sjar Chapter 435 Nebula·Rock is officially launched.
Chapter 435 Nebula·Rock is officially launched.
Nebula's launch time was set for 2 AM.
Jiang Feng didn't have any particular reason for choosing this time; he was just unsure of himself. He didn't even want to think about the possibility of the system crashing during the day, with hundreds of eyes watching.
At least it's quiet at 2 a.m., so if there's a problem, you can quietly fix it, and once it's fixed, you can pretend everything went smoothly the next day.
The system did not crash, and everything ran smoothly.
The migration script ran for forty minutes, eight minutes longer than the rehearsal, but it didn't skip any errors.
When all virtual machine instances were switched from the old platform to the new platform, the packet loss rate was less than 0.3%, which was an order of magnitude lower than the standard he set.
He stared at the curves representing system load on the monitoring screen. The curves rose smoothly and fell smoothly, so stable it didn't seem real.
The operations team leader, Lao Liu, stood up from his workstation, took off his headphones and hung them around his neck. He opened his mouth, then closed it again, finally saying only, "President Jiang, everything is running smoothly."
Jiang Feng nodded. He didn't stand up because his legs were numb.
In the first week after the launch, Jiang Feng copied the operational data onto an A4 sheet of paper and personally delivered it to Ling Yun's office.
The data isn't impressive—just over 500 registered users and 1,200 virtual machines created, mostly on free trial plans, with fewer than 20 paying users. However, the system runs at 100% capacity, with no unplanned downtime whatsoever.
While Ling Yun was looking at the data, Jiang Feng stood in front of the table, his hands supporting him on the edge of the table, his upper body leaning forward, like a student waiting for the teacher to grade his paper.
"Five hundred users," Ling Yun put down the paper, "Do you think that's too many or too few?"
"Too few."
"Less is better," Ling Yun said. "There are hardly any people in China who understand cloud computing right now. If you talk to them about virtual machines, they'll ask if a virtual machine is a fake computer. If you talk to them about elastic computing, they'll ask what elasticity means and whether it can be stretched out."
Jiang Feng smiled, then stopped.
"But there's one piece of data you didn't write down." Ling Yun turned the page over; the back was blank.
"What?"
User feedback.
Jiang Feng pulled a small notebook from his jacket pocket, flipped to the middle page, and cleared his throat. "Two university labs, one doing protein folding simulations, said our platform made computational tasks 30% faster than their own servers. And the other is an internet startup doing online accounting—"
"What's your name?"
"Walnut Accounting. Three people, working in a residential house in Shenzhen. They built their entire backend on PanShi, using our database, application server, and file storage. The founder posted on the forum yesterday, saying that they used to use a self-built server, which would crash during the peak month-end settlement period, losing a lot of users with each crash. Since using PanShi, it hasn't crashed."
Ling Yun leaned back in his chair and tapped his fingers three times on the table. "Have your people take a screenshot of this post and save it."
"It's already saved."
"Print it out in a larger size and hang it on your office wall."
Jiang Feng was taken aback. "Hang it on the wall?"
"Hang it on the wall," Lingyun said. "The first compliment from your first customer is more effective than any other compliment. Every time someone comes to visit, just point to that and say, 'This is our first customer.'"
Jiang Feng nodded and made a note in his notebook.
What about user retention for the free plan?
"The seven-day retention rate is about 30%," Jiang Feng turned a page, "and most of the churn occurs on the day of registration. Many people register, glance at the control panel, and leave without knowing how to use it."
"Is the console too complicated?"
"Yes. We think it's pretty simple, but people who haven't done operations and maintenance before would take a look and see that instances, images, security groups, VPCs—these are all new concepts. We're already working on a simplified version."
When will it be available online?
"next month."
Ling Yun picked up the A4 paper on the table, looked at it again, then took a pen from the pen holder and wrote a line of text under the data.
Don't rush to make money.
He pushed the paper back to Jiang Feng. Jiang Feng glanced down at the words, then folded the paper twice and put it in his pocket.
"President Ling, there's something I'd like to discuss with you."
"explain."
"I want to launch a 'Developer Support Program.' University labs, startups, and independent developers—as long as they pass the review, they'll get a six-month free trial. No limit." Jiang Feng slowed his speech slightly when he said the last three words, as if he were testing the waters.
Ling Yun remained silent, waiting for him to continue.
"Right now, nobody in China is doing public cloud. Alibaba is doing e-commerce, Tencent is doing social networking, nobody cares about this tough job," Jiang Feng rolled up his notebook into a tube, then unrolled it, then rolled it up again. "But as long as we run fast enough, by the time they realize what's happening, when everyone in the market talks about cloud services, the first thing they think of is Nebula. At that point, no matter how much money they throw at us, they won't be able to beat us."
Ling Yun stared at him for a long while. A car drove by outside the window, and the sound coming through the glass was muffled, like someone knocking on the wall in the basement.
"How much is the budget?"
"The first batch is three million."
"I've approved five million for you," Ling Yun picked up the phone and dialed an internal number. "Finance, I've approved five million for the developer support program at Nebula Technology. Go through the group budget."
Jiang Feng gripped the small notebook tightly, his knuckles turning slightly white.
"Is there anything else?"
"That's all."
"Then go get to work."
Jiang Feng walked to the door, opened it, and then turned around. His mouth opened and closed briefly. He then reached out and tapped the door frame twice with his knuckles before turning and leaving.
The footsteps in the corridor quickly fell silent. Ling Yun heard him greeting someone at the elevator entrance, his voice completely different from before, as if he were a different person—his voice was twice as loud, and every word had an upward inflection at the end.
The elevator rang, and the person left.
In the afternoon, a pinned post appeared on Nebula Technology's technical forum, titled "Nebula·Rock Officially Opens for Public Beta, Apply Now and Receive a Six-Month Free Credit Limit." The post was less than 500 words long, contained no adjectives, and included an application link at the bottom.
Within two hours, the page views exceeded two thousand.
That night, Lao Liu, the head of the operations and maintenance team, was on night shift. He made himself a bowl of noodles and was about to eat when an icon on his screen changed from green to orange. He glanced at it, then, without even finishing his noodles, picked up the phone and called Jiang Feng.
"President Jiang, the server load has reached the warning level. New registrations, all new registrations."
Jiang Feng's voice came from the other end of the phone, very calm. "Add more examples, until we can't handle it anymore."
"Where's the money?"
"President Ling approved it; there will be plenty."
Old Liu hung up the phone, adding instances one after another on the control panel while staring at the upward curve on the monitor screen. He muttered something under his breath, it was hard to tell if he was cursing or laughing.