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Comment by isbvhodnvemrwvn

2 years ago

Is spending time to make it reliable worth it vs working on your actual product? Databases are THE most critical things your company has.

23 comments

isbvhodnvemrwvn

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Draiken  2 years ago

I see this argument a lot. Then most startups use that time to create rushed half-assed features instead of spending a week on their db that'll end up saving hundreds of thousands of dollars. Forever.

For me that's short-sighted.

  • orthoxerox  2 years ago

    Startups are in the job of earning millions. If they can spend $100k on a managed DB now and just spend every braincell on getting their product right, it's a win for their investors.

    • Draiken  2 years ago

      That mentality is working wonders right now, isn't it?

      Hundreds of dead startups because after all that unnecessary spending, they still have unnecessary buggy software that got sold to other startups that, when push comes to shove, will cut spending in those same startups that offer half-baked buggy products.

      What you say is definitely what they preach. But I don't agree or see that as a good logic.

      Way too many startup founders decide to build shitty products with short-sighted solutions like these, following whatever is trendy (crypto, AI, etc) because investors advise them to. Guess what: the investor doesn't care about creating a good business. He wants a unicorn. So they advise them to make all-or-nothing moves knowing it will most likely kill the startup.

      It's definitely "a strategy". But I think it's short-sighted as hell.

      2 replies →

davedx  2 years ago

All that infra doesn’t integrate itself. Everywhere I’ve worked that had this kind of stack employed at least one if not a team of DevOps people to maintain it all, full time, the year round. Automating a database backup and testing it works takes half a day unless you’re doing something weird

  • isbvhodnvemrwvn  2 years ago

    Setting up a multi-az db with automatic failover, incremental backups and PiTR, automated runbooks and monitoring all that doesn't take half a day, not even with RDS.

  • fullstackchris  2 years ago

    A startup sized company using this many tools? They're for sure doing something weird (and that's not a compliment :) )

    Totally on your side with this one - but alas, people associate value with complexity.

  • ffsm8  2 years ago

    > Automating a database backup and testing it works takes half a day unless you’re doing something weird

    True story bro

    I'm sure that's possible if you're storing the backup on the same server you're restoring on and everything is on top of the line nvme storage. Otherwise your backup just started to run and will need another few days to finish. And that's only if you're running single master.

    You're massively underestimating the challenge to get that kind of automation done in a stable manner - and the maintenance required to keep it working over the years.

    • icedchai  2 years ago

      I worked at a place with its own colo where they ran several multi TB MySQL database servers. We did weekly backups and it could take days. Our backups were stored on external USB disks. The I/O performance was abysmal. Taking a filesystem snapshot and copying it to USB could take days. The disks would occasionally lock up and someone would have to power cycle them. Total clown show.

      I would rather pay for RDS. Databases are the one thing you don't want to screw up.

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