to have this problem. Most ideas never
materialize. Most software goes unused. Most businesses fail in their first
year. Yet here we are, one of the largest open-source communities ever
assembled, collectively building software that will run on millions of
computers around the world. To know that your work was meaningful, and that a
vibrant community of people will continue building upon it…. can any founder
ask for anything more?

I want to thank from the bottom of my heart every member of the Docker team
and community, past and present, for making Docker what it is today. Thanks to
you, this founder’s bittersweet moment is mostly sweet. We have built
something great together. I look forward to seeing where you will take it
next.

Happy hacking,

Solomon

------
distantsounds
twitter mirror:
[https://twitter.com/solomonstre/status/979034154384834560](https://twitter.com/solomonstre/status/979034154384834560)

------
vegancap
Did anyone else well up at that final image? It's been a long week...

~~~
odonnellryan
It's a nice image, but I'm trying to figure out what kind of rig that sailboat
has.

~~~
jackmac92
I think it can only sail backwards...

------
Fenrisulfr
Hug of death?

Twitter post here:
[https://twitter.com/Docker/status/979027618866520064](https://twitter.com/Docker/status/979027618866520064)

------
cryptoz
Title should change. Sounds like Docker is shutting down permanently since the
site doesn't load and the title is French for Good Bye.

~~~
fhood
Haha, I clicked on it in a panick after remembering what au revoir meant.

~~~
coding123
Yeah same was about to shit my pants...

------
betaby
Well, 504. No cloud auto scaling?

------
notananthem
504... rip

------
simonebrunozzi
If you read between the lines, there's no mention of Ben Golub (Docker's CEO
until few months ago). I am wondering if that's intentional, or...
intentional. Or intentional?

------
zackify
Oh, the irony of the docker blog timing out...

------
PlaneSploit
Looks like they are using Docker Swarm to host their website.

------
nroach
504 gateway error?

 _edit_ Solomon Hykes is departing -
[https://twitter.com/Docker/status/979027618866520064](https://twitter.com/Docker/status/979027618866520064)

------
timsuchanek
[http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:0VT_m5S...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:0VT_m5Sl0FoJ:https://blog.docker.com/2018/03/au-
revoir/%3Fnot-changed&num=1&hl=en&gl=de&strip=1&vwsrc=0)

------
overcast
Is it just a conscious joke at this point to put "incredible journey" in any
of these types of announcements?

~~~
kristianc
'Incredible journey' is usually reserved for software companies selling out or
shutting down, neither of which is happening in this case.

~~~
sah2ed
The parent likely picked it up from the Twitter announcement:

"The entire #Docker team would like to thank @solomonstre for creating the
containerization movement and his 10 years of service and innovation. Thank
you for bringing us all along on this _incredible journey_ – we look forward
to continued collaboration
[https://dockr.ly/2ut6OyO"](https://dockr.ly/2ut6OyO")

[https://twitter.com/Docker/status/979027618866520064](https://twitter.com/Docker/status/979027618866520064)

~~~
kristianc
Maybe they genuinely thought the journey had been incredible and wanted to
express their gratitude to shykes, who after all, built the company they work
for?

It isn't a bad or forbidden phrase in and of itself, it just usually sounds
rather hollow when users are getting screwed by a service shutting down. But
Docker isn't shutting down.

Also, consider when railing against cliched thinking that the 'Our Incredible
Journey' Tumblr is by now a massive HN cliche. It no longer sounds insightful
or smart.

------
DDerTyp
Website is 502'ing, here is a the WaybackMachine-Version:
[https://web.archive.org/web/20180328164640/https://blog.dock...](https://web.archive.org/web/20180328164640/https://blog.docker.com/2018/03/au-
revoir/)

------
haney
Site appears to be down but I'm guessing the post is related to this tweet?
[https://twitter.com/Docker/status/979027618866520064](https://twitter.com/Docker/status/979027618866520064)

~~~
connorl33t
Very short blog post from Solomon with a little bit of his history at Docker,
noting that the company is at the point where he can leave it to run by itself
without him.

------
Dayshine
A founder has retired, nothing as dramatic as the title might imply.

------
markbnj
Finally loaded for me. Solomon Hykes is leaving the company.

------
anonytrary
HackerNews often snuffs out the websites it links to -- the "hug of death".
Damn it. Guess I'll come back in 20 minutes.

~~~
zeisss
[https://twitter.com/Docker/status/979059103128436736](https://twitter.com/Docker/status/979059103128436736)
twitter has a screenshot

------
peterwwillis
I think their blog being hugged to death is a good example of how this
technology (read: web backend tech in general, not containers) is still too
complicated for people in general to use it for simple cases, like scaling the
load of otherwise static content. (It's wordpress, but still) We need
solutions that require less resources and smaller learning curves.

~~~
smallbigfish
> being hugged to death

Whenever I read about this I can't help to think that people don't make a good
use of a load balancer like HAProxy in front of their web-servers. Even if
it's a single server behind the load balancer.

There's this sweet spot where your server is handling requests as fast as it
can but if you cross above it everything halts. To make it simple, this
usually happens when one or more hardware resources (CPU, RAM, disk) reaches
90% utilization.

So just do some basic benchmarks and find that sweet spot and put a limit in
HAProxy. Say 100 concurrent connections for static assets and 50 concurrent
connections for everything else.

All requests above the limit will go in a HAProxy queue but they should not
stay there for long because the web-server is able to work at full speed
without being overloaded.

PS: I have quite a dream. To write some fabulous blog post that reaches the HN
front page and serve it from a raspberry pi device. Too bad I don't write at
all.

~~~
peterwwillis
What you're describing is queueing, but the solution you're really looking for
is back pressure. Any queue will eventually fill and when you fill it, things
fall out. So rather than just dropping requests or letting the requests swamp
your box, what you want to do is intelligently reject requests.

On the web, this means sending 503 responses. In a more intelligent client-
server model, this might be the client doing an exponential back-off retry
with jitter. A plain-old retry can swamp the server and just kill everything.
An exponential back-off retry will allow the backend to achieve a level of
service that isn't fast, but also isn't unavailable.

Hopefully in this case the haproxy is used intelligently and simply returns
cached responses to GET requests without query strings. You don't want to hold
onto connections or pass them off to the dynamic layer behind the proxy if
you're overloaded. You can also respond to the client with a page with an
auto-refresh, implementing an exponential back-off retry.

~~~
smallbigfish
The setup I described will not get you from 10 requests/second to 1000. It
will let you to make the most of your hardware though.

