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Fly.io Postgres cluster down for 3 days, no word from them about it

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797 points burnerbob | 8 comments | 20 Jul 23 23:42 UTC | HN request time: 1.342s | source | bottom
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throwaway220033 ◴[21 Jul 23 05:18 UTC] No.36810259[source]▶
The worst thing about Fly is, when something goes wrong, it's not just one thing, there's bunch of things broken at the same time and their status page will show everything green.

Their typical response is either silence or so casual ("oh this is what happens we deploy on friday"). The product looks amazing but it's just a nice package around the most unreliable hosting service I've ever used.

You can't just keep breaking people's work every once a week, make them spend their weekend nights trying to bring back their stuff, and give these "we could have done better" answers. This is an excuse for exceptions, not patterns.

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1. stephenr ◴[21 Jul 23 09:26 UTC] No.36811783[source]▶
> when something goes wrong, it's not just one thing, there's bunch of things broken at the same time and their status page will show everything green

How dare they use AWS' patented approach to having a service outage.

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2. gtirloni ◴[21 Jul 23 11:29 UTC] No.36812560[source]▶
Was that an attempt to discredit criticism of Fly's operational processes by pointing out that another company also has issues in how they handle outage notifications?
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3. gtirloni ◴[21 Jul 23 11:44 UTC] No.36812683{3}[source]▶
Was the sarcasm an attempt to discredit criticism of Fly's operational processes by pointing out that another company also has issues in how they handle outage notifications?
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4. stephenr ◴[21 Jul 23 13:23 UTC] No.36813452{4}[source]▶
You could have just answered my previous question with "No, I am not familiar with sarcasm".

Because you clearly don't understand sarcasm, I'll be blunt:

No, I'm not trying to discredit any criticism of this provider. I agree with the comment I replied to, that this kind of failure mode is fucking ridiculous. My response thus is not an attempt to normalise this, but to highlight the elephant in the room, which is that AWS - the gold standard for "hosting" services for many a startup and techbro - *also* has Rube Goldberg like levels of interdependence that cause cascading failures *every time* something goes wrong, and *also* have a status board so confidently green that it may as well be an ad for lawn care products.

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5. gtirloni ◴[21 Jul 23 14:27 UTC] No.36814196{5}[source]▶
Thanks for clarifying. I understand now you wanted to call attention to the fact that another famous organization in the same space as Fly.io also has such bad practices. Thanks for the data point.
6. ctvo ◴[21 Jul 23 14:39 UTC] No.36814346[source]▶
I wouldn’t put AWS and Fly in the same sentence. AWS is magnitudes more reliable, with better support.
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7. stephenr ◴[21 Jul 23 14:41 UTC] No.36814367[source]▶
I didn't mention how often they fail.

I merely mentioned two characteristics of how they fail, that are spectacularly shit.

8. CryptoBanker ◴[21 Jul 23 16:09 UTC] No.36815566{5}[source]▶
I don’t think you understand the comment you’re replying to at all. Either that or you’re trying to deflect even further