Moving from Azure to Google Cloud Platform | Hacker News Reader

Moving from Azure to Google Cloud Platform

about.gitlab.com

80 pointssuprememoocow40 comments

previously: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17341508

Kubernetes? Yeah right... The reasons are very clear: 1) GitHub being acquired by Microsoft. 2) Google is an investor in GitLab (through GV).

GitLab began migrating to GCP months ago, long before GitHub had anything to do with Microsoft.

https://about.gitlab.com/2018/04/05/gke-gitlab-integration/

At the very least GitHub acquisition is pushing them to do it faster.

Github being aquired by MS could be a thing if Gitlab was not doing this transition before that. Some of the jobs listing for Gitlab were specifying GCP knowledge because they were migrating from Azure (and this was written there).

Can someone explain how exactly does MS acquiring GitHub forces GitLab to move out from Azure? Like is it some kind of fear that Microsoft will meddle with the data or something?

It's simple. Some people don't want their open source projects hosted on a site owned by Microsoft, a company that extremely hostile to Linux and open source for several years was, spreading a lot of misinformation and engaging in many shady actions against it. Now, if you migrate from Github to an Azure-based platform, you are indirectly supporting Microsoft, and some people would prefer to avoid that. I don't think anyone expects MS to meddle with their data in any way.

I understand that Gitlab helm charts are now beta in 11.0, does it also mean Gitlab is fully running on Kubernetes on Azure (there's no mention of AKS)?

I wonder if they'll also publish the difference in cost between the two platforms.

For everyone saying this is a political decision, I don't see why Gitlab would be afraid of being political, especially seeing as a lot of developers were annoyed/angered at the Microsoft buyout.

I also can't see on a technical level a company planning this kind of maintenance operation this quickly. It would be reckless.

This is the same organization that switched precipitously to unstable CephFS in 2016. Recklessness doesn't seem to be a problem at GitLab.

https://about.gitlab.com/2016/11/10/why-choose-bare-metal/

We tested CephFS but we never switched to it.

They claim this is because of their focus on Kubernetes, but I have to wonder how much of this has to do with Microsoft acquiring Github. That aside, that's a tough slight for AKS.

Agree, this is the first thing i thought when i read that. Reaction to all troll on the fact that gitlab was hosted on Azure

Except they announced this before it was known that Microsoft buys Github...

https://about.gitlab.com/2018/04/05/gke-gitlab-integration/

They might have put these two things together: https://twitter.com/jasonfried/status/430871267881672704?lan... https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/08/21/github_ceo_chris_wa...

And would have looked very stupid if they had been bought by Google instead: https://www.cnbc.com/2018/06/05/github-interest-from-google-...

I don't think moving to GKE implies that AKS is inadequate. They could just be choosing the best of two excellent options.

I think GV investing $20 million on them helps too:

https://techcrunch.com/2017/10/09/gitlab-raises-20m-series-c...

GV is not partial to a particular cloud vendor. They do not push GCP onto the startups they invest in.

Do the start-ups that they invest in get discounts/credits/a better rate though? They might not push GCP, but they may give incentives.

Certainly doesn't hurt the recipients view of other Google offerings.

To be fair, AKS wasn't generally available until about a week ago. And while in preview, there were some significant issues with AKS (they themselves recommended not to do production deployments on it for the preview period).

The irony of GitLab running on Microsoft and GitHub not.

Indeed. This moves them closer to reversing that. Now to complete that, all that has to happen is for GitHub to move to Azure. They probably wouldn't want to do that now because it would look like they were implementing the merger before regulatory approval.

btw, this was announced in April, before the GitHub acquisition.

Credit to detaro (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17393538) for this tidbit.

First announced in April.

https://about.gitlab.com/2018/04/05/gke-gitlab-integration/

It would be interesting to see details of the performance issues motivating this.

It's probably more of a branding and PR strategy than a technical decision.

It was a technical decision. They announced it before the GitHub acquisition.

https://venturebeat.com/2018/04/06/why-and-how-gitlab-abando... https://about.gitlab.com/2018/04/05/gke-gitlab-integration/

They did have an outage a couple weeks ago. servers were down for an hour or something. Logs are published on a google doc

How did they end up on Azure in the first place? Any Gitlabbers here that know the story?

Azure credits.

A year or two ago Y Combinator startups would be given around $1M in Azure credits, should they move to Azure. GitLab.com at the time moved over to Azure, with the goal being to reduce costs before we consumed those credits. I think we consumed all of it in a matter of months. Once you're stuck with a hosting provider (Azure or not), it's difficult to move away from it.

Who’s surprised? They can’t afford to run on their biggest competitor’s platform.

Netflix does, at least ec2.

Is amazon video their biggest competitor? I’d have thought that Hulu, HBO Go, iTunes and other streaming services might be more popular than Amazon Video. I have no data to back that up though.

ps: given that Amazon Video is available for all prime members, we can’t compare total number of subscribers. Hours of videos watched per day might be a better number to look at.

Amazon is definitely Netflix's biggest competitor when comparing who's spending the most on original content in streaming. They're also a major competitor when it comes to bidding for exclusive rights but there are many participants in that fight, including cable plus companies like Disney setting up their own streaming service.

It would be an enormous risk for any cloud provider to attempt to degrade the use of their platform or snoop on how it's used by a company who is a competitor in another area, be it streaming or code management.

Correct me if I'm wrong, doesn't Netflix run their billing / search / recommendation /... systems on AWS and their whole video content streaming are engineered / hosted internally in collaboration with ISPs?

It's interesting how companies balance that decision, like Netflix's use of AWS despite Prime video being a competitor. That said, I'm skeptical that they made a major decision like this so quickly after the acquisition was announced.

They didn't, they announced this in April.

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