Cool tech. The drive manufacturers are essentially marching to the drum detailed in this paper from 2016: https://research.google/pubs/disks-for-data-centers/. Multi actuators are part of it but also higher density and better tail latency.
I run a company that provides Minecraft server hosting for businesses (i.e. after school programs, summer camps, Code Ninjas, E-Sports leagues etc) and produces fun and educational events using Minecraft (i.e. 10-15 elementary school kids in an event space at a library learning physics by building roller coasters in the game).
We've switched entirely over to Paper for everything because it works so much better than vanilla, and it also enables us to put it behind a Velocity proxy (Minecraft Java Application layer proxy also developed by the same group that develops Paper) for better scalability, more secure infrastructure, and some cool features like enabling any version of Java edition to join the same server (mad props to the ViaVersion & ViaBackwards plugin teams that make this possible!). This is impossible to do with Vanilla. We do all of our own content development creating the activities the kids do during the events, and the plugin ecosystem that someone else mentioned is hugely helpful for this. I especially want to call out how awesome the Geyser and Floodgate plugins are — they make it possible for Java and Bedrock clients to play together in the same world, which makes our customers lives so much easier.
We're hiring part time / contract developers, event hosts, and technical support personnel. If this sounds interesting, please reach out. My contact info is in my profile.
I have Minecraft on iOS, as well as two Java licenses. You can have both mixed on the same server if you are using Paper with Floodgate and Geyser. It's great; my younger child can use iOS, while my elder kids can use the java licenses on their computers.
Interesting, does that mean the different editions have feature parity now?
I remember it used to be that the Java Edition was ahead of Bedrock with some game features and the phone version had way less content – is that no longer the case or are these server plugins disabling some game features?
I think they have some drift in between versions (java lands first), but aside from that, they're extremely similar and only differ in what essentially amounts to quirks rather than actual gameplay differences. So no, you're not typically going to really notice the differences.
Constantly updating geyser to keep it up to date with the most recent bedrock versions is quite a pain. Maybe paper has tools to automate these updates (I use fabric) but it seems unlikely.
Geyser/any third-party plugin isn't by the paper team, so they wouldn't have tools to auto update. (they also generally discourage auto-updating any software/plugins). There are plugins available to update geyser automatically though, here's one: https://www.spigotmc.org/resources/geyserupdater.88555/
I built and run a Minecraft server hosting service for parents to enable young kids to play online safely and with less hassle (https://minecraft-playdates.com). Been slowly growing it while adding features, and it's bringing in about $150/mo now. Potential for much more if I were focused on it.
Tech stack: Frontend is a mix of hand-crafted HTML and pages or fragments of components designed in Webflow. (This is my first meaningful webapp, so don't judge!) Using Firebase Auth for authentication, Stripe for billing, Firestore for the database. The frontend talks to a custom API server written in Golang. It's purpose is to essentially orchestrate customized VMs. Each VM runs a Minecraft server mgmt sidecar process (also written in Golang), which orchestrates the MC server itself. Each VM is entirely self contained, the API server pushes config into into VM metadata. The the sidecar listens for changes and applies them. There is some interesting logic there to determine what game settings can be applied without restarting the server and which can't be.
Overall architecture is pretty straightforward, but it's grown organically and it's a mix of crufty bits, along with nicer bits which came later. It currently supports four server types (Java, Bedrock, Spigot, Forge), and I'm in process of adding Paper. Each time I add a server I learn more and figure out a bit better design. Adding Paper is mostly replacing the original Java and Bedrock cruft with better stuff I created while adding Spigot and Forge. Beyond the Sidecar, Most of the magic is in the frontend making it easy for parents to manage invited players, gameplay (including plugins/mods/minigames), and playtimes.
Happy to dive in more detail 1:1 or small group, my contact info is in my profile.
My main side project is: https://minecraft-playdates.com Minecraft server hosting for parents. This is a fully fleshed out and working service with paying customers.
My secondary project is https://golang-labs.com. With this one, I'm exploring whether there is a need for an enterprise focused module proxy for Golang. The issues I see with the public proxy are: build repeatability, license compatibility, and information security. Please reach out if this is something you care about.
https://minecraft-playdates.com - Safe online play for your kids: Control playtimes, durations, and who they play with. I just launched the MVP a couple of weeks ago (built over the last 6 months or so with help from my wife and son (the Minecraft player). This is my first foray into consumer SaaS.
My second project is https://golang-labs.com. This is much earlier stage, but the first product idea is a Golang module proxy designed to make builds repeatable, auditable, and put programmatic guiderails around which open source licenses are allowed. I've built the website, and prototyped enough of the product to know it can be built. I am primarily focused on customer discovery before committing. Please reach out (contact info in my profile) if this would be useful for you or your org.
I work for Google and am the product manager for Cloud Filestore. I would have responded sooner, but I was busy with with announcement related events :)
If you (or anyone reading this) want to discuss any aspects of Filestore, My email is my Hacker news login with at google.com appended.
(1) Filestore is a zonal product and provides high availability (HA) within the zone. We are considering adding regional regional HA, but it's not entirely clear what the use case is, as there is a cost & performance tradeoff. I'd be happy to chat with you in more depth to understand what you would like to see here.
(2) It's hard to be precise about what latencies _you_ will see, as the set of benchmarks and workloads run against NFS is so varied. Anything I say here, will be true for some workload, but undoubtably is bound to find someone who can find a workload where it's not true :). So, TL;DR: YMMV, best to test your workload when the beta launches soon (signup to be notified when it launches in a few weeks at https://goo.gl/forms/Hx6XkobcwNo5DoA33)
(3) We support close-to-open consistency, but it's really up to the client. See this Linux NFS FAQ for details: http://nfs.sourceforge.net/#faq_a8. TL;DR: If you're running a Linux version ≥ 2.4.20, and haven't mounted with the 'nocto' attribute, then yes, you'll see CTO.
(4) We don't have any plans for pub/sub integration on the roadmap, but I'd love to talk to you about the use case (see info about my email addr above).
(5) Yes, we have NFSv4 support on the roadmap. We launched with NFSv3, because it's still widely used, and in many cases customers won't see any appreciable performance delta from NFSv4. That said, we agree that it is very important, and NFSv4 can often help wih some metadata heavy workloads, and has a more extensive authentication and authorization model which some workloads require. Ultimately we made a time-to-market tradeoff.
(6) For backups, we support any of the standard commercial backup software that's certified against GCP and can backup NFSv3 shares. We don't have a native backup solution planned, but we do have snapshots on the roadmap, which in some cases are sufficient.
(7) As to implementation, sorry no, I cannot.
And to answer a few more questions from the nested comments so this is all in one place:
* Snapshots are on the near term roadmap, and are very high priority for us to get supported.
* SMB, extended attribute, and quota support are all on the roadmap, and like NFSv4 are high priority
Unfortunately I can't be more precise about when to expect these features.
We agree that this is an important use case, and is something we considered during the design. It is now supported by placing a Web Application Firewall in front of the App Engine application. We chose to limit the initial set of firewall features to IP address range blocking only — in part because that's sufficient to enable a WAF to front an App Engine Application.
-Tad Hunt
(Manager on the App Engine team that brought you this firewall)
Would love to - couldn't find your email in your profile tho.
To keep the UI simple, I'd like to specify a URL and specify the IP range(s) that are allowed to access each. Bonus points if I can in addition to web UI submit and change the map programmatically. The first allows for greater security for admin pages and similar internal uses. The second allows us to provision for our enterprise users dynamically, who are at well known IPs.
