AWS Aurora PostgreSQL versions vanish from the mega-cloud for days, leaving customers in the dark

Several versions of Amazon Web Services' Aurora PostgreSQL went missing earlier this week, prompting concern among AWS customers. Greg Clough, a software engineer who uses the American super-cloud, noticed that AWS Aurora PostgreSQL v10.12, v10.13, and v11.8 vanished from every AWS region on Monday without explanation. And in …

[Robert Grant]

Lost time with these database instances will never be recovered but with some explanation, closure and healing may be possible.

Wait - isn't this a tech outage? Have I missed a hideous psychological tragedy?

[cbars]

So how come they can call it PostgreSQL if the code has been forked to do Amazon stuff.... that's a trademark infringement, surely

From postgres trademark policy, unacceptable use:

"Use of the name(s) or logo in a software product that is unrelated to PostgreSQL and does not run on it, or work with it."

[Steve K]

Aurora

It is branded as AWS Aurora for PostgreSQL to distinguish it from the MySQL version like they do for other flavours of AWS RDS as well.

They’ve got to label it with something, otherwise how would you know which one to use?

[cbars]

Re: Aurora

Comment was a bit tongue in cheek, a bug in Amazon's code meaning it doesn't work with it, and is therefore a trademark infringement...

[teknopaul]

don't know much about postgres but mysql has a clean backend front end split.

You can use a mysql client to talk to mysql front end that has different types of storage. You can write your own storage without breaking the licence afaik.

[Anonymous Coward]

Sorry, I don't understand

Its The Cloud, its magic, it never has tech problems because the rainbow pixies make everything Just Work and customer applications run smoothly for all eternity without the same kind of issues the useless overpaid do-nothing hobgoblins in the old company server room said they had to cope with. Has there been a glitch in the Maxtrix?

Oh wait, the cloud is just a way for bean counters to offload costs into a different ledger and has nothing to do with better uptimes or support.

[Robert Grant]

Re: Sorry, I don't understand

It's neither.

[Tom 38]

Re: Sorry, I don't understand

Its The Cloud, its magic, it never has tech problems because the rainbow pixies make everything Just Work and customer applications run smoothly for all eternity without the same kind of issues the useless overpaid do-nothing hobgoblins in the old company server room said they had to cope with.

Its the exact opposite of that. Running things in the cloud, everything can fail all the time, and designing your applications around that fact is what allows your hobgoblins to manage more applications with more resilience than they could curating pet servers in their server room.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Sorry, I don't understand

Hey Jeff, nice of you to join us. How are the billions coming along?

[katrinab]

Re: Sorry, I don't understand

But it is an SQL server. You should be using blockchains for your data storage and processing needs.

That's where you are going wrong.

[teknopaul]

Re: Sorry, I don't understand

The magic of the cloud is you can turn off the bill. Its rented hardware with fairly active support, & clear definitions of what they do and what you do.

Plus economies scale.

[trevorde]

Obligatory xkcd

https://xkcd.com/908/

[ozreg]

Aurora PostgreSQL v10.12 / v11.7 is back everywhere

It looks like Aurora PostgreSQL v10.12 / v11.7 is back everywhere... and v10.13 / v11.8 is back in ap-south-1

REGION: ap-south-1

"Aurora PostgreSQL (Compatible with PostgreSQL 10.11)"

"Aurora PostgreSQL (Compatible with PostgreSQL 10.12)"

"Aurora PostgreSQL (Compatible with PostgreSQL 10.13)"

"Aurora PostgreSQL (Compatible with PostgreSQL 11.6)"

"Aurora PostgreSQL (Compatible with PostgreSQL 11.7)"

"Aurora PostgreSQL (Compatible with PostgreSQL 11.8)"

[TimMaher]

This is NOT SQL

Why is somebody re-writing massively ancient code and then messing it up?

“NOT EXISTS” has been around since the dawn of Ted Codd.

Then it seems to have hung about, untested, in several release versions.

[Steve K]

Re: This is NOT SQL

If it is suddenly fixed then I wonder whether workarounds are sufficiently robust that they still work?

I imagine that you can control when you move to the fixed version in Production instances?

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: This is NOT SQL

I would imagine that would be a no, as they pulled the broken versions and replaced them with the supposed fixed ones.