Dear Ryan: I did read your Sep. 14 posting on the megastore transition with interest. I also viewed your presentation at Google I/O. I am very impressed by the effort that the team is putting to make GAE scaleable, highly available and minimize downtime. In your talk multiple times you mentioned how unacceptable a two hour downtime is and you gave the SVColo incident that brought down Tweeter and FriendFeed a few times. So you seem to get it!!!
Unfortunately, the reality I see and face in the ground for the past 16 months is different. As I am writing this, I have 2 GAE powered sites down for TWO DAYS[1] and I am still waiting. The root cause? Simple "index count quotas" reseting issues that Google can solve on your end in minutes by resetting counters. In a similar situation in June[2], it took SEVEN DAYS to resolve the problem. Same issue in January took FOUR DAYS to get resolved[4]. Same issue is October 2008 took THREE DAYS to resolve[5]. Do you find this response acceptable? If you read the postings I refer to, you will see that most of the time was wasted in round trip communication across timezones!!! Several bugs have been filed on the index quotas issues but they have not been addressed. You cannot believe how frustrating and unproductive is to be in my shoes: 1. I dont know when anybody from Google will read my postings... 2. It can take up to 12 hours between replies. 3. For hours, I have to check the discussion group every ten minutes to see if somebody will read/take action/reply to my messages. Who can run a successful service with this kind of support? In addition to investments in multihoming, data centers and all the other great projects you describe, Google needs to invest in fixing the relatively simples issues (like [3]) first. This will make us self sufficient. It also must beef up support. A couple of months ago I posted a note on what Google can do to improve Google App Engine Support[6]. I received a lot of positive feedback from the community but official GAE did not even reply to the posting. The situation I currently see makes me wonder whether GAE as a whole has its priorities right. Right now I definetely feel that the customer is not the priority. Thanks for reading, I hope this message will help Google focus on the buring issues first and improve Google App Engine. Best Regards, Peter http://www.gae123.com REFERENCES 1. http://groups.google.com/group/google-appengine-python/browse_thread/thread/688aa5d0d376bd9f 2. http://groups.google.com/group/google-appengine/browse_thread/thread/d5c17a116e81d266 3. http://groups.google.com/group/google-appengine/browse_thread/thread/e0c5bd1a19c945c1 4. http://groups.google.com/group/google-appengine/browse_thread/thread/4f98d2c04fac0fb9/715e7def1a361ec9?show_docid=715e7def1a361ec9 5. Direct e-mail communication with Mar. Nic., available upon request 6. http://groups.google.com/group/google-appengine/browse_thread/thread/03fd57a38f130dee --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Google App Engine" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/google-appengine?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
