Cloud on cloud on cloud...can it work?

2 points·jmartens··4 comments

During the recent AWS outage, I noticed companies like Heroku saying they were down, and other companies saying they were down because Heroku was down.

At what point will this madness end? Does it ever make sense to be a cloud service, built on a cloud service, built on another cloud service?

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Isn't levels of abstraction the way technology works? Look at the evolution of the computer and programming languages.

What is the alternative? Buy hardware, rent colo space and manage your own machines that die in the middle of the night? The next level up is dedicated servers managed by a hosting provider. The next level up is a virtual machine on the hardware managed by the hosting provider. The next level up is a service provider letting you run processes on a platform they built. These layers of abstraction are needed so that we on a multitude of levels can do what we need to.

Does it make sense? Yes but it makes it all too easy to become reliant on the cloud provider for resilient fault tolerant systems rather than understanding how to fulfil the need yourself.

To be honest, any other cloud provider suffering the same persistent outages would be losing customers left and right. AWS is a testament to vendor lock in, both in mindshare and technology. Heroku being down, no clue what to say to that, they've been bitten by this so many times...

Can it work? It's already working pretty well. Not perfect for sure, but working pretty well.

Maybe my question should have been "should it work?" I'd argue that it isn't working well.....and my point being the recent AWS outage that took down PaaS providers like Heroku and AppFog.

I just wonder if there is a better way? What would happen if PaaS companies sourced infrastructure differently? Would it be worth the time/cost?

I don't know, just curious.

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