I recently posted about datastore multihoming, which I’ve been working on for a while now, on the App Engine blog. The post is similar to the Transactions Across Datacenters talk I gave at Google I/O earlier this year, but it has much more detail on how we’re applying those lessons to the datastore itself.
When I was at PDC last year for Microsoft’s Windows Azure announcement, one of my strongest impressions was how much “under the hood” information there was. A number of talks went deep into Azure’s internal design decisions and implementation. As I described at the time:
The internal details on how Azure works were particularly compelling. Developers may not need that information to write Azure services, but providing it drastically increases their confidence and comfort level in the system.
Other developers at PDC mentioned this, and I also felt it personally, at a gut level, long before I identified what it was. My reactions to “how to” talks varied widely, but every time I went to an “under the covers” talk, Azure felt more and more solid.
In the same vein, I’m proud that we’ve made such a concerted effort to be transparent about App Engine’s inner workings. This datastore multihoming blog post is definitely part of that trend.
Happily, reception seems to be positive so far. Fingers crossed!
You’ve got mail:
http://groups.google.com/group/google-appengine/browse_thread/thread/f61b29eb7e29d156
It would help transparency if you, you know, read your own discussion groups where us lowly developers – your customers – hang out.
thanks for the ping. i’ve replied on that thread.
good to know about the working details. thx pal
I just read your article on multi-homing the app engine datastore. This is an amazing piece of technology. I think people even working in the tech industry are underestimating what is you are providing with app engine. Data replication this level is unbelievably hard to do. This is industry changing technology.
thanks! i’ve actually been reading your blog for a while, and i know you’re well aware of the challenges involved in this stuff, e.g. your work on non-blocking i/o, so i definitely appreciate the kind words.
Been awhile since I’ve spent much time working on my proxy server. Wish there were more hours in the day. So many interesting things to do, not enough time.