Joyent Blog
joyeur.com · Company blog · on HN since 2007
Joyent's company blog covers cloud infrastructure, Node.js, and critiques of Amazon EC2 and Elastic Block Store.
What HN saysHN commenters cite its posts on why EBS abstractions fail, its HTTP Signature auth scheme, and Node.js on Windows.
33HN people shared it
10linked it in comments
31stories submitted
468story points
11 years agolast shared
2007people per year2026
Most-shared posts
- 1On Cascading Failures and Amazon's Elastic Block Store3 people · 53 points · first shared 2011 · 8 comments on HN
- 2Magical Block Store: Why EBS Can't Work2 people · 124 points · first shared 2011 · 53 comments on HN
- 3Joyent unveils HTTP Signature auth scheme for REST APIs2 people · 53 points · first shared 2012 · 10 comments on HN
- 4Why Amazon's EC2 isn't yet a platform for "normal" web applications2 people · 9 points · first shared 2007 · 1 comments on HN
- 5Joyent Slingshot: Allows you to port rails applications which converge between the web and the desktop2 people · 5 points · first shared 2007 · discussion on HN
- 6Joyent Partners with Microsoft to Port Node.js to Windows2 people · 2 points · first shared 2011 · discussion on HN
- 7Joyeur: Cloud Nine: Specification for a Cloud Computer. A Call to Action.2 people · 1 points · first shared 2008 · discussion on HN
- 8Joyent responds to Yahoo's issues with V8 being used under Node.js1 people · 83 points · first shared 2011 · 21 comments on HN
- 9Joyent: free hosting for high-volume Python apps, if you give us customer info1 people · 33 points · first shared 2008 · 14 comments on HN
- 10Riak performance benchmarking on Joyent1 people · 19 points · first shared 2010 · 1 comments on HN
- 11Joyent: Let my People Have Root1 people · 14 points · first shared 2008 · 6 comments on HN
- 12Twitter and Joyent Divorce1 people · 13 points · first shared 2008 · 11 comments on HN
- 133 Big Reason to use a Mobile PaaS: Versioning, Security, Push1 people · 9 points · first shared 2011 · 2 comments on HN
- 14Slingshot Apologia: We Didn't Design Slingshot for Planes (Joyent replies to DHH)1 people · 6 points · first shared 2007 · 4 comments on HN
- 15Joyent: eBay chooses Node.js as the runtime stack in ql.io1 people · 6 points · first shared 2011 · 2 comments on HN
What HN people wrote when they linked it
thwarted · 2015-11-19
I experimented with an alternative HTTP authentication scheme (like basic or digest, using the "WWW-Authenticate" header) that used ssh keys to authenticate the client. Some of the idea was based on this Joyent blog [0] post about signing the date header, but more robust and meant for a user rather than scripted access. The idea was that the browser would interface with a specific ssh-agent with specific keys loaded for specific sites.
Unfortunately, I didn't get very far and stopped working on it a while ago, but one thing I did learn was that the source code for links was much easier to come up to speed on and use for rough experiments than the source code for a full-on graphical browser.
I still have notes for it... somewhere.
[0] http://joyeur.com/2012/01/03/a-bit-more-about-the-new-joyent-cloud-api…
insaneirish · 2012-07-11
The idea of mdadm on top of EBS volumes makes me cringe.
Mark Mayo's thoughts on abstracted block storage are spot on: http://joyeur.com/2011/04/24/magical-block-store-when-abstractions-fai…
pnewhook · 2011-06-23
More info on the official node.js blog http://joyeur.com/2011/06/23/joyent-partners-with-ms-to-port-node-js-t…
And from Joyent
http://joyeur.com/2011/06/23/joyent-partners-with-ms-to-port-node-js-t…
jjm · 2011-04-23
If you accept that any of your instances can go down at any time, you accept the fact all of them can be down at one (the same) time.
You might think your safe with reserved instances too, thinking you've reserved the dedicated time with EC2. Well what happens when the entire network stack goes down or block storage the reserved instance rack depends on goes down? So does all 10 or 20 reserved instances you had up, at once.
Also, it was this very replication/snapshot mirroring feature of EBS that cascaded into (network,etc) congestion.
Check http://joyeur.com/2011/04/22/on-cascading-failures-and-amazons-elastic…
ned · 2010-10-08
Joyent came out with such a product in 2007, called Slingshot. I remember it being quite slow (…for what was supposed to be a desktop app), but functional.
http://joyeur.com/2007/03/22/joyent-slingshot/
dpritchett · 2010-09-20
That's at least a 13-week window for Joyent to wow us with no.de, the hosting they used for the recent Node Knockout. I'm a Heroku fan but I'm also impatient.
http://joyeur.com/2010/09/16/smartplatform-and-node-js/
maheshcr · 2008-05-12
I have read some good definitions[1] of cloud computing from Joyent.
[1]http://www.joyeur.com/2008/05/08/cloud-nine-specification-for-a-cloud-…
neuroelectronic · 2011-04-23
"Lesson 2: Size is No Protection from Outages"
At this point it has become clear that EBS failed due to a cascading failure as EBS volumes were mirrored across datacenters. http://joyeur.com/2011/04/22/on-cascading-failures-and-amazons-elastic…
From a practical point of view, the solution is simple, allow EBS to fail in certain areas to cordon off the damage. Size was a key variable here that made the outage take so long to recover from.
On point 1, in my opinion, this was not a single point of failure. Thus the need for the adjective "Cascading" That is, it was no more a single point of failure as relying on "hard drives" would be. ie. the "sigle point" was the technology itself, not a physical single point, obviously.
So in my mind, the question is, can the technology be modified to allow for failures or to restrict those failures while still utilizing the huge pool of hardware available to it effectively? It's a difficult problem, but not unsolvable.