Bad Moon Rises Over Cloud Perceptions

By Nicole Hemsoth

April 28, 2011

Let’s pretend for a moment that you are the owner or technical lead on a web application that recently captured the public’s attention and swelled in popularity—to the point that serving those visitors or customers without building a new data center would be impossible.

Instead of resorting to that up-front investment, what you need, of course, is infrastructure that will scale with your traffic or transactions—a resource that will allow you to avoid the cost and expertise required to maintain a system robust enough to handle the flood. What you need, in other words, is a cloud-based infrastructure provider—preferably one that offers an attractive guarantee of uptime and continual reassurance that no matter what, that data is backed up and replicated to death in the event of disaster.

So, there you have it; you’re all set to serve users and wash your hands of the whole infrastructure problem. In one relatively swift move you’ve shed the need for expensive, cumbersome hardware and can roll ahead with your business.

What could be more convenient? The resources simply scale along with demand, you pay for that demand as it happens, and outside of your maintenance of the core business applications, you can sit back and relax.

Right?

According to CTO and founder of the cloud management firm Rightscale, Thorsten von Eicken, a former colleague of AWS chief Werner Vogels,  this assumption is part of what sparked some of the trouble for those who had their business lifeblood in the cloud. Those guarantees and assurances backing any cloud computing outlet were as good as gold, weren’t they?

Following the initial Amazon Web Services outage, von Eicken wrote that although many customers were able to resort to a solid “Plan B” in the case of an outage, some were not adequately prepared for such an event. He claims that “because of Amazon’s reliability has been incredible, many users were not well-prepared leading to widespread outages. Additionally, some users got caught by unforeseen failure modes rendering their failure plans ineffective.”

So is this to say that if you experienced extensive, damaging outages and data loss the burden ultimately falls on you due to lack of disaster recovery plans? Not necessarily. However, what Von Eicken and other notable experts on the cloud movement suggest is that there might have been some over-confidence in Amazon’s ability to take care of everything. That aside, one has to wonder if even AWS as a whole had been a little too confident.

Now let’s go back to the scenario with you at helm from before. You’ve prepared yourself in any way you thought was necessary or appropriate given Amazon’s very solid track record of performance and uptime, the extensive service level agreements (SLAs) and their several success stories of mission-critical cloud operations.

Nonetheless, you woke up this morning (if you were lucky enough to sleep following the outage) to the following message that Amazon sent out to some of its customers today:

Hello,
 
A few days ago we sent you an email letting you know that we were working on recovering an inconsistent data snapshot of one or more of your Amazon EBS volumes.  We are very sorry, but ultimately our efforts to manually recover your volume were unsuccessful.  The hardware failed in such a way that we could not forensically restore the data.
 
What we were able to recover has been made available via a snapshot, although the data is in such a state that it may have little to no utility…
 
If you have no need for this snapshot, please delete it to avoid incurring storage charges.
 
We apologize for this volume loss and any impact to your business.

Sincerely,

Amazon Web Services, EBS Support

This message was produced and distributed by Amazon Web Services LLC, 410 Terry Avenue North, Seattle, Washington 98109-5210

You read this a few times. It doesn’t really sink in at first since after all, wasn’t everything protected under, like 50 layers of different protection and duplication efforts on Amazon’s side?

You see key phrases and nothing else… “failed in such a way that we could not forensically restore the data…”

“..data is in such a state that it may have little to no utlilty…”

And your favorite line of all after you’ve had a few moments to really think about it:

 “If you have no need for this snapshot, please delete it to avoid incurring storage charges…”

At these lines, you cock a brow over your left eye, which started twitching occasionally a few days ago in the wake of the outage and now appears to be possessed.

Seriously?… This apologetic letter about your complete and total loss of my data and you’re warning me that I am going to be incurring storage charges?

(insert select profanities here)

While certainly Amazon could have massaged this message, lending a spoonful of sugar for such medicine, this is not the only way that communication has played a significant role in the increasingly bad press the normally stable infrastructure provider is receiving today.

As von Eicken noted of the initial outage, Amazon receives an “F” for its ability to effectively communicate with users throughout the first signs of trouble. Many are now claiming that failure extends to the data loss matter at hand now. At a time like this, however, good communication is needed more than ever—it seems that either they have no idea of the extent and cause of the loss or they are afraid to let people know how bad it is and how far it extends. Either way, this does not bode well for the company as it has opened the door to a bumrush of negative speculation.

The problem is, in Amazon’s defense, this is the first major problem with multiple, compounding failures that it has ever experienced. There have been latencies and delays in select zones in the past but nothing on this level—not even close to it.

In addition to opening the door for widespread criticism and speculation, it has also allowed competitors (not to mention the six or more backup/recovery companies that are rapid-firing press, barely able to contain their excitement over this outage and loss) to claim dominance—to state that they are immune from such disasters.

But we all know, no one is immune. If Amazon suffers this type of problem, Rackspace could suffer the same issue. If Rackspace trips momentarily, so could Microsoft’s services.

And the point that no one brings up here is that this same problem—and worse—could happen in your very own data center if you chose not to hop on the cloud bandwagon. And it could be far more destructive and expensive.

We’ll spare Amazon for a moment and say that this was written in haste. After all, they have been raked over the coals since news of sporadic data destruction broke…and broke in a very public way.

Just as cloud computing hit the mainstream media outlets in a big way over the past year, so too did news of the problems that could arise when you push your core business into the ether.

The announcement today that data was not only lost or temporarily unavailable—that instead it was actually destroyed—certainly doesn’t bode well for the future of mission critical applications being exclusively hosted on cloud computing infrastructure. It is unfortunate for IaaS providers that this should happen right at that much-anticipated golden moment of growing comfort with cloud computing, but perhaps we should consider this event in light of a few points that major media outlets aren’t talking about.

By the way, the media that I’ve encountered this morning paints the picture of what happened with the Amazon cloud in some rather black and white terms. Mainstream outlets necessarily be condemned for this however—after all, it’s not easy to come up with live news that is approachable for the folks that just a few months ago learned that clouds were more than just the puff upstairs while still painting a picture of the outage that is technically dense and thus in better context.

With that said, the media really doesn’t have a leg to stand (nor does anyone else at this point) when Amazon has been (notoriously) uncommunicative about what actually happened. Aside from sporadic updates following the initial outage and some updates that were dense but not necessarily revealing, the public, not to mention the users whose data may have been chewed up, are in the dark.

If an infrastructure provider of any size has a problem like this, the first item on the agenda should be communication. This not only protects them from wild speculation across media outlets, but it also protects the very notion of the cloud as a reasonable solution for everyone—no matter who they choose to rent hardware from.

Subscribe to HPCwire's Weekly Update!

Be the most informed person in the room! Stay ahead of the tech trends with industry updates delivered to you every week!

MLPerf Inference 4.0 Results Showcase GenAI; Nvidia Still Dominates

March 28, 2024

There were no startling surprises in the latest MLPerf Inference benchmark (4.0) results released yesterday. Two new workloads — Llama 2 and Stable Diffusion XL — were added to the benchmark suite as MLPerf continues Read more…

Q&A with Nvidia’s Chief of DGX Systems on the DGX-GB200 Rack-scale System

March 27, 2024

Pictures of Nvidia's new flagship mega-server, the DGX GB200, on the GTC show floor got favorable reactions on social media for the sheer amount of computing power it brings to artificial intelligence.  Nvidia's DGX Read more…

Call for Participation in Workshop on Potential NSF CISE Quantum Initiative

March 26, 2024

Editor’s Note: Next month there will be a workshop to discuss what a quantum initiative led by NSF’s Computer, Information Science and Engineering (CISE) directorate could entail. The details are posted below in a Ca Read more…

Waseda U. Researchers Reports New Quantum Algorithm for Speeding Optimization

March 25, 2024

Optimization problems cover a wide range of applications and are often cited as good candidates for quantum computing. However, the execution time for constrained combinatorial optimization applications on quantum device Read more…

NVLink: Faster Interconnects and Switches to Help Relieve Data Bottlenecks

March 25, 2024

Nvidia’s new Blackwell architecture may have stolen the show this week at the GPU Technology Conference in San Jose, California. But an emerging bottleneck at the network layer threatens to make bigger and brawnier pro Read more…

Who is David Blackwell?

March 22, 2024

During GTC24, co-founder and president of NVIDIA Jensen Huang unveiled the Blackwell GPU. This GPU itself is heavily optimized for AI work, boasting 192GB of HBM3E memory as well as the the ability to train 1 trillion pa Read more…

MLPerf Inference 4.0 Results Showcase GenAI; Nvidia Still Dominates

March 28, 2024

There were no startling surprises in the latest MLPerf Inference benchmark (4.0) results released yesterday. Two new workloads — Llama 2 and Stable Diffusion Read more…

Q&A with Nvidia’s Chief of DGX Systems on the DGX-GB200 Rack-scale System

March 27, 2024

Pictures of Nvidia's new flagship mega-server, the DGX GB200, on the GTC show floor got favorable reactions on social media for the sheer amount of computing po Read more…

NVLink: Faster Interconnects and Switches to Help Relieve Data Bottlenecks

March 25, 2024

Nvidia’s new Blackwell architecture may have stolen the show this week at the GPU Technology Conference in San Jose, California. But an emerging bottleneck at Read more…

Who is David Blackwell?

March 22, 2024

During GTC24, co-founder and president of NVIDIA Jensen Huang unveiled the Blackwell GPU. This GPU itself is heavily optimized for AI work, boasting 192GB of HB Read more…

Nvidia Looks to Accelerate GenAI Adoption with NIM

March 19, 2024

Today at the GPU Technology Conference, Nvidia launched a new offering aimed at helping customers quickly deploy their generative AI applications in a secure, s Read more…

The Generative AI Future Is Now, Nvidia’s Huang Says

March 19, 2024

We are in the early days of a transformative shift in how business gets done thanks to the advent of generative AI, according to Nvidia CEO and cofounder Jensen Read more…

Nvidia’s New Blackwell GPU Can Train AI Models with Trillions of Parameters

March 18, 2024

Nvidia's latest and fastest GPU, codenamed Blackwell, is here and will underpin the company's AI plans this year. The chip offers performance improvements from Read more…

Nvidia Showcases Quantum Cloud, Expanding Quantum Portfolio at GTC24

March 18, 2024

Nvidia’s barrage of quantum news at GTC24 this week includes new products, signature collaborations, and a new Nvidia Quantum Cloud for quantum developers. Wh Read more…

Alibaba Shuts Down its Quantum Computing Effort

November 30, 2023

In case you missed it, China’s e-commerce giant Alibaba has shut down its quantum computing research effort. It’s not entirely clear what drove the change. Read more…

Nvidia H100: Are 550,000 GPUs Enough for This Year?

August 17, 2023

The GPU Squeeze continues to place a premium on Nvidia H100 GPUs. In a recent Financial Times article, Nvidia reports that it expects to ship 550,000 of its lat Read more…

Shutterstock 1285747942

AMD’s Horsepower-packed MI300X GPU Beats Nvidia’s Upcoming H200

December 7, 2023

AMD and Nvidia are locked in an AI performance battle – much like the gaming GPU performance clash the companies have waged for decades. AMD has claimed it Read more…

DoD Takes a Long View of Quantum Computing

December 19, 2023

Given the large sums tied to expensive weapon systems – think $100-million-plus per F-35 fighter – it’s easy to forget the U.S. Department of Defense is a Read more…

Synopsys Eats Ansys: Does HPC Get Indigestion?

February 8, 2024

Recently, it was announced that Synopsys is buying HPC tool developer Ansys. Started in Pittsburgh, Pa., in 1970 as Swanson Analysis Systems, Inc. (SASI) by John Swanson (and eventually renamed), Ansys serves the CAE (Computer Aided Engineering)/multiphysics engineering simulation market. Read more…

Choosing the Right GPU for LLM Inference and Training

December 11, 2023

Accelerating the training and inference processes of deep learning models is crucial for unleashing their true potential and NVIDIA GPUs have emerged as a game- Read more…

Intel’s Server and PC Chip Development Will Blur After 2025

January 15, 2024

Intel's dealing with much more than chip rivals breathing down its neck; it is simultaneously integrating a bevy of new technologies such as chiplets, artificia Read more…

Baidu Exits Quantum, Closely Following Alibaba’s Earlier Move

January 5, 2024

Reuters reported this week that Baidu, China’s giant e-commerce and services provider, is exiting the quantum computing development arena. Reuters reported � Read more…

Leading Solution Providers

Contributors

Comparing NVIDIA A100 and NVIDIA L40S: Which GPU is Ideal for AI and Graphics-Intensive Workloads?

October 30, 2023

With long lead times for the NVIDIA H100 and A100 GPUs, many organizations are looking at the new NVIDIA L40S GPU, which it’s a new GPU optimized for AI and g Read more…

Shutterstock 1179408610

Google Addresses the Mysteries of Its Hypercomputer 

December 28, 2023

When Google launched its Hypercomputer earlier this month (December 2023), the first reaction was, "Say what?" It turns out that the Hypercomputer is Google's t Read more…

AMD MI3000A

How AMD May Get Across the CUDA Moat

October 5, 2023

When discussing GenAI, the term "GPU" almost always enters the conversation and the topic often moves toward performance and access. Interestingly, the word "GPU" is assumed to mean "Nvidia" products. (As an aside, the popular Nvidia hardware used in GenAI are not technically... Read more…

Shutterstock 1606064203

Meta’s Zuckerberg Puts Its AI Future in the Hands of 600,000 GPUs

January 25, 2024

In under two minutes, Meta's CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, laid out the company's AI plans, which included a plan to build an artificial intelligence system with the eq Read more…

Google Introduces ‘Hypercomputer’ to Its AI Infrastructure

December 11, 2023

Google ran out of monikers to describe its new AI system released on December 7. Supercomputer perhaps wasn't an apt description, so it settled on Hypercomputer Read more…

China Is All In on a RISC-V Future

January 8, 2024

The state of RISC-V in China was discussed in a recent report released by the Jamestown Foundation, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank. The report, entitled "E Read more…

Intel Won’t Have a Xeon Max Chip with New Emerald Rapids CPU

December 14, 2023

As expected, Intel officially announced its 5th generation Xeon server chips codenamed Emerald Rapids at an event in New York City, where the focus was really o Read more…

IBM Quantum Summit: Two New QPUs, Upgraded Qiskit, 10-year Roadmap and More

December 4, 2023

IBM kicks off its annual Quantum Summit today and will announce a broad range of advances including its much-anticipated 1121-qubit Condor QPU, a smaller 133-qu Read more…

  • arrow
  • Click Here for More Headlines
  • arrow
HPCwire