Thoughts on AWS Elasticache multi-AZ ?

[Marc Byrd]

Any thoughts, info, experience with this?

http://aws.amazon.com/about-aws/whats-new/2014/10/24/aws-elasticache-redis-multi-az/?sc_ichannel=ha&sc_icountry=en&sc_icampaign=ha_ed_elasticache_redis_multi_az&sc_icontent=ha_297&sc_idetail=ha_en_297_1&sc_iplace=ha_en_ed&sc_isegment=3&/

Are they using sentinel?  redis-cluster?

m

[Josiah Carlson]

The blog post about the feature makes me think that it's Redis Sentinel as there is no discussion about sharding, different operations, etc.

Incidentally, Jeff Barr's blog post about the addition includes something incorrect near the end, "The Multi-AZ support in ElastiCache for Redis currently makes use of the asynchronous replication that is built in to newer versions (2.8.6 and beyond) of the Redis engine." Asynchronous replication has been in Redis since before I started using it (version 1.2.4), maybe they misspoke and they really meant that they only allow replication when you choose version 2.8.6 and later.

 - Josiah

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[Josiah Carlson]

P.S. If you want to pay someone to run Redis for you in AWS, there are better providers for that service than Amazon (better performance, comparable or better pricing, ...).

[Marc Byrd]

It would be useful to get recommendations for other better redis-as-a-service providers in AWS, especially any that provide sentinel or cluster support, or even consistent hashing (or transparency to such things).  

Thanks,

m

[Josiah Carlson]

Feature matrices are always biased in favor of the provider hosting the matrix, but I would point you to https://redislabs.com/redis-comparison . Check features, compare pricing, and make an educated decision. :)

 - Josiah

[Michel Martens]

On Thu, Oct 30, 2014 at 6:18 AM, Josiah Carlson
<josiah....@gmail.com> wrote:
> Feature matrices are always biased in favor of the provider hosting the
> matrix, but I would point you to https://redislabs.com/redis-comparison .
> Check features, compare pricing, and make an educated decision. :)

I kept this issue out of the mailing list and the community in
general, and I plan to continue doing so, but I just want to clarify
some points: first, that table is not accurate, but it's something
that I have discussed in private with them. Second, I think this is
not the right place to send these kinds of recommendations; this is a
community mailing list and it should be free of advertisements. Third,
if you do send a recommendation, you should disclose your ties with
the company you are recommending.

[Josiah Carlson]

On Thu, Oct 30, 2014 at 12:24 AM, Michel Martens <sov...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Thu, Oct 30, 2014 at 6:18 AM, Josiah Carlson
<josiah....@gmail.com> wrote:
> Feature matrices are always biased in favor of the provider hosting the
> matrix, but I would point you to https://redislabs.com/redis-comparison .
> Check features, compare pricing, and make an educated decision. :)

I kept this issue out of the mailing list and the community in
general, and I plan to continue doing so, but I just want to clarify
some points: first, that table is not accurate, but it's something
that I have discussed in private with them.

If you believe that the posted feature matrix is incorrect, why not post your corrected version?

 

Second, I think this is
not the right place to send these kinds of recommendations; this is a
community mailing list and it should be free of advertisements

A recommendation is different from an advertisement. Generally speaking, a recommendation is not compensated, but an advertisement is compensated.

To the point: no one has ever provided me any compensation for recommending or advertising any service on this list, or anywhere else for that matter. Additionally, not only did I *not* advertise or recommend a service, I explicitly recommended that people read about and compare features, compare pricing, and make an educated choice - for themselves.

It also so happens that I am in direct email contact with Marc Byrd off-list about Redis, so if I actually wanted to make a direct recommendation about Redis hosting, I would have directly emailed him that recommendation. Instead, because it's the closest thing to a single place for "provider X has features Y", I linked to the Redis Labs feature matrix. If there had been a Wikipedia entry, competing feature matrices from other companies, etc., I would have linked them*. There weren't, so I did the best with what was available.

* My wife is a front-end designer and developer for a company is in the SaaS telephony field. Of the dozen+ competitor sites that she has asked me to look at over the years, every one of them has a feature matrix that included competitors. That no other Redis SaaS hosting providers have a feature matrix surprises me; it is the single most obvious and direct way to help distinguish your product from other offerings.

Third,
if you do send a recommendation, you should disclose your ties with
the company you are recommending.

I didn't make a recommendation of any company (except to say that AWS' offerings are sub-par compared with some others), but because you seem to be implying that I did recommend Redis Labs and that I am getting paid for it, let me respond to that implied conflict of interest accusation directly: I have not, nor have I ever been employed or offered any sort of compensation by any company that provides SaaS Redis hosting. That includes, but is not limited to, Redis Labs (or by its previous name of Garantia Data), OpenRedis, Redis Green, Redis to go, Amazon (AWS), and Microsoft (Azure cloud).

But really, that sounds reasonably fair. Though while waving your hands around implying that I recommended a company's services, you seem to have forgotten to disclose the fact that you are the founder of one of these aforementioned Redis service providers. But I'm sure that had nothing to do with why you replied, and you are just another Redis enthusiast that wants this mailing list to be free from advertisements.

Regards,

 - Josiah

[Michel Martens]

On Thu, Oct 30, 2014 at 9:34 PM, Josiah Carlson
<josiah....@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On Thu, Oct 30, 2014 at 12:24 AM, Michel Martens <sov...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> On Thu, Oct 30, 2014 at 6:18 AM, Josiah Carlson
>> <josiah....@gmail.com> wrote:
>> > Feature matrices are always biased in favor of the provider hosting the
>> > matrix, but I would point you to https://redislabs.com/redis-comparison
>> > .
>> > Check features, compare pricing, and make an educated decision. :)
>>
>> I kept this issue out of the mailing list and the community in
>> general, and I plan to continue doing so, but I just want to clarify
>> some points: first, that table is not accurate, but it's something
>> that I have discussed in private with them.
>
>
> If you believe that the posted feature matrix is incorrect, why not post
> your corrected version?

It's a business practice that I don't agree with because it often
leads to disagreements and disputes. The legal status of comparative
advertisement changes from country to country
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparative_advertising#Legal_issues),
but in all cases it is subjected to some regulations to prevent
misleading advertising, one of the common outcomes of such practice.

>>
>> Second, I think this is
>> not the right place to send these kinds of recommendations; this is a
>> community mailing list and it should be free of advertisements
>
>
> A recommendation is different from an advertisement. Generally speaking, a
> recommendation is not compensated, but an advertisement is compensated.

I agree on the difference between a recommendation and advertisement,
but it's not possible to run a background check on people sending
recommendations to see if instead they are advertising. That's why the
policy has to prevent both cases, something that is sad, of course,
but it's also fair.

>> Third,
>> if you do send a recommendation, you should disclose your ties with
>> the company you are recommending.
>
>
> I didn't make a recommendation of any company (except to say that AWS'
> offerings are sub-par compared with some others), but because you seem to be
> implying that I did recommend Redis Labs and that I am getting paid for it,
> let me respond to that implied conflict of interest accusation directly: I
> have not, nor have I ever been employed or offered any sort of compensation
> by any company that provides SaaS Redis hosting. That includes, but is not
> limited to, Redis Labs (or by its previous name of Garantia Data),
> OpenRedis, Redis Green, Redis to go, Amazon (AWS), and Microsoft (Azure
> cloud).

It's just a guideline, and if you disclose you have no ties, that's good enough.

> But really, that sounds reasonably fair. Though while waving your hands
> around implying that I recommended a company's services, you seem to have
> forgotten to disclose the fact that you are the founder of one of these
> aforementioned Redis service providers. But I'm sure that had nothing to do
> with why you replied, and you are just another Redis enthusiast that wants
> this mailing list to be free from advertisements.

I'm a Redis enthusiast that wants this mailing list to be free from
advertisements. I'm also moderator of this mailing list, and that's
why I wanted to intervene. You are implying I did so for business
purposes, and that I should have disclosed where I work. But I kept my
message neutral and I didn't recommend anything, I just provided
general guidelines.

[Stefan Parvu]

> I'm a Redis enthusiast that wants this mailing list to be free from
> advertisements. I'm also moderator of this mailing list, and that's

From my side, as a new Redis user and enthusiast I think you are a bit over reacting.
There are no ads, commercial promotions or other things like in this mail thread.
In fact Josiah's email was strict to the point about the subject of the message. Redis is
used more and more on different cloud providers and some discussions will engage
about it. It is normal and healthy.

Even more it should be open to discuss features and advantages running Redis on
AWS or RedisLab or whatever else or how one would run a Redis installation across 20
nodes in OpenNebula or OpenStack. Maybe somebody could consider adding a new
page, under http://www.redis.io/documentation where we could store examples and notes
about this topic.

--
Stefan Parvu <spa...@systemdatarecorder.org>

[Salvatore Sanfilippo]

On Fri, Oct 31, 2014 at 9:30 AM, Michel Martens <sov...@gmail.com> wrote:

> I'm a Redis enthusiast that wants this mailing list to be free from
> advertisements.

Ok, let's take the above sentence as a reference, since I'm a Redis
enthusiast too, and want this ML free of advertising :-)
Clearly there is a tension between the ability to communicate
experiences, including which provider to use and which not, and at the
same time to take here a vendor-neutral environment.

Who knows me for quite some time probably noticed a pattern: even if
Pivotal is my sponsor and Pivotal+VMware (Pivotal is a VMware spinoff)
together contributed hugely at Redis for years, they are rarely
mentioned here even when a shameless plug would be ok. It is important
to take this environment a completely disinterested place I think, in
the interest of everybody. Maybe tomorrow I start a new Redis company.
I'm sure you would not be happy to see something like a bug report,
and later my shamess plug about how "Redis PRO Condor edition" fixes
it. So it is important to set the tone.

A few guidelines:

1) It is ok to say: I use RedisLabs for my instances, they have a good
service, or, I'use OpenRedis and the support is awesome, or I use AWS
and it's so great to have it well integrated with my other AWS
services, and so forth.
2) It is also ok to complain about vendors if you can *show proof* of
your claims, and in a very polite way.
3) However I would avoid to provide links to web sites that are
managed by Redis vendors. One thing is to link to an user-conducted
research about Redis services vendors, another is to link at vendor's
pages.

Btw comparison tables honestly suck. Take Redis vs other DBs, on a
comparison table is terrible because you can't capture the
performance, the API and data model, the stability, and so forth.
Comparison tables have some truth about certain features being
available or not, but the user knows if she/he needs something and is
not available in a given vendor.
In a managed Redis instance thing, the stress is in the *managed*. How
it is managed, well or not? And this is not captured very well by
comparison tables.

I think here there are a number of high profile Redis vendors, part of
our community for a lot of time, or having big names. You can pick
from Rackspace to AWS, from OpenRedis to RedisLabs, and I think you'll
hardly find a provider where people don't know what they are doing:
for sure not in my list above.

So if you have been an user of one of this service, and want to
express your experience, be free to do this. But to avoid linking to
providers web sites can be a simple rule to stay more neutral. However
I don't think we can completely ban those kind of discussions from the
ML.

Salvatore

--
Salvatore 'antirez' Sanfilippo
open source developer - GoPivotal
http://invece.org

"Fear makes the wolf bigger than he is."
— German proverb

[Stefan Parvu]

> So if you have been an user of one of this service, and want to
> express your experience, be free to do this. But to avoid linking to
> providers web sites can be a simple rule to stay more neutral. However
> I don't think we can completely ban those kind of discussions from the
> ML.

Good tips.

As always a bit better documentation can help and avoid extra noise. Would you
consider adding a new section under documentation page where people for example
can send their experiences and share technical details running Redis on AWS, etc in terms
of latency, memory & cpu usage ... in numbers. This page could be useful for people
thinking to take Redis to clouds.


--
Stefan Parvu <spa...@systemdatarecorder.org>

[Josiah Carlson]

On Fri, Oct 31, 2014 at 1:30 AM, Michel Martens <sov...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Thu, Oct 30, 2014 at 9:34 PM, Josiah Carlson
<josiah....@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On Thu, Oct 30, 2014 at 12:24 AM, Michel Martens <sov...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> On Thu, Oct 30, 2014 at 6:18 AM, Josiah Carlson
>> <josiah....@gmail.com> wrote:
>> > Feature matrices are always biased in favor of the provider hosting the
>> > matrix, but I would point you to https://redislabs.com/redis-comparison
>> > .
>> > Check features, compare pricing, and make an educated decision. :)
>>
>> I kept this issue out of the mailing list and the community in
>> general, and I plan to continue doing so, but I just want to clarify
>> some points: first, that table is not accurate, but it's something
>> that I have discussed in private with them.
>
>
> If you believe that the posted feature matrix is incorrect, why not post
> your corrected version?

It's a business practice that I don't agree with because it often
leads to disagreements and disputes. The legal status of comparative
advertisement changes from country to country
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparative_advertising#Legal_issues),
but in all cases it is subjected to some regulations to prevent
misleading advertising, one of the common outcomes of such practice.

When I first read this paragraph, my first thought was, "That is one of the silliest reasons for not properly marketing a product that I've ever heard." After consulting my MBA-holding CFO, he almost laughed himself out of his chair when I told him your excuse.

But really, the stated laws seem pretty clear in this regard: don't be disparaging, keep it positive, feature comparisons are generally fine. So let me help you on the way, because I really do think that your site is missing a truly meaningful and 100% correct feature comparison matrix to help you advance your product. What is the one killer feature that differentiates your high-end product from a Redis master + slave + sentinel setup?

Also, is your service hosted in AWS? Because you don't mention where it is hosted. If it is in AWS, then saying as much will bring more AWS customers to you. But if you aren't hosted in AWS, then you really should say so, because bandwidth out of AWS can be costly for some use-cases (analytics in particular, which is hugely write-heavy).

 

>>
>> Second, I think this is
>> not the right place to send these kinds of recommendations; this is a
>> community mailing list and it should be free of advertisements
>
>
> A recommendation is different from an advertisement. Generally speaking, a
> recommendation is not compensated, but an advertisement is compensated.

I agree on the difference between a recommendation and advertisement,
but it's not possible to run a background check on people sending
recommendations to see if instead they are advertising. That's why the
policy has to prevent both cases, something that is sad, of course,
but it's also fair.

Thankfully Salvatore clarified it for us: personal experience stories are fine.

It's just a guideline, and if you disclose you have no ties, that's good enough.

I stated what I did to make it clear to anyone and everyone involved that your implied claims were unfounded.

I also don't recognize your implied authority in the matter, for reasons that will become clear in a moment.

> But really, that sounds reasonably fair. Though while waving your hands
> around implying that I recommended a company's services, you seem to have
> forgotten to disclose the fact that you are the founder of one of these
> aforementioned Redis service providers. But I'm sure that had nothing to do
> with why you replied, and you are just another Redis enthusiast that wants
> this mailing list to be free from advertisements.

I'm a Redis enthusiast that wants this mailing list to be free from
advertisements. I'm also moderator of this mailing list, and that's
why I wanted to intervene. You are implying I did so for business
purposes, and that I should have disclosed where I work. But I kept my
message neutral and I didn't recommend anything, I just provided
general guidelines.

If you were a judge in an a courtroom, and you were being asked to decide on a case relating to Redis hosting providers, both the lawyers would bring this up as a conflict of interest. In many countries, if you decided to continue to head the trial, either party would have cause to file an appeal if the judgement were unfavorable to either party.

That you pointed a finger at me suggesting a conflict of interests (where there are literally none), but yet failed to even mention the fact that you *founded* a Redis hosting provider. Seriously? Why is this even a conversation, and why am I even involved?

This isn't world politics, this is the Redis mailing list. I have spent the last 4-4.5 years offering commercial-quality Redis support for free to any and all, and I will continue to do so in any way that *I* judge to be reasonable. If you (or anyone else) has a problem with that, or if you (or anyone else) has a problem with what I write here in the future, then I would ask that you bring it up privately with me so I can at least attempt to directly address your concerns instead of having things turn into a public shit show.

Regards,

 - Josiah

P.S. Thank you everyone for private words of support in this matter. Your emails were unexpected and unnecessary, but very much appreciated.

[Michel Martens]

I'd like to apologize for my participation in this thread. Even though
I still think there was some value in providing those guidelines, now
I see that it may be a view that's not shared by the rest of the
community.

On Fri, Oct 31, 2014 at 6:04 PM, Josiah Carlson

I understand why you may regard my decision as silly or laughable, but
I think it's just because we don't share the same world view. If I had
the opportunity to take all the market, I wouldn't do it, because I
love the fact that people that enjoy working with Redis can make a
living with it. In other words, I think there's room for everyone, and
I'm happy as long as I can keep working with what I love.

>> > But really, that sounds reasonably fair. Though while waving your hands
>> > around implying that I recommended a company's services, you seem to
>> > have
>> > forgotten to disclose the fact that you are the founder of one of these
>> > aforementioned Redis service providers. But I'm sure that had nothing to
>> > do
>> > with why you replied, and you are just another Redis enthusiast that
>> > wants
>> > this mailing list to be free from advertisements.
>>
>> I'm a Redis enthusiast that wants this mailing list to be free from
>> advertisements. I'm also moderator of this mailing list, and that's
>> why I wanted to intervene. You are implying I did so for business
>> purposes, and that I should have disclosed where I work. But I kept my
>> message neutral and I didn't recommend anything, I just provided
>> general guidelines.
>
>
> If you were a judge in an a courtroom, and you were being asked to decide on
> a case relating to Redis hosting providers, both the lawyers would bring
> this up as a conflict of interest. In many countries, if you decided to
> continue to head the trial, either party would have cause to file an appeal
> if the judgement were unfavorable to either party.
>
> That you pointed a finger at me suggesting a conflict of interests (where
> there are literally none), but yet failed to even mention the fact that you
> *founded* a Redis hosting provider. Seriously? Why is this even a
> conversation, and why am I even involved?

I'm sorry we can't find a solution for this, because I see it in a
very different light. My goal was to provide guidelines so that
_nobody_ could take advantage of this medium for business purposes,
myself included. The fact that you are enraged is a sign that I failed
at making my point clear, and I really wish you could understand my
intentions better. I take full blame of my inability to make myself
clear, and I apologize for causing you any problems.