Comments on: Amazon Web Services or Joyent Accelerators: Reprise

By: Ivo

Ivo — Mon, 26 May 2008 18:25:49 +0000

And there’s OpenSolaris on EC2 as well:

http://blogs.sun.com/ec2/entry/launch_of_opensolaris_on_amazon

By: Vince

Vince — Mon, 19 May 2008 17:31:56 +0000

@Dom

In case you weren’t aware, Amazon does provide paid support (Silver & Gold) – much like Joyent does for it’s Accelerators.

See the link below

http://www.amazon.com/gp/browse.html?node=566801011

By: Dom

Dom — Mon, 19 May 2008 16:49:29 +0000

I have to admit I was seduced by AWS only a few weeks ago. I used a prominent service to build my virtual server image and experienced the fastest and most flawless deployment of any software ever. The low cost and fast build and deployment time, and knowing I’d only be billed for actual usage as opposed to paying upfront for bandwidth and disk space I might not necessarily use, was enthralling.

But my party soon ended. With no support and little experience in the linux world, I’ve been driven back to a hosted solution.

The good news – I found Joyent.

By: Seth

Seth — Sat, 17 May 2008 10:40:32 +0000

Amazon has a very simple advantage, you pay for what you use. I can scale instantly and I can deploy servers as needed. I agree the basic 3 tier web deployment doesn’t work for high traffic sites, but for smaller startups it works fine.

No hardware load balancer, but I can setup a high availability deployment across different datacenters aka “Availability Zones”. That’s not something many cloud providers will be able to offer.

If the box where your load balancer lives dies, relaunch the instance and your are back online.

With the Joyent Accelerators, is there a cancellation process for each instance I might not need ? With Amazon I can simple terminate the instance and I’m done.

This is a perfect example of what you need to be able to do with cloud computing.
http://blog.animoto.com/2008/04/21/amazon-ceo-jeff-bezos-on-animoto/

By: David Young

David Young — Sat, 17 May 2008 02:54:11 +0000

@Teddy: Joyent has an API. Aptana is using it to deliver cloud computing services to their customers. Neither Joyent nor Amazon have state layer interoperability. Neither Joyent nor Amazon have automatic scale. That’s why I gave Joyent a 7. Without hardware load-balancing, I’d give Amazon a 6 cloud score.

Beyond the scoring, do you agree with the nine traits of a cloud computer?

By: Teddy K

Teddy K — Fri, 16 May 2008 23:25:59 +0000

Since you guys just wrote the other day a blog post that establishes a metric of 9 traits for cloud computing, let’s compare Joyent to Amazon.

http://www.joyeur.com/2008/05/08/cloud-nine-specification-for-a-cloud-computer-a-call-to-action

1) Virtualization Layer Network Stability
Joyent = Yes, Amazon = Yes

2) API for Creation, Deletion, Cloning of Instances
Joyent = No, Amazon = Yes

3) Application Layer Interoperability
Joyent = Yes, Amazon = Yes

4) State Layer Interoperability (most difficult)
Joyent = No, Amazon = Yes

5) Application Services (e.g. email infrastructure, payments infrastructure)
Joyent = Yes, Amazon = Yes

6) Automatic Scale (deploy and forget about it)
Joyent = No, Amazon = Yes

7) Hardware Load Balancing
Joyent = Yes, Amazon = No

8) Storage as a Service
Joyent = Yes, Amazon = Yes

9) “Root”, If Required
Joyent = Yes, Amazon = Yes

——————

Totals: Joyent 6/9, Amazon 8/9

By: Ramin

Ramin — Fri, 16 May 2008 04:48:14 +0000

Here’s an exercise:

- Take a single application from scratch. Something with a database, some sort of web service interface, and an AJAX or Flex/widget interface. Not a toy, but something reasonable.

- Now build and deploy it on Google AppEngine, Amazon EC2/S3, and Joyent accelerator.

- Keep meticulous note of how long it took to write, test, and debug, and more importantly, what steps were taken to deploy the app.

- Also keep track of how much each of them cost to deploy and some on-going cost/performance scenarios.

- Put them side-by-side.

Whoever has the fewest number of steps and the fastest build/deploy time is likely to attract the most developers. Whoever can show that the operating cost scales linearly with use will have developers casting flower petals in their path

A few years ago there was a geek humor piece making the rounds. Someone had tried writing the ‘Hello World’ app across a number of languages/platforms. The C and Java version were two lines. The OLE one was 3-4 pages long. It was a joke, but it reinforced the perception that OLE was hard to use and it never took off.

As an app developer, I don’t care that it runs on Solaris, FreeBSD, or Mac-OS. I want it to work. I want an optimized deployment workflow and a simple way to monitor and keep things running.

If you guys present a way for developers to build and deploy apps quickly and easily and keep them running cost-effectively, you’ll have to beat people off with a stick.

Just my $0.02.

By: Brendan

Brendan — Fri, 16 May 2008 04:29:01 +0000

An interesting read, but I am not entirely convinced you are comparing Apples with Apples. One could argue that EC2, S3 et all are built on similarly scalable hardware and operating systems – functionality exposed to the end user is as much a choice of what makes commercial sense, as it is capabilities.

Joyent accelerators do compare well, but their strength comes from what they run on. Fundamentally, OS choice does matter – otherwise you wouldn’t pimp Open Solaris half so much.

The choice between an almost ‘instant on’ environment, versus one that requires some effort to construct really shouldn’t be dismissed too lightly. So it’s more a comparison between an operating system (which is really the core point here, given the discourse on kernels and hypervisors) and Amazon’s actual application framework, rather than what it actually runs on.

By: Daniel Howard

Daniel Howard — Fri, 16 May 2008 04:00:58 +0000

Hi,

I agree the Joyent Accelerator compares favorably with Amazon’s offering. For me, though, the big win for Amazon is that I can deploy server instances in minutes, whereas my reading of Joyent’s offering was that provisioning an accelerator costs $50 and can take a few days. Amazon’s initial barrier to adoption is really low, and that is going to draw a developer in to start playing quick and cheap. It would be neat if Joyent could provide faster, cheaper turnaround on new services.

Sincerely,
-daniel