[tquai]

It's a lesson in overengineering. At this point my $5 Pentium 3 server has a greater uptime than Amazon.

[potatolicious]

Your $5 Pentium 3 server isn't the largest retail website on the internet making $61 billion a year.

Having seen a lot of the code that Amazon runs on, and having seen first-hand the scale that it runs on, I'll say this: it's not perfect, but it's remarkably well-engineered, and a hell of a lot better than most snarky HNers could do.

[hhw]

But that's the point. Most people don't need anything that well-engineered. Compared to more traditional hosting solutions from quality providers, AWS has terrible uptime and at a much higher cost for the same amount of resources. Two VPS'es from two different providers in a simple failover configuration with an anycast DNS solution would be simpler, cheaper, and much more reliable.

[vineel]

Except your Pentium 3 server doesn't have to handle over 100 million unique visitors per quarter. :P

[setrofim_]

Unless your server needs to handle comparable amounts of traffic, it's not the same thing.

[tquai]

It doesn't. My server is appropriately engineered to its task.

[frehpt]

Is that the sound of the power supply going on your Pentium 3...

...or your internet connection

You never patch or reboot your magic box either?

[illuminate]

How is your hooptie server at all comparable to the largest online retailer?

When very little changes and very little happens, uptime's a lot easier to accrue.