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Amazon, MS, Google Clouds Flop In Stress Tests

Posted by samzenpus on from the dark-clouds dept.

Eponymous writes "A seven month study by academics at the University of New South Wales has found that the response times of cloud compute services of Amazon, Google and Microsoft can vary by a factor of twenty depending on the time of day services are accessed. One of the lead researchers behind the stress tests reports that Amazon's EC2, Google's AppLogic and Microsoft's Azure cloud services have limitations in terms of data processing windows, response times and a lack of monitoring and reporting tools."

10 of 154 comments (clear)

  1. no kidding by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

    you get what you pay for - news at 11.

    I'll be sticking with own servers in a colo thanks.

  2. Wave? by tygerstripes · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I wonder what the implications will be for Wave? Real-time updates across multiple servers present very similar challenges to cloud-computing. If the relevant protocols have the same problems then it raises doubts over the scalability of the Wave protocol.

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    Meta will eat itself
    1. Re:Wave? by Thomas+Charron · · Score: 3, Interesting

      The challenges for Wave don't rely on nearly the same challenges. Wave involves ONLY data transfer, not processing, storage, etc.. It's a protocol.

      Making the comparison you've made is the same thing as saying HTTP is flawed becouse Joes Web Shack servers are slow.

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      -- I'm the root of all that's evil, but you can call me cookie..
  3. "Cloud" be bollox, dude. by EWAdams · · Score: 1, Interesting

    Yeah, I'm going to allow my computing and data storage to be dependent on large numbers of strangers, some of them hostile to me. No thank you. The Internet is handy for looking things up on and sending messages to people. Low-importance collective activity like SETI? Fine. But it is dangerously vulnerable for critical operations. I hope the people in charge of things like national electrical infrastructure are aware of that...

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    I piss off bigots.
  4. Re:Cloud Computing? Why? by pietromenna · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Actually, have you tried playing out with Google App engine? It brings to the table a host server for your Django application at very low cost. It also allows you to integrate your application with google user managment. Why to use? Well, for me, it is for low cost hosting for Django Applications, but for business it can be really interesting as there is somebody taking care of the infrastructure while they only need to care about the application itself.

  5. Re:Cloud Computing? Why? by lena_10326 · · Score: 2, Interesting

    What about installation and software setup? How does 1-3 days beat launching a node in 5-15 minutes?

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    Camping on quad since 1996.
  6. AppLogic? by Roguelazer · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Buh? As far as I can tell, Google doesn't have a platform called "AppLogic". Perhaps they were referring to App Engine? And it's not even the editors' fault this time -- TFA has the terms wrong too. That really inspires confidence...

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    My Systems
  7. if i ran slashdot by nimbius · · Score: 2, Interesting

    it would be an offense punishable by ban if when referring to the cloud, members didnt roll their eyes and make fart noises.


    cloud is becoming less and less of a "news for nerds" thing because its surrounded by nothing but business jargon instead of tech talk. outsource your risks?? I still manage the same servers, in the same datacenter, with the same network but for some reason its been abstracted to "cloud" computing. you aren't outsourcing any new. theres still a guy you call at 5 AM when the mysql servers arent replicating properly, or the amanda job is hung.

    a PRIME example, this article has NO NUMBERS!! no quantifiers or methods by which they tested the aformentioned services. they only say things were bad when one group of university students half a world away tested them. the university doesnt even mention the study!

    and at seven months of presumably unauthorized stress testing, i wouldnt be surprised if google and amazon network engineers met over a few pints of beer and decided your asinine experiment deserved a bit of traffic shaping.

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    Good people go to bed earlier.
  8. Re:Cloud Computing? Why? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

    It depends on your application. My application is a genetic algorithm. I want lots and lots of computers some of the time, and no computers some of the time. So, it's perfect for me.

    I was recently at a Hadoop user's group. There were lots of people with applications that needed lots of compute time some of the time, and really don't need very much at all some of the time. There was a talk by a guy from Data Wrangling where he's pulling in lots of data every night and doing some runs. He really should not be paying for computers during the day when he's not using them, and EC2 allows him to just use what he wants.

    If you have a web site and are using a computers 24/7, then go with a hosted solution. If you have highly critical applications or sensitive data, then use internal servers. But, there are lots of users and applications where cloud computing works great.

  9. Re:Quite interesting, actually by lenehey · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I dunno. If someone steals my money, it can be replaced by the bank whose security system failed. If someone steals my secrets, there is no remedy.