Maybe one of the Google developers will see this and can provide you with an informed answer.. but, if it slips through the cracks, you should definitely ask during the IRC office hours (or just check #appengine on irc.freenode.net, since someone from Google may be there at any time.)
Do you know how Zynga's backend is set up on AWS? I would imagine it's pretty complex so, you have to have the system architects and administrators to manage that. If your app becomes popular on a Farmville scale, you'd have to be prepared to automatically start-up new instances and balance load across them. Which means you'd need to spend time and energy designing this sort of system up front. Though, if you just plan on cranking up an Extra Large EC2 Instance and running off of that (and maybe using SimpleDB on the back end).. and dealing with front end scaling issues later. You would probably be fine.. most apps do not become popular on the Farmville scale. SimpleDB will enforce a little database discipline, and, if you do "blow up", you could probably figure out how to load balance over multiple static instances until you cooked up some sort of automated scaling method. (Again, this depends on you using SimpleDB on the back-end.) With Appengine, you avoid any sort of systems architecting (just code as fast as possible).. but you have to spend time coding ways to deal with the 99th percentile outlier Datastore issues. Maybe there are some people here who have user facing apps who can speak about this from experience (I happily do backend processing where retrying a failed datastore operation or a failed cold start is no problem.. and there is no user on the other side to become frustrated.) On Thu, Dec 2, 2010 at 1:10 AM, Shane <[email protected]> wrote: > I know this has been asked one way or another before, but most of the > main issues to do with GAE stability seem to have been asked around > the end of 2008, early 2009. > > Basically, I have been arguing back and forth with my business partner > about whether to use GAE or AWS for the back-end of our social game > engine. I love GAE (Java) for so many reasons, and although it used > to be unstable, it's pretty good now. The main argument in favour of > AWS is the fact that AWS has proven itself with multiple games running > tens of millions of active users per day. The obvious pin-up child > for AWS is Zynga, with its Farmville peaking at 80+million DAU. And > that's just one of the hugely successful games running on the AWS > infrastructure. Remarkable achievement. > > So, one way or another it's KNOWN to work. GAE on the other hand > doesn't have any examples that I could find doing these sorts of > numbers. Not even close. So can I trust it? Is there a single > example of a large social game with millions of Daily Active Users, > using GAE? > > I look forward to your thoughts, but please also note, this is not > intended to start any sort of flame war. I love both systems, but > both have their positives and negatives, but I'm about to make an > architectural decision that likely won't be undone moving forward. > > Regards, > Shane > > -- > 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]<google-appengine%[email protected]> > . > For more options, visit this group at > http://groups.google.com/group/google-appengine?hl=en. > > -- 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.
