Hacker News Reader

Re: "rebooting the server gives you a clean state"

That's not quite true: the HD contents survive crashes and reboots. Only if you release the node (or lose it otherwise -- it's not guaranteed to stay with you), the HD contents are lost.

I suspect lots of startups are finding it "stable enough", and the backup/redundancy planning needed manageable.

View on HN

Are you certain? This must be new, because before your would get a fresh machine every time. Anytime you boot, AMZ looks at the image you want to run, and they unpack and uninstall it for you, meaning that even a reboot led to a clean drive. Now, there's been some talk about 'shadow copies' where you might even get access to other customers data by simply starting a deep scan on the drive.. but that's hardly persistence.

Yes. Of course, you lose the HD contents if you release the instance, or for other occasional failure and system events.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com