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Cloud Time

To Release, and Everything After

June 28, 2010

www.geocities.com/robbi01/creation.html

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GREAT BUSINESS, BUT INSURMOUNTABLE TECHNICAL CHALLENGES TO MOVING FORWARD

Sources: http://icanhascheezburger.com/

• How do we budget and plan

hardware growth?

• How will we handle peak

loads?

• How can we control costs as

we grow?

• How can we get / keep a

robust web offering?

• What do we do if our growth is

500% of what we’re planning?

(or 50%)?

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THE SOLUTION: “CLOUD COMPUTING”

• Cloud Computing doesn’t really look like

anything -- here’s why it matters

– Planning - no more HW or hosting center

budgeting, purchasing, installation, or support!

– Scalability - instant scalability!

– Cost

• only buy capacity when we need it

• demos and new projects - interim hardware

• zero-cost software stack

– Stability

– Flexibility

• Need a server = get a server: $0.10 / hour

• Need a GB = get a GB: $0.15/GB/month

“Cloud” Computing

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COULD THE CLOUD WORK FOR YOU? HERE’S WHAT WE HAD TO CONSIDER

– Platform

• Need open LAMP-like stack (Ruby on Rails, for us)

• Easier with open source tools and technologies

• Build your platform, then save / clone your image

– Administration

• UNIX admin skills

• Terrific Amazon toolkit for managing your environment - but

– Still have to manage your own scalability

• Uptime is generally GREAT, but

– Still need to be able to “Roll Your Own” backup

– Community

• Big, active tech community

• Not a lot of books yet

• Lots of online materials

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PIECES / PARTS -- AWS, Ubuntu, Rails, Ruby, MySQL, Nginx, Thin, God

Ubuntu (7.10)

MySQL (5.0.45)

Ruby (1.8.6 patch 111)

Rails (2.0.2)

Thin

Nginx Nginx Nginx

Thin Thin

sudo /usr/local/nginx/sbin/nginx -c config/nginx.conf

thin start --server 3 --socket /tmp/thin.sock

upstream backend { server unix:/tmp/thin.0.sock;

server unix:/tmp/thin.1.sock;

server unix:/tmp/thin.2.sock; }

...

...

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PUT IT ALL TOGETHER, AND WHAT DO YOU GET?

The Platform Evolution Gave Us Richer Code Faster

These are just

snippets, but

indicative of the

larger picture

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WHAT IT MEANT FOR US

• PLANNING...

– Hardware:

• EC2 = NO NEW SERVERS!

• Instantaneous Capacity

– Test platform

– Demo platform

– Want to experiment with parallel, scalable architectures - No Problem!

• Painless cutover

– Storage:

• S3 = Economical Backup

• Ability to take on business we declined in the past

• Easy backup and proven recovery for all digital assets

– Asynchronous messaging and flexible data architectures

• SQS in evaluation

• SimpleDB in evaluation

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WHAT IT MEANT FOR US

• ...AND DELIVERY

– “Hardware”

• We started with a single small server on EC2

• Ran up a $2.40 bill determining if it would work for us

– “Storage”

• Regular nightly backups to S3, plus infinite capacity for growth

– This is the future of scalable web offerings

– “Lock-in” through value delivery rather than proprietary rat-hole

• KEY consideration in the event of an acquisition

“The Cloud” Changed How We Plan, Deliver, and Roadmap Offerings

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AWESOME PRODUCT INTRODUCTION...

• TERRIFIC!

– Strong Sales demonstrations, starting Mid-May

– Trade Show Launch June 3

– Limited set of customer requests from the launch

• AND SO, THE CLOUD GAVE US....

– Code Complete

– QA Complete

– Sales Kit and Demos

– Great Introduction....

Everything Was Ready For Rollout -- What Could Possibly Go Wrong?

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AND RELEASE ???

• On Friday, June 6 all that was left was a thin clipboard of action items preceding

release

• So, How Did Friday, June 6, 2008 Go?????

On 06/06/2008 at 0643 hours, I was contacted by Corp. Vaughn. He advised

patrol was requesting a traffic unit respond to 119th and Mission Rd. He

advised a truck had hit a pedalcyclist. The pedalcyclist had been

severely injured. The injuries were possibly life

threatening.

I responded and arrived at 0650 hours. Upon my arrival I contacted MPO

Farris, who was the ranking officer on scene.

MPO Farris and Officer Couturier advised me that V1 (2003 Chevrolet C/K

1500) had been eastbound on 119th St. approaching Mission Rd. D1, Fred

Kipp, reported to them that as he approached the intersection the light

was green. He could not say if it was a round green light or a green

arrow. He had moved into the left turn lane. He made a left turn from

119th St. to Mission Rd. As he was in the turn he struck P2

(Pedalcyclist John Repko), who had been westbound on 119th St.

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RELEASE ... FINALLY (December, 2008), AND HOW WE GOT THERE

• We didn’t ship “Version 1.0” -- We went right on to “Version 2.0”

– Added in all the “Want to Haves”

– Added in all the requests from the Introduction

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LESSONS LEARNED

“That last inch of nice-to-haves costs about a mile...”

“Fiddle” == DEATH

The Final Words

Thoreau: “If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them.”

Jamie Zawinski: "A 50%-good solution that people actually have solves more problems and survives longer than a 99% solution that nobody has because it’s in your lab where you’re endlessly polishing the damn thing. Shipping is a feature. A really important feature. Your

product must have it."

QUESTIONS?