Wow, I had forgotten what it's like to work in a world where I have to manage this drudgery myself. This is exactly why I build on App Engine.
Before all the haters reach for the downvote button: I have apps that routinely go from 2-3 requests/sec to bursts of 500+ requests/sec for hours at a stretch and the only difference is that my bill is a few tens of dollars higher than usual. And there's no reason it couldn't handle 100X that load as long as I keep paying the bill.
You have a point, but App Engine has the following issues:
- lock-in (migrating your apps to another platform will be extremely hard)
- Less control over your backend
IMO these two issues are enough to keep most of the app developers away from App Engine.
This is foolishness. Your biggest risk is that your product will fail in the marketplace, not that for mysterious-and-unnamed-reasons you will suddenly have to migrate off the platform. As far as "control" goes - there is nothing about appengine that prevents you from running specialized application code in other parts of the cloud. But it's a pretty exotic need.
no reason it couldn't handle 100X that load as long as I keep paying the bill
You might be surprised what kind of limits you hit and what your invoice looks like when you actually hit 50k reqs/sec for any length of time.
Cloud platforms have bottlenecks, too. The vendors usually handle that by making it comically expensive for you to exceed a certain threshold ("financial back pressure") and/or by throttling you outright.
I really would be surprised. I'm pretty familiar with GAE's limits and pricing structure. Granted, 50k requests/sec is severe, but they would have to actually go out and write special billing code just to charge me more if I hit that rate. I don't see that happening.
Google lifts these limits when you ask. It has come up numerous times on the mailing list. I think it fair to take their explanation in that document literally.
Before all the haters reach for the downvote button: I have apps that routinely go from 2-3 requests/sec to bursts of 500+ requests/sec for hours at a stretch and the only difference is that my bill is a few tens of dollars higher than usual. And there's no reason it couldn't handle 100X that load as long as I keep paying the bill.