+1000 On Wed, Mar 13, 2013 at 12:39 AM, Mike West <[email protected]> wrote:
> 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 > > >
