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Equinix is acquiring Packet

packet.com

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Re: Equinix is acquiring Packet

#31

Post by technofiend »

pm90 wrote: post #18

I was hoping for Packet to be the next big bare metal provider so this is kinda sad at first glance. I’ve heard great things about them but haven’t used them; I was considering them for a side project of spinning up my own k8s cluster just because. GCP and AWS probably fit the needs of most established businesses. I know quite a few startups that use bare metals though since they cost a lot less. Plus, you have compl…

Considering their service offering I understand it, but they don't have pricing I'd consider hobbyist-friendly. So building a skunkswork project out of your pocket is prohibitively expensive. Having said that it's one of the few places that gives you enough control over your device and network to let you stand up origami infrastructure where you build a system that builds some systems that have a kubernetes cluster that hosts your app.

Re: Equinix is acquiring Packet

#32

Post by DetectiveX »

dilyevsky wrote: post #29
pm90 wrote: post #18

I was hoping for Packet to be the next big bare metal provider so this is kinda sad at first glance. I’ve heard great things about them but haven’t used them; I was considering them for a side project of spinning up my own k8s cluster just because. GCP and AWS probably fit the needs of most established businesses. I know quite a few startups that use bare metals though since they cost a lot less. Plus, you have compl…

Packet’s pricing doesn’t seem worth it to me compared to GCP - looking at their list prices they seem to be priced just 20% less for compute (actually same if you get e2s) so unless I’m missing something seems like very niche offering...

They also offer discount pricing for long term contracts and etc. But depends on your use case among other things on whether a long term commitment makes sense.

Re: Equinix is acquiring Packet

#34

Post by ljsmith93 »

ksec wrote: post #20

So Equinx is stepping into Cloud Hosting? What makes Packet any difference to, Linode, DO, Upcloud, Vultr, Hivelocity, and many others? Where the first few are bringing Bare Metal to its offering along with Database aaS.

Equinix has long been in the cloud game. Most public clouds have at least some presence in their data centers or using their global network backbone. I do believe this is their first venture into direct to consumer cloud sales assuming they retain Packet's business model.

Re: Equinix is acquiring Packet

#35

Post by swyx »

Eikon wrote: post #25
swyx wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

hi I'm a mere frontend developer who doesnt do much at the network layer - do you mind ELIFEDing to me what exactly Packet got right? What's the big deal about automated bare metal? is it somehow a lot faster? cheaper? than virtualization? Is Packet 100% for edge computing or is Equinix kinda repurposing it in this acquisition for its edge computing strategy? I feel like something that is so obvious to you is not obv…

Well, bare metal is usually way cheaper for way more performance at the cost of often being less managed. What packet got right is that you get the same functionality that you could usually only get in colocation environments using high-end networking equipment. You may want to look up on the Internet for “BGP” and “Autonomous System” to learn more.

ha funny enough i have done a networks 101 course so am familiar with BGP and ASes. just feel like thats a big leap to Packet which is much more cutting edge.

thanks for the confirmation!

Re: Equinix is acquiring Packet

#36

Post by swyx »

shaklee3 wrote: post #24
swyx wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

hi I'm a mere frontend developer who doesnt do much at the network layer - do you mind ELIFEDing to me what exactly Packet got right? What's the big deal about automated bare metal? is it somehow a lot faster? cheaper? than virtualization? Is Packet 100% for edge computing or is Equinix kinda repurposing it in this acquisition for its edge computing strategy? I feel like something that is so obvious to you is not obv…

Here's the way I see it: there are a lot of customers who don't need all of the AWS services. They also would prefer to be running on bare metal for performance reasons, and to have slightly more control over their application. I know AWS with the nitro instances are closing that gap, but packet was around before they had those. Also, their provisioning software is excellent. From the time you choose to deploy, it ta…

ok awesome. minor follow up - why do customers care about the newer instances like cavium arm processors? again is it a pure performance thing? or they are extremely optimized for some kind of workload?

maybe i'm so used to OSes abstracting things that I completely lack knowledge about what baremetal choices can do for me. this is a little scary.

Re: Equinix is acquiring Packet

#37

Post by dilyevsky »

DetectiveX wrote: post #32
dilyevsky wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Packet’s pricing doesn’t seem worth it to me compared to GCP - looking at their list prices they seem to be priced just 20% less for compute (actually same if you get e2s) so unless I’m missing something seems like very niche offering...

They also offer discount pricing for long term contracts and etc. But depends on your use case among other things on whether a long term commitment makes sense.

Well so do every other cloud vendor ;) - committed use discount on gcp is 30%

Re: Equinix is acquiring Packet

#38

Post by DetectiveX »

dilyevsky wrote: post #37
DetectiveX wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They also offer discount pricing for long term contracts and etc. But depends on your use case among other things on whether a long term commitment makes sense.

Well so do every other cloud vendor ;) - committed use discount on gcp is 30%

Depends of course peoples needs for cloud. Some people need the power of bare metal and that's why most cloud providers are moving to making that an option.

Re: Equinix is acquiring Packet

#39

Post by dilyevsky »

DetectiveX wrote: post #38
dilyevsky wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well so do every other cloud vendor ;) - committed use discount on gcp is 30%

Depends of course peoples needs for cloud. Some people need the power of bare metal and that's why most cloud providers are moving to making that an option.

Probably mostly for marketing purposes (just to say they have it). Kvm/nitro penalty is within single percentage points these days so 99% of folks out there won’t even know the difference.
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