[lightbendover]

File this under "If a headline is asking a question, then the answer is NO." Honestly, I'm not even sure what point the author is trying to make besides "anecdotally and at low scale, unusual-for-the-purpose technology X solved problem Y." A near-infinite number of bad patterns can solve problems along happy paths and resolve plenty of edge cases to boot. 99.9% availability was a goal post here? There are systems where 7 9s is unacceptable. The author didn't even provide data backing the measurement goals.

[xupybd]

This solves their problems not some theoretical other problem.

They avoided over engineering and building more complexity than required.

[hbrn]

What are those mythical systems where seven nines is unacceptable? What are the chances you're going to work on one of those?

Google Spanner for example is up to five nines. Are there a lot of systems that need to be three orders of magnitude more reliable than Google Ads?

[lightbendover]

You're right, nothing is more important than serving ads.

[hbrn]

Nothing is more profitable than serving ads.

I'm still waiting for an answer.

[lightbendover]

While I have no idea what kind of distributed system would need 7+ 9s, there are plenty of solution providers who at least promise it as part of their marketing. I truly disbelieve that these companies don't have any point of failure within their system that would take them under that threshold, even if it hasn't been challenged to date, but that level of availability is still the published goal. Hopefully needless to say, but 99.9% is not acceptable for most "important" (and yes, advertising is important) applications outside of US-East-1 somehow. Quick examples, no experience with any of these: * https://www.infinidat.com/en/news/press-releases/infinidat-h... * https://vindicia.com/blog/9999999-global-system-uptime/ * https://www.ibm.com/downloads/cas/A856LOWK

Bad examples? Certainly yes. Are there any good examples? Maybe, doubtful. Does any system actually need 7 9s? Maybe, doubtful.