I have been a CouchDB developer (and consumer of hosting services) for a long time. Over the past few years, many things have changed in the CouchDB world, but something that has remained consistent is having a free (for most of us), standards-based hosting platform to experiment with and depend on. The value Iris Couch, and particularly Jason, has provided is immeasurable. Database administration is hard, especially with a platform that is so unique and flexible. I would recommend Iris Couch to anybody.
I have also been using both Cloudant and Couchbase 2.0 the last couple months and have been blown away with what these companies have accomplished. I feel lucky to be part of a community with such talent and technical diversity. CouchDB is definitely much more than database... http://caolanmcmahon.com/posts/couchdb_is_not_a_database/ On Tue, Mar 12, 2013 at 8:45 PM, Jeff Charette <[email protected]> wrote: > I figured you guys were under fire. Glad to hear you are on the other side > of that. I am still on and sticking with iris and probably will use cloudant > too eventually. I hope my questions didn't cause any issues, just had to > launch 6 months of work and I myself am under that support load as we speak. > Looking forward to the premium service when you guys get to it. > > Also, anything I can do to help, let me know. We are a lot better at design > than development. > Jeff Charette | Principal > We Are Charette > web / identity / packaging > > m 415.298.2707 > w wearecharette.com > e [email protected] > > On Mar 12, 2013, at 8:21 PM, Jason Smith <[email protected]> wrote: > >> On Tue, Mar 12, 2013 at 2:01 AM, Jeff Charette <[email protected]> wrote: >> >>> What is your CouchDB host preference? Here has been my experience which >>> leaves me as a loss for hosted services. >>> >>> Cloudant >>> - doesn't support newest couch techniques like require and I can't find a >>> tutorial to port my couch app. >>> >>> Iriscouch (currently using) >>> - I have nothing but love for these guys, but have had a lot of issues >>> lately. I've requested an upgrade with no response unfortunetly. >>> - they are on 1.2.1 which would be great, but 1.2.1 has a big issue which >>> has been fixed for 1.2.2 >>> https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/COUCHDB-1651 >> >> >> Thanks for your love. Regarding Iris Couch, I am biased; but I myself have >> nothing but love for the people at Cloudant, too. Of course, ultimately, >> you don't need people, you need the stuff they make and do (i.e. CouchDB >> service). >> >> You are right that we have had issues lately. We've always had random >> failures; but this is the first time things have gotten bad enough that >> general users felt prolonged slowness or unavailability. >> >> Long story short: these issues are behind us and we are back to our >> well-known quality of service. >> >> I thought our failure would be a boring story, but maybe I'll tell it >> anyway. >> >> The big problem was that we failed to support people, not that we failed to >> run software. Do you know how lots of stuff runs just fine from 0% to about >> 90% or 95% capacity, then it collapses horribly (e.g. memory, filesystems, >> disk i/o)? We experienced a similar collapse with customer support. >> >> The past two weeks, due to vacations and traveling engineers, we were doing >> less regular maintenance than usual. Then, also randomly, a few machines >> crashed badly. As a sysadmin I like CouchDB, because only safe operations >> are allowed. (For example, CouchDB has no JOINs, therefore every read >> operation is guaranteed to complete in logarithmic time.) That is usually >> the situation; however there is still the occasional memory leak or out of >> control process or whatever. Anyway, we exhausted memory on several >> machines which crashed many people's couches. >> >> That's fine; but the real collapse happened when everybody began to inquire >> about their server. Fixing stuff over SSH is quick, but supporting people >> takes much more time. When we saw the support volume spike, I decided to >> enter triage mode: make a priority list of technical and personal >> obligations and work from the top down. >> >> All software has real-time constraints. In fact, all human activity has >> real-time constraints. Right? Right? Hello? Hello! Can you hear me? After a >> certain time, if something is not done, it may as well never be done. That >> is how I approached our support load. >> >> I have learned from many trusted advisors (Hi, Jan and Noah and everyone!) >> that "support load" is a terrible phrase. CPU load is CPU load; but >> "support load" is people. So, I have learned my lesson, and we are now >> working through the entire backlog. Some people emailed to tell us >> nevermind, they had moved to Cloudant. I think they wanted to twist the >> knife a bit, to blow off steam. Okay, but that put them near the bottom of >> our priority list (they are no longer using the service; outstanding issues >> are moot). However they are still people. We will be emailing even them, to >> say the issue has been resolved. If you ask a question, I should respond, >> otherwise it's rude. >> >> -- >> Iris Couch >
