Startupping Blog http://www.startupping.com A Community for Entrepreneurs en Sat, 17 May 2008 14:51:02 GMT vBulletin 2 http://www.startupping.com/images/logo.gif Startupping Blog http://www.startupping.com Elance Virtual Assistant Contest http://www.startupping.com/forums/showthread.php?t=951&goto=newpost Tue, 15 Jan 2008 21:02:45 GMT I've written about Elance and outsourcing many times. It can be a great way to help get your startup off the ground. Virtual assistants are one type of outsourcing that is becoming popular. Well, Elance is running a contest where the grand prize is a virtual assistant for 2008. To enter the contest, you must answer the question "How would you use a virtual assistant to grow your business or improve your personal life?". The contest ends on January 25, 2008, and more information can be found at the contest web site. ]]> Announcements Mark Fletcher http://www.startupping.com/forums/showthread.php?t=951 Database Developments http://www.startupping.com/forums/showthread.php?t=918&goto=newpost Fri, 14 Dec 2007 21:24:04 GMT The single biggest challenge in scaling an Internet service is the database. In my experience, the ways things generally work is like this: you put... The single biggest challenge in scaling an Internet service is the database. In my experience, the ways things generally work is like this: you put up an Internet service using a single instance of a basic database, like MySQL or BerkeleyDB. Everything is run off that single database. As you grow, the database becomes overloaded, and then you begin an endless cycle of scaling work. First, you split the single database into multiple, unrelated databases. You also need to worry about reliability, and so start looking at things like hot backups. Then you look at adding read-only copies of your databases, and with those you have to worry about keeping things in sync and other related hassles. And of course you start implementing in-memory caches using something like memcached, which are great, but have their own issues as well (cold caches on restarts being the biggest I can think of off hand). All of this takes a lot of work, a lot of expertise, and a lot of maintenance.

Two items relating to databases caught my eye this week. The first was the benchmarking of a RAID consisting of Solid State Drives, or SSDs. An SSD is basically a chunk of non-volatile RAM in a package with a disk-drive interface. They're designed to replace standard hard drives with something with the performance of RAM. While SSDs have been in development for a few years, I think they're really starting to become interesting for use in databases. They provide orders of magnitude speedups over hard drives in some areas, like seek performance. They're not perfect, but if I was in the situation where I needed to scale a database immediately, I'd definitely look at using an SSD.

The other item was the announcement of Amazon's SimpleDB. This is a new web service that goes along with the existing S3 and EC2 services. SimpleDB provides a robust, simple, scalable database system. If it offers high performance and high reliability, as they claim, then this could be a very big deal. In combination with the other services, it would eliminate the vast majority of scaling issues facing an Internet service. It's only in limited beta right now, but once it goes live (and works as advertised), I think I'd be hard pressed to not recommend that a new startup host their entire site using Amazon. This further reduces the cost structure associated with an Internet startup (both in terms of money and in terms of talent needed) and lowers the barrier to entry for new services. Like I said, a very big deal. ]]> How To Mark Fletcher http://www.startupping.com/forums/showthread.php?t=918 Hard Drives Fail, A Reminder http://www.startupping.com/forums/showthread.php?t=763&goto=newpost Mon, 20 Aug 2007 15:29:35 GMT This email greeted me Saturday morning: ---Quote--- Unit UnitType Status %Cmpl Stripe Size(GB) Cache AVerify ... This email greeted me Saturday morning:

Quote:
Unit UnitType Status %Cmpl Stripe Size(GB) Cache AVerify IgnECC
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
u0 RAID-1 DEGRADED - - 232.82 OFF OFF OFF

Port Status Unit Size Blocks Serial
---------------------------------------------------------------
p0 DEVICE-ERROR u0 232.83 GB 488281250 WD-WCANY2307742
p1 OK u0 232.83 GB 488281250 WD-WCANY2320853
One of the drives in the server that runs Startupping had failed. No data was lost, because the drive was part of a RAID. The hosting company was able to quickly replace it and things are back to normal. But it serves as a reminder that hard drives are not nearly as reliable as most people think they are. You need to always plan for hardware failure with your Internet service, because it will happen. ]]> How To Mark Fletcher http://www.startupping.com/forums/showthread.php?t=763 More Startup Commandments http://www.startupping.com/forums/showthread.php?t=762&goto=newpost Mon, 20 Aug 2007 15:22:24 GMT User nalin (http://www.startupping.com/forums/member.php?u=1597) recently posted (http://www.startupping.com/forums/showthread.php?p=3496#post3496)... User nalin recently posted these great ones:
  1. You'll have to revise your 'strategy' every few weeks so don't spend a lot of time in Word / PowerPoint / Kinkos making it look pretty.
  2. No matter where on the emotional rollercoaster you are on any given day, project total confidence to the outside world -- people respond more to that, than your schpiel on disintermediating blah, blah, blah.
  3. If you go to a web 2.0 networking event, everyone you tell your idea to thinks they're an expert on what web businesses will succeed or fail. They're not. No one is. They just all read the same blogs which confidently assert constantly changing conventional wisdom.
  4. Wear comfortable shoes. You're frequently going to need to step outside to walk around the block while muttering to yourself.
  5. Exercise and eat healthy. In the long run, you don't increase productivity by consuming pizza, doritos and red bull while chained to your desk all day/every day.
  6. When your friends/family ask you how the business is coming along... always start off by saying "Great!" Save the cathartic sharing of any doubts/stress with fellow entrepreneurs and sites like this! Non-entrepreneurs won't understand and will just feel sorry for you...
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