Top all-time · #1687
Randy Bias
Personal blog · cloudscaling.comsystemsprogramming
Randy Bias writes Cloudscaling, a personal blog at cloudscaling.com about systems and programming. Since 2009, 46 different Hacker News readers have linked it 51 times, most often “Pets vs. Cattle and How to Use the Analogy Properly (2016)”. The last post was in 2017, but the archive is still widely read.
Cloudscaling is the blog of Randy Bias
Most-linked posts?
- Pets vs. Cattle and How to Use the Analogy Properly (2016)12 people · 12 mentions · first linked 2016-10-03
- The History of Pets vs Cattle and How to Use the Analogy Properly8 people · 9 mentions · first linked 2020-01-20
- Will Containers Replace Hypervisors? Almost Certainly5 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2016-05-22
- Netflix's Advice on Moving to Amazon Web Services3 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2010-11-23
- EC2 estimates: 40k servers, 220M+ revenue3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2009-10-01
- Continuous Delusion at the Infrastructure Layer2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2017-02-26
What Hacker News says?
No, all good, this is super useful - if you're thinking about this, then it matters to us! Our philosophy is built on the "cattle, not pets" [0] and 12-factor [1] app methodologies. To some extent, the Disco server itself should be treated as disposable. Disco runs your applications, which are just deployments of your code (ie git pulls). There's nothing on the server itself to back up. If a server were to die, you'…
Comment linking /blog/cloud-computing/the-history-of-pets-vs-cattle/
on “Replacing a $3000/mo Heroku bill with a $55/mo server”Submitted Netflix's Advice on Moving to Amazon Web Services as a story · 46 points
HN discussion"In the old way of doing things, we treat our servers like pets, for example Bob the mail server. If Bob goes down, it’s all hands on deck. The CEO can’t get his email and it’s the end of the world. In the new way, servers are numbered, like cattle in a herd. For example, www001 to www100. When one server goes down, it’s taken out back, shot, and replaced on the line." http://cloudscaling.com/blog/cloud-computing/th…
Comment linking /blog/cloud-computing/the-history-of-pets-vs-cattle/
on “Google Kubernetes Engine is introducing a cluster management fee on June 6”Submitted “Vanilla OpenStack” Doesn’t Exist and Never Will as a story · 17 points
HN discussionRandy Bias also claims authorship https://cloudscaling.com/blog/cloud-computing/the-history-of... this tweet by Tim Bell seems to indicate shared credit with Bill Baker and Randy Bias https://x.com/noggin143/status/354666097691205633 @randybias @dberkholz CERN's presentation of pets and cattle was derived from Randy's (and Bill Baker's previously).
Comment linking /blog/cloud-computing/the-history-of-pets-vs-cattle/
on “AI is a floor raiser, not a ceiling raiser”Submitted EC2 estimates: 40k servers, 220M+ revenue as a story · 9 points
HN discussionI’m guessing this is a techie reference. Computer servers can be divided into two roles in modern technical architectures… they are either “cattle” or “pets”. Pets are computer servers that have names and are always up. Cattle are servers that are transient, spun up and down as needed and do not necessarily have any long running identity/name as a component of a larger system. http://cloudscaling.com/blog/cloud-comp…
Comment linking /blog/cloud-computing/the-history-of-pets-vs-cattle/
on “Building a rocket engine from scratch”Submitted Netflix AWS Strategy Reflects Google Philosophy (interview w/ Adrian Cockcroft) as a story · 8 points
HN discussionI'd suggest looking at ScaleIO from EMC which is free for unsupported use I believe. It is blazing fast, runs on bog standard Linux, and supports K8S and Cinder. It's the most impressive block storage product for high performance I've seen. http://cloudscaling.com/blog/cloud-computing/killing-the-sto...
Comment linking /blog/cloud-computing/killing-the-storage-unicorn-purpose-built-scaleio-spanks-multi-purpose-ceph-on-performance/
on “ClusterHQ is shutting down”Submitted AWS Rebooting 100s or 1000s of EC2 Instances for Security Update as a story · 6 points
HN discussionPets vs cattle: https://cloudscaling.com/blog/cloud-computing/the-history-of...
Comment linking /blog/cloud-computing/the-history-of-pets-vs-cattle/
on “A configuration management system for computers that are pets, not cattle”Submitted OpenStack’s Future Depends on Embracing Amazon as a story · 5 points
HN discussionThe original pet v cattle metaphor was indeed inspired by servers, not containers. http://cloudscaling.com/blog/cloud-computing/the-history-of-... What makes a given component – server, vm, container, whatever – is not the runtime, but how you deal with it when it gets seriously ill. Pets are taken to the vet or hospital to get treatment. Cattle are.. well, read the article I linked.
Comment linking /blog/cloud-computing/the-history-of-pets-vs-cattle/
on “Containers are tents”Submitted Pets vs. Cattle and How to Use the Analogy Properly (2016) as a story · 4 points
HN discussionWhy are we still building tools to hand manage VMs in 2021? Am I missing something or is this for raising pets instead of heading cattle[0]? 0. http://cloudscaling.com/blog/cloud-computing/the-history-of-...
Comment linking /blog/cloud-computing/the-history-of-pets-vs-cattle/
on “Zero-Trust RDP and SSH Access to VMs on Google Cloud”Submitted Understanding Cloud Datacenter Economies of Scale as a story · 4 points
HN discussionThis is coming from the perspective of someone working in platform engineering. The further down the stack you are, the more conservative (aka boring) you have to be, because the blast radius increases. Quoting another great post [0] on this: "The risk profile for infrastructure is different than the applications that run on top of that infrastructure." [0] http://cloudscaling.com/blog/devops/continuous-delusion-at-…
Comment linking /blog/devops/continuous-delusion-at-the-infrastructure-layer/
on “Make Boring Plans”Submitted Will Containers Replace Hypervisors? Almost Certainly as a story · 3 points
HN discussionhttps://cloudscaling.com/blog/cloud-computing/the-history-of...
Comment linking /blog/cloud-computing/the-history-of-pets-vs-cattle
on “Old school Linux administration – my next homelab generation”Submitted AWS Dedicated Instances, Hypervisor Security, and Multi-tenancy as a story · 3 points
HN discussionPet's vs cattle is an analogy that originated with English-speakers. http://cloudscaling.com/blog/cloud-computing/the-history-of-...
Comment linking /blog/cloud-computing/the-history-of-pets-vs-cattle/
on “Available on Google Cloud: Intel Optane DC Persistent Memory”Submitted Pets vs. Cattle and How to Use the Analogy Properly as a story · 2 points
HN discussionMore on where "pets vs cattle" comes from: http://cloudscaling.com/blog/cloud-computing/the-history-of-...
Comment linking /blog/cloud-computing/the-history-of-pets-vs-cattle/
on “Chrome OS has stalled out”Submitted The History of Pets vs Cattle and How to Use the Analogy Properly as a story · 2 points
HN discussionVery different experience with AWS/OpenStack/running our own here. We indeed had a largish AWS bill ~50k/month. Decided to move dev/test in house into an OpenStack cluster I built with the help of Mirantis/FuelWeb. Decent experience standing up the cluster but spurts of trouble thereafter. No real win with anything API-like at all with OpenStack. Feels half-baked. Getting help is damn near impossible. Meanwhile in A…
Comment linking /blog/cloud-computing/openstack-aws/
on “Libcloud: One Interface To Rule Them All”Submitted Pets vs. Cattle and How to Use the Analogy Properly as a story · 2 points
HN discussionAmazon is expanding their EC2 feature set so rapidly... The pace is mind blowing to me. Last year, Randy Bias estimated EC2 was pulling $220M revenue/yr: http://cloudscaling.com/blog/cloud-computing/amazons-ec2-gen... And he estimated an overly conservative 10-20% annual growth. But given the EC2 buzz this year, and personal anecdotes from my friends and colleagues using it, my gut feeling tells me the 2010 revenues…
Comment linking /blog/cloud-computing/amazons-ec2-generating-220m-annually
on “New EC2 Instance Type - The Cluster GPU Instance”Submitted Pets vs. Cattle and How to Use the Analogy (2016) as a story · 2 points
HN discussionTo extend the analogy, I'm reminded of the pets vs cattle debate in the context of managing computer systems, and how that distinction continues to shake out. I suspect that as personal computing moves toward cloud computing, following businesses, we will see tension between local-first AI solutions and cloud AI products. Seeing as how the same megacorps that build personal computer pets and pet products are buildin…
Comment linking /blog/cloud-computing/the-history-of-pets-vs-cattle/
on “AI won't replace human devs anytime soon”Submitted Will Containers Replace Hypervisors? Almost Certainly as a story · 2 points
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