I am hosting my SaaS site using Google Cloud. All my clients are based in SA. I chose Google Cloud after experiencing very bad service from Azure. I won't go back to Azure, even if they build the datacenter behind my yard. I love the pricing and simplicity of Google Cloud. Ironically, my site is on Microsoft .NET stack, but I still don't trust Microsoft with hosting my site.
I hope Google and AWS will follow suite and build datacenter in SA.
Cool! Luckily, we have a POP in Johannesburg and it's "only" 160ms from there to London/Paris along our backbone (then another handful to europe-west1 in Belgium). Do you have good telemetry on the kind of latency your customers on seeing?
Just mentioning, i didn't knew Google Cloud does the .Net stack also. But i haven't had any bad experience with Azure ( small webapps, not huge ones). ( i chose Azure over Amazon)
I just publish and run. Some web apps have been running for over 4 years, without me touching it and paying customers ( 1-10). I only had one small "downtime" moment, but it was over after 15 minutes.
I wouldn't expect anything more from where i host it. The biggest annoyance i had was the redesign of the dashboard, which had me confused for a while ( it changed a lot, so that's normal), then again, i don't hate change. I switched to the new interface asap.
Funny, I don't have personal experience with either, but I'm always reading that Google's customer service is abysmal (i.e. non-existent). But then, maybe you just haven't needed them yet.
A month ago on the thread about AWS opening up a region in Sweden, a discussion ensued [1] about the lack of major cloud provider datacenters in Africa.
I wrote [2] that a good site in Africa would be challenging, because one would have to "pick a spot touched by more than one thick pipe, in jurisdiction known for political and civic stability and a regime with rough compatibility to the ideology and national security apparatus of western allies -- their home base and primary source of customers; receptive and promoting of foreign investment, and having access to multiple reliable, redundant power sources from which to draw energy."
While South Africa ranks high on stability and ideological compatibility, and reasonably on fiber [3], my understanding was that reliable and redundant utility power supply is a significant issue [4][5]. I'd be curious to see whether co-generation will be used to overcome these limitations.
I am seeing a lot of comments about the need for stable power. It seems logical, but it’s not an absolute need. I managed a data center win San Diego at the time of the California electrical power crisis [1] near the end of the Dot Com days. I have operated more than one at a time since. During those times, which produced rolling blackouts, we just ended up running our generators more often. Power outages in Data Center happen during maintenance and upgrades, not so much during power grid outages. I have still never never had a data center go down during a power grid outage… but have seen many during upgrades, and maintenance.
In the years since the rolling blackouts, I have been colocated in data centers that have made the decision to use special pricing available from the power utility, available when you can have a preemptable load… during peak hours of peak season the power company can tell you to get off the grid with short notice. The data center operators did OK when they did this for most years. They got a lower price on power all year, in exchange for running their generators more. I’d say that the typical year, they ran the generators for several hours per day for 7 to 10 days in the Summer months. The last year they dd this, they ran a much higher number of days than expected… maybe 15 - 18 days from noon to 7pm. I understand they had to stop doing this because of the pollution of the generators or the permits required for such heavy usage... but that info is not first hand. It could have been many other reasons such as neighbors complaining about the noise in the business parks (2MW diesel generators are deafeningly loud), costs related to running the generators for so many hours, etc.
To operate like this, you have to be on your game for maintenance of the generators and checklists and training. You also have to have multiple contracts with fuel delivery trucks, just incase your outage lasts for a while. These data centers were all under 5MW in size each. We never lost critical load during a power supplier outage.
I hope I have illustrated that a reliable power supply is not strictly required to run a reliable data center or service that is dependent upon a reliable data center.
One issue is that neighbouring African countries don't have good connectivity - the connection to the EU is typically better than to their neighbours. So if you want to serve e.g. users in Kenya, it would typically be better to use a datacenter in the EU than one in South Africa.
Yep. We've had to do some work for clients in Africa in my job. One we did in Morocco was fine from EU data centers on AWS, but South Africa has been very difficult to serve with acceptable latency from any data centre we've tried.
We're 90% AWS here, but would probably use Azure for those clients if they had a data centre in that region.
A few years ago I recall that IBM announced a plan to set up something in Kenya.
But don't blame the industry for not having a major datacenter anywhere on that continent. You need a stable power supply for that to make sense, which very few countries there have. Even Ghana that used to brag about that is now a basket case, last I checked.
Africa's a big place, but I think you're right. If you take out South Africa the rest of the continent is completely "out of the loop" concerning cloud services from the major players, it seems.
I was just in a comment thread here where someone describe Africa as "a shithole" (their exact words ) when it came to hosting data centers. Glad to see that the people actual making decisions in tech have some rational ability.
I've never seriously considered using Azure, I'm quite happy with AWS. Problem is the closest zone to South Africa is EU. This might make me consider using Azure. I hope Amazon has similar plans in the works.
I think you could do Morocco as well, but isn't uninterrupted power also a major issue in South Africa. You only have Eskom and they don't seem to be that well run or have enough well maintained power plants.
Are these cloud services going to be served from newly built 100% Microsoft datacenters or servers colocated with Hetzner South Africa (Cape Town and Joburg)?
MSFT is starting to get it. Many startups are being funded for stupid projects that target the US and are based in SF. The future belongs to markets like Africa and S. America. They currently take about 6% each of world's total software market.
From the press release:
- It happens in 2018
- They brag about "40 cloud regions" across the world. But do not say anything about their current capabilities in Africa.
- 40 "Regions"? where are these 'regions' located?
And why so many? Are they incapable of handling large geographical areas?
[+] [-] madiathomas|8 years ago|reply
I hope Google and AWS will follow suite and build datacenter in SA.
[+] [-] boulos|8 years ago|reply
Disclosure: I work on Google Cloud.
[+] [-] NicoJuicy|8 years ago|reply
I just publish and run. Some web apps have been running for over 4 years, without me touching it and paying customers ( 1-10). I only had one small "downtime" moment, but it was over after 15 minutes.
I wouldn't expect anything more from where i host it. The biggest annoyance i had was the redesign of the dashboard, which had me confused for a while ( it changed a lot, so that's normal), then again, i don't hate change. I switched to the new interface asap.
[+] [-] christogreeff|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] simooooo|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Vinnl|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] niftich|8 years ago|reply
I wrote [2] that a good site in Africa would be challenging, because one would have to "pick a spot touched by more than one thick pipe, in jurisdiction known for political and civic stability and a regime with rough compatibility to the ideology and national security apparatus of western allies -- their home base and primary source of customers; receptive and promoting of foreign investment, and having access to multiple reliable, redundant power sources from which to draw energy."
While South Africa ranks high on stability and ideological compatibility, and reasonably on fiber [3], my understanding was that reliable and redundant utility power supply is a significant issue [4][5]. I'd be curious to see whether co-generation will be used to overcome these limitations.
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14031565 [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14035251 [3] https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d4/Cable_ma... [4] http://www.fin24.com/Economy/SA-fears-dark-days-ahead-as-pow... [4] http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2015/03/crippling-... [5] http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2015/03/crippling-...
[+] [-] mikiem|8 years ago|reply
In the years since the rolling blackouts, I have been colocated in data centers that have made the decision to use special pricing available from the power utility, available when you can have a preemptable load… during peak hours of peak season the power company can tell you to get off the grid with short notice. The data center operators did OK when they did this for most years. They got a lower price on power all year, in exchange for running their generators more. I’d say that the typical year, they ran the generators for several hours per day for 7 to 10 days in the Summer months. The last year they dd this, they ran a much higher number of days than expected… maybe 15 - 18 days from noon to 7pm. I understand they had to stop doing this because of the pollution of the generators or the permits required for such heavy usage... but that info is not first hand. It could have been many other reasons such as neighbors complaining about the noise in the business parks (2MW diesel generators are deafeningly loud), costs related to running the generators for so many hours, etc.
To operate like this, you have to be on your game for maintenance of the generators and checklists and training. You also have to have multiple contracts with fuel delivery trucks, just incase your outage lasts for a while. These data centers were all under 5MW in size each. We never lost critical load during a power supplier outage. I hope I have illustrated that a reliable power supply is not strictly required to run a reliable data center or service that is dependent upon a reliable data center.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_electricity_crisis
[+] [-] madiathomas|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tertius|8 years ago|reply
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jasper_Solar_Energy_Project
[+] [-] staticelf|8 years ago|reply
Glad to see things change and a small step into a more connected and peaceful world.
[+] [-] matharmin|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] wjoe|8 years ago|reply
We're 90% AWS here, but would probably use Azure for those clients if they had a data centre in that region.
[+] [-] finid|8 years ago|reply
But don't blame the industry for not having a major datacenter anywhere on that continent. You need a stable power supply for that to make sense, which very few countries there have. Even Ghana that used to brag about that is now a basket case, last I checked.
[+] [-] johan_larson|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pjmlp|8 years ago|reply
It is great that those countries get the infrastructure to enjoy what is already possible in the majority of the world.
Sure there are many roadblocks for that to be an easy goal, but not doing anything is worse I think.
[+] [-] oblio|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] outside1234|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] matharmin|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|8 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] John23832|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mozey|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] aswanson|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] skc|8 years ago|reply
Perhaps Rwanda as well.
Uninterrupted power is a major challenge here on the continent.
[+] [-] vezycash|8 years ago|reply
Power is no biggie - network providers have learned to live on power generators.
The main issue is that Cable, Fiber penetration is very low.
[+] [-] yread|8 years ago|reply
https://www.indexmundi.com/facts/indicators/IC.ELC.OUTG/rank...
[+] [-] mrweasel|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] alnitak|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] douche|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pizzetta|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] John23832|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|8 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] _urga|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rainbowmverse|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|8 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] unknown|8 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] cmurf|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jksmith|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] TotallyHuman|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rcgorton|8 years ago|reply
Makes me skeptical about Micro$lop
[+] [-] throwme_1980|8 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] throwme_1980|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ramshanker|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] germtone|8 years ago|reply
(1) https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c3/Worldwid...
(2) https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/6a/Xkeyscor...
[+] [-] unknown|8 years ago|reply
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