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Amazon: a Single Disaster Made Us Rethink Our Cloud Supply Chain (datacenterfrontier.com)

Posted by Soulskill on from the great-cumulonimbus-shortage-of-aught-nine dept.

1sockchuck writes: At this week's AWS re:Invent conference, Amazon Web Services introduced new features and looked ahead to a future in which enterprise computing shifts to the cloud. But AWS also looked back at how a disaster reshaped its supply chain. In 2011, an unusually heavy monsoon season led to massive flooding in Thailand, which at the time manufactured nearly half of the world's supply of hard disk drives (HDDs). Prices soared and shortages developed, and Amazon's usual vendors were unable to deliver the volume the company sought to support its fast-growing cloud computing platform. "When a single flood hits half the manufacturing supply, and you don't have a direct relationship with suppliers, it turns out to be hard to get what you need," said AWS executive Jerry Hunter. So AWS executives jumped on a plane, flew to Thailand, and began building direct relationships that would support their shift to company-built hardware.

37 comments

  1. Monsoon season affecting The Cloud? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    Seems ironic.

    1. Re:Monsoon season affecting The Cloud? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Had my own personal cloud last night. It's wild what a tin of baked beans will produce. Careful with those matches.

    2. Re:Monsoon season affecting The Cloud? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Jeff Besos can be used as an extra HDD

  2. Once again no editing by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    What in the world is the string "hard disk drives (HDDs)" doing in TFS? That only makes sense in an article that is later going to refer to the initialism. But this is just a Slashdot summary, and of course that doesn't happen.

    1. Re:Once again no editing by crow · · Score: 2

      Well, being Slashdot, people will use the initialism in their comments, and others will ask what it means, so having it spelled out isn't a problem. It's much better than the summaries that use an initialism without explaining it. There have been many that did that, often with much more obscure references.

      Of course, the real answer is that in most cases the summaries are cut-and-paste copies from the article.

  3. Bigger question by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Why are hard drives still made in Thailand?

    1. Re:Bigger question by invictusvoyd · · Score: 1

      Becoz the weather there is perfect for HDD trees.

  4. Off Topic by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    ...but Jerry Hunter is a douchebag of critical proportions. He treats his staff and departments like complete dogshit, and belittles those that are actually quite a lot smarter than himself.

    During a meeting about (and with) the technicians that keep his servers alive he said, "If they were smart they wouldn't work in a datacenter."

    He's a tool.

    1. Re:Off Topic by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      And it's gotten worse now that Chris French and Bo Wallace are in even higher positions of power. French is from the fulfillment centers and is trying to turn the datacenters into fulfillment centers. Bo Wallace is from Ireland and has sucked down more Kool Aid then everyone who has ever even HEARD of Jonestown.

  5. more coffee needed by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    """... support their *shit* to company-built hardware..."""

  6. Intel by PRMan · · Score: 2

    I looked at the time, and Intel lost so much money on CPUs and motherboards that they would have been better off upgrading people to SSDs for free.

    --
    Peter predicted that you would "deliberately forget" creation 2000 years ago...
    1. Re: Intel by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Are you posting in the right thread? Seems irrelevant...

    2. Re: Intel by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      He's saying that because of no hard drives, fewer computers were being sold, hence fewer processors and Intel would have done better giving out SSDs to keep the CPUs flowing.

    3. Re: Intel by invictusvoyd · · Score: 1

      They could have turned them into thin clients

    4. Re: Intel by KGIII · · Score: 1

      The dumb terminals of yesteryear. That which is old is new again, and all that. I kind of liked the idea of thin clients then and I still do - they serve a function and fill a niche. With much of what we do being 'in the cloud' these days, well, it's a lot like the terminals of yesterday.

      Personally, at this moment, I'm in west New York. My home is in N.W. Maine. I am using my laptop to connect to my home via VNC through the hotel's wireless. It gets worse... On the home machine I have GhostBSD running, as a VM, and it too has VNC enabled. Yes, yes I have logged into my machine at home, from a hotel, and have also logged into a VM on that machine (via VNC) and then browsed the 'net through there.

      No, no I don't have a good reason for the last bit.

      --
      "So long and thanks for all the fish."
  7. And nothing changed by guruevi · · Score: 3, Informative

    So they flew to Thailand and cut out the middle man. Besides a small savings on their purchases, the next monsoon they'll still be without their drives. The problem wasn't that the distributors were piling up stocks, it's that they were physically unable to manufacture them.

    --
    Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
    1. Re:And nothing changed by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      ... The problem wasn't that the distributors were piling up stocks, it's that they were physically unable to manufacture them.

      And that they were shipping to people that weren't amazon.

      The direct personal relationships attempt to solve the latter problem.

    2. Re:And nothing changed by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      They will be first in line for the ones that do get manufactured

    3. Re:And nothing changed by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Yeah.. re-thinking would be finding a way to source their storage needs that was less geographically centralized.

    4. Re:And nothing changed by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      What's funny is that I've heard from people inside one of the big drive manufacturers (mid-level management based in Thailand) that production capacity wasn't really impacted by the flooding at all. They said it was more of a psychological and market-reaction storm than anything else.

    5. Re:And nothing changed by grep+-v+'.*'+* · · Score: 1

      The problem wasn't that the distributors were piling up stocks, it's that they were physically unable to manufacture them.

      Nope, the problem was that Amazon couldn't get ahold of the first ones manufactured when they did get going again. Timing matters.

      You build relationships to call in favors. The minor price savings of "no middle-man" was just a side-effect.

      --
      If the universe is someone's simulation -- does that mean the stars are just stuck pixels?
    6. Re:And nothing changed by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Try to buy .22 ammo. Same thing and has been this way for years. I thought it would be short term but the short supply has been happening for almost 3 years now. I gave up and ended up buying a .30 rifle and a .177 pellet gun instead to play around with and my .22 stays in the safe.

    7. Re:And nothing changed by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Try using an old HDD in your .22

    8. Re:And nothing changed by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      They flew to Thailand to make sure the next time Amazon would get the remaining stock before you or I have a chance to purchase them. That way Amazon can engage in rent seeking on storage space the next time a natural disaster strikes.

    9. Re:And nothing changed by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You'd think the market would have responded with more .22LR ammo, but it hasn't. It suggests something more sinister than Obama's agenda, which was the original reason given for the run on ammo. I think ammo manufacturers have taken a lesson from Enron and gasoline refiners in California and engineered themselves a little shortage to drive up prices.

    10. Re:And nothing changed by luis_a_espinal · · Score: 2

      You'd think the market would have responded with more .22LR ammo, but it hasn't. It suggests something more sinister than Obama's agenda, which was the original reason given for the run on ammo. I think ammo manufacturers have taken a lesson from Enron and gasoline refiners in California and engineered themselves a little shortage to drive up prices.

      Me no think so. I think it is emotion-driven demand that constantly clears up the aisles off any box with 22LR (and to a lesser degree, 38SP, regular load or +P). For as much as guns are popular in this country, we have a shitty supply-chain. To make it worse, you cannot easily reload 22LR, which makes scarcity even worse. With almost every other ammo, you can reload your own (either as a hobby, to weather shortages or, if you are a crazy lunatic, preparing for the Obama/UN/Jade Helm apocalypse.)

      With 22LR, there is no reloading option, so your only option is to grab what you can and stockpile. And every other 22LR afficionado (or crazy lunatic) has the same idea. It's been months that I've seen a 22LR box in Walmart, for example. Crazy!

    11. Re:And nothing changed by KGIII · · Score: 1

      When I read it, it looked like they were saying that they bought themselves privilege. They're able to buy enough volume to be a priority. I'm not sure that this is special, unique in any way, or signifies anything other than a slow news day or an example of a poorly performed article selection.

      --
      "So long and thanks for all the fish."
    12. Re:And nothing changed by KGIII · · Score: 1

      I buy most of my ammo from Jack's Trading Post, down in Farmington, and do a lot of plinking. In fact, the sidearm I have with me is "just" a Mark II. I've never seen them completely run out of .22LR and I've even ordered whole cases of the stuff - even after Obama's election. I keep hearing people say there's a shortage and whatnot but I've not really seen much in the way of this shortage. I am not sure where the discrepancy lies.

      It's obviously true that some people are experiencing shortages but, even when it was on the news and heavily covered, I didn't have any real problem with any shortages. There was about a month where the stock was pretty low on the shelves. Being the goober that I am, I already had plenty of my own stock so I didn't worry about it and just didn't buy any while the stock was that low.

      That was for a period of maybe a month and only during the peak of the news cycle. So, while I saw it, it was a limited scope and didn't really last long and I've not noticed it since. It's not like I live in an area where we don't have a lot of enthusiasts. They're a pretty small store so it's not like they have special ties with the manufacturers or anything.

      I must also admit that I've not asked other people in real life about it. I've not asked the owner for more information about it. I have no idea what their volume is (they're often pretty busy) nor do I know about their supply chain. I can only share that none of this has really impacted me. During the one month where there were only a few boxes on the shelves, I simply skipped buying any. It's not like I was in danger of running out or anything.

      --
      "So long and thanks for all the fish."
    13. Re:And nothing changed by luis_a_espinal · · Score: 1

      I buy most of my ammo from Jack's Trading Post, down in Farmington, and do a lot of plinking. In fact, the sidearm I have with me is "just" a Mark II. I've never seen them completely run out of .22LR and I've even ordered whole cases of the stuff - even after Obama's election. I keep hearing people say there's a shortage and whatnot but I've not really seen much in the way of this shortage. I am not sure where the discrepancy lies.

      It's obviously true that some people are experiencing shortages but, even when it was on the news and heavily covered, I didn't have any real problem with any shortages. There was about a month where the stock was pretty low on the shelves. Being the goober that I am, I already had plenty of my own stock so I didn't worry about it and just didn't buy any while the stock was that low.

      That was for a period of maybe a month and only during the peak of the news cycle. So, while I saw it, it was a limited scope and didn't really last long and I've not noticed it since. It's not like I live in an area where we don't have a lot of enthusiasts. They're a pretty small store so it's not like they have special ties with the manufacturers or anything.

      I must also admit that I've not asked other people in real life about it. I've not asked the owner for more information about it. I have no idea what their volume is (they're often pretty busy) nor do I know about their supply chain. I can only share that none of this has really impacted me. During the one month where there were only a few boxes on the shelves, I simply skipped buying any. It's not like I was in danger of running out or anything.

      Interesting. The supply/drain could be location specific. I'm in South Florida (and Florida is as gun-land as it goes.) I try not order online unless I'm buying in bulk. I'm trying to find just two boxes of 22LR CCI for my NAA, but every time I go to Walmart they have none (plenty of 9mm, though.) And the gun stores when they carry they charge more than what it should be (supply and demand I guess.)

      But during the last election, Jesus Christ, I couldn't find any 38SP or 22LR unless in bulk. Single boxes where nowhere to be found and I had to rely on gun-deals.com or gunbroker.com to get some.

    14. Re:And nothing changed by KGIII · · Score: 1

      LOL I'm not home or I'd offer to send you some. I'm over in Buffalo. I've got 500 + 30 I guess - 3 magazines w/10 rounds each - 0 in the chamber, rounds on me, it's just easier to pack a brick. I have property in PCB and will be down that way before I'm done. I don't think I've enough to help you out. If I were home I'd offer to ship you some. I've got cases of it. I've easily got a couple hundred boxes. And no, no... Much of it is probably from before the rush. I just almost always buy a couple of boxes when I am picking up ammo. I've got a variety, from sub sonic to the nifty little snake rounds to match grade. I could probably supply a small size pistol club for a weekend just with Federal rounds.

      --
      "So long and thanks for all the fish."
  8. This will be the best comment on this story. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Now THAT'S ironic.

    1. Re:This will be the best comment on this story. by davester666 · · Score: 1

      Someone should write a song about it.

      --
      Sleep your way to a whiter smile...date a dentist!
  9. I know what they could have done by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    They could have just bought the drives from Amazon.

    Right?

  10. Worthless article by manu0601 · · Score: 1

    You can skip this one. The linked article contains nothing more about hard disk supply, it just explains what Amazon Snowball is.

  11. Didn't help by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Problem is now we have 30 different types of drives, have to use a spreadsheet for each server, and confirm that hardware monitoring service and the spreadsheet sync up for what we are putting in the server because the last thing you want after 10 hours is half your damned tickets to reopen because you put in the correct drive according to hardware engineering but the wrong one according to hardware monitoring.

  12. it was no disaster by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    it was actually the best thing that happened to the HDD industry in years. Prices have still not dropped below pre-flood levels...

  13. I was thinking they were investing by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    To build factory in a safe geographical zone. What a bummer.