It's not an apples-to-apples comparison, because EC2 and Google Cloud have ephemeral disk - persistent disk is an add-on, which is implemented with a complex and frequently changing distributed storage system
On the other hand, a Hetzner machine I just rented came with Linux software RAID enabled (md devices in the kernel)
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I'm not aware of any comparisons, but I'd like to see see some
It's not straightforward, and it's not obvious the cloud is more reliable
The cloud introduces many other single points of failure, by virtue of being more complex
e.g. human administration failure, with the Unisuper incident
Of course, dedicated hardware could have a similar type of failure, but I think the simplicity means there is less variety in the errors.
e.g. A distributed system is one in which the failure of a computer you didn't even know existed can render your own computer unusable - Leslie Lamport
I just wish there was a way to underscore this more and more. Complex systems fail in complex ways. Sadly, for many programmers, the thrill or ego boost that comes with solving/managing complex problems lets us believe complex is better than simple.
One side effect of devops over the last 10-15yrs I've noticed as dev and ops converged is that infrastructure complexity exploded as the old school pessimistic sysadmin culture of simplicity and stability gave way to a much more optimistic dev culture. Also better tooling also enabled increased complexity in a self fulfilling feedback loop as more complexity also demanded better tooling.
Anecdotal, but a year ago we lost the whole RAID array in a rented Hetzner server to some hardware failure.
In a way, I think it doesn't matter what you use as long as you diversify enough (and have lots of backups), as everything can fail, and often the probability of failure doesn't even matter that much as any failure can be one too many.
On the other hand, a Hetzner machine I just rented came with Linux software RAID enabled (md devices in the kernel)
---
I'm not aware of any comparisons, but I'd like to see see some
It's not straightforward, and it's not obvious the cloud is more reliable
The cloud introduces many other single points of failure, by virtue of being more complex
e.g. human administration failure, with the Unisuper incident
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40366867
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2024/05/google-cloud-acciden... - “Unprecedented” Google Cloud event wipes out customer account and its backups
Of course, dedicated hardware could have a similar type of failure, but I think the simplicity means there is less variety in the errors.
e.g. A distributed system is one in which the failure of a computer you didn't even know existed can render your own computer unusable - Leslie Lamport