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Is a billion dollars worth of server lying on the ground?

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Re: Is a billion dollars worth of server lying on the ground?

#161

Post by npsimons »

viraptor wrote: post #10

He kind of touches on this in point IV, but never mentioned specifically: the cost comparison is not AWS vs ovh. It's fragment-of-EC2 vs ovh. If you need a predefined small number of VMs and no other functionality, it would be silly to go with AWS. But on the other hand, if you want a set of servers of a given class spawning on demand, with traffic coming in via load balancers, with integrated certificate and DNS man…

> You'll pay more than the price difference for someone to implement all of that from scratch.

I also think the "pay someone to set this up" factor is underestimated. Person time cost eclipsed computer time cost a long time ago. If you've got the market demand to need that kind of infrastructure, you're almost certainly operating at a scale where you can afford to dish out the extra dough because it will reduce downtime and overhead enough to make the ROI worth it.

I'm not an expert in this (I'm just a code monkey who works with scientists, and side hustles as a small time sysadmin), but reading books like "Release It!" and reading blogs (especially DevOps, as I'm looking at getting into that) gives me the impression that if someone could reduce their costs while still getting the value AWS gives, they'd be doing it. I mean, maybe it's a well-kept secret (especially if it gives a market advantage), but if it's so easy, I'd think everyone would be doing it, and AWS would be out of business.

Edit: I concede that startups probably don't need AWS; what I'm thinking of above is big, old, established companies that believe "no one was ever fired for buying AWS." But I do believe that you have to have smart, motivated people in order to grow while staying lean, and just because we hear the survivor stories of startups that do, doesn't mean there aren't dozens that die because inexperienced devs though they could do better than AWS, and were proven wrong.

Re: Is a billion dollars worth of server lying on the ground?

#162

Post by throwaway894345 »

smolder wrote: post #132
ndomer wrote: post #12

One big thing not mentioned here: the massive collection of managed services AWS gives you at no cost. The biggest example is probably IAM, which makes it easy to control which servers can take what actions on which other services. And can also be integrated directly into external tools like Vault. Want to use service discovery? No need to set up Consul/Istio/etc., just use the managed service. Same with load balance…

> At no cost That's so ridiculous I'm not sure how to reply or even interpret your comment.

I can't tell if your comment is a particularly rude way of picking the nit that "nothing is free, the cost (e.g., of IAM) is built into other services" or if you really find it absurd that the nominal price of many AWS services is $0 or something else entirely.

Re: Is a billion dollars worth of server lying on the ground?

#163

Post by NoOneNew »

disgruntledphd2 wrote: post #126
NoOneNew wrote: post #116

Um, the real reason CFOs go for cloudserver solutions is tax reasons. The tax breaks for "leasing" instead of owning, are a cheap way of an exec looking good to a board (plus it's easier to do creative accounting). I promise you, this accounts for easily 70% of equipment leasing/renting agreements, no matter the industry. Construction, printing, food industry, etc. They get a full tax break on the lease and on the se…

I've assumed this for a while, because so many companies appear to be doing this - do you have any links to the tax savings as I'd like to understand this in more detail?

A good base search would be "lease vs buy equipment tax benefits" for your country/state/city, just to get your feet wet. There are different incentives for different areas. From there, you should be able to google fu around for more information/tips/tricks. It's slightly not-straightforward stuff, but it's not terribly complicated after a little bit of reading. However, there's a reason why tax code books are so dense. When in doubt, ask someone qualified that's smarter than me, CPA or whatever else accountants get for certs.

Re: Is a billion dollars worth of server lying on the ground?

#164

Post by ksec »

throwaway894345 wrote: post #156
wazoox wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then you remember that for years, Stack Overflow ran out of a couple of well administered servers. YAGNI. KISS. People forget the basics because "infrastructure astronautics" is fun, and it probably helps make a beautiful resume, too.

I would guess SO had a relatively small number of employees and their servers were running a pretty straight-forward CRUD app and a database. Comparing that to the heterogeneous workloads that large organizations deal with is a bit silly. No doubt there's still a lot of fat to trim in those large organizations, but trimming that fat is rarely their largest opportunity (much to the chagrin of those of us who like simp…

It is the World top 50 site by Alexa.

Comparatively speaking even compare them to the same CRUD app and DB, most are using 5 to 10x more servers with 1/2 to 1/5 of the traffic.

Re: Is a billion dollars worth of server lying on the ground?

#165

Post by wazoox »

throwaway894345 wrote: post #156
wazoox wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then you remember that for years, Stack Overflow ran out of a couple of well administered servers. YAGNI. KISS. People forget the basics because "infrastructure astronautics" is fun, and it probably helps make a beautiful resume, too.

I would guess SO had a relatively small number of employees and their servers were running a pretty straight-forward CRUD app and a database. Comparing that to the heterogeneous workloads that large organizations deal with is a bit silly. No doubt there's still a lot of fat to trim in those large organizations, but trimming that fat is rarely their largest opportunity (much to the chagrin of those of us who like simp…

I was thinking more of the ordinary startup than of large organizations.

Re: Is a billion dollars worth of server lying on the ground?

#166

Post by ksec »

user5994461 wrote: post #95
jrochkind1 wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Huh, making a manual AWS stack 50 times more expensive than a heroku setup seems like a real trick to me! I'm used to heroku being more expensive than running it yourself -- as I would expect, since you're paying them for a lot of management.

Heroku is both incredibly cheap and incredibly expensive. It's only $7/month to deploy a web application. More if you want some of the paid features and a database instance. It all works out of the box with instant deployment out of the box, it's fantastic. Then it suddenly goes $50 more per gigabyte of RAM, which makes it massively expensive for any serious workload. It's crazy hot much they can try to charge, makes…

Well Heroku is running on top of AWS. So you are basically paying an extra premium on top of the premium from AWS.

Although whether it is worth it depends on your view.

( I keep thinking SalesForces is just not a good fit for Heroku, they should have sold it to MS or Google )

Re: Is a billion dollars worth of server lying on the ground?

#167

Post by someguydave »

user5994461 wrote: post #107
someguydave wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is probably the real reason for bundled cloud provider popularity. It’s way easier for competent engineers to cut out the brigade of uninformed and cheap managers of the IT budget when you distill your specs into an AWS credit card charge. For a small startup of competent people this is unneeded, but those companies typically succeed or fail into mediocrity eventually.

It's only 80% of the reason. The other 80% is all the time wasted dealing in the physical world, moving and plugging servers. You could have the most competent engineer fully backed by the company, it's still going to take weeks to procure a goddamn server because it takes time to fight DELL and ship to the colo and have remote hands put it in place and set it up and a thousand more things.

for sure, the friction of managing physical servers is much higher. it would be worthwhile if a company commits to managing those physical assets well, which very few would commit to doing

Re: Is a billion dollars worth of server lying on the ground?

#168

Post by throwaway894345 »

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #43
oriesdan wrote: post #7

I think the main reason they can afford pricing their services that high is because of peer pressure - probably itself the result of clever marketing, or that would be a really happy coincidence. I've worked in many startups now, several of them where I was the first (and for a while, only) developer and had to decide on the infrastructure. Each time I was going with OVH, and each time the CEO was trying to push for…

I've worked as a contractor for a CEO for two companies, in both he pushed for a full migration to AWS. Would not be surprised if he got a kickback from AWS. Amazon is pushing AWS pretty hard in the C-level, I don't know if you've ever followed one of their certifications or landing pages, but they do their marketing really well. Anyway, I do think a platform like App Engine / Beanstalk and other quick / easy / no se…

In my mind, one of the big (but seldomly discussed) pros for using AWS and especially their high-level services (especially WRT containers) is that they allow rank-and-file developers to do a lot more of the work that was traditionally considered 'ops'. This is advantageous because developer teams don't need to coordinate with a single ops team when they need something, which allows the whole organization to be more agile. Another advantage is that you don't have to hire and develop a high functioning ops competency in your business--you can outsource much of that to AWS and focus your time/resources on more valuable opportunities (in general, I wish the on-prem side of the debate would acknowledge opportunity costs in their talking points).

Re: Is a billion dollars worth of server lying on the ground?

#169

Post by jrochkind1 »

user5994461 wrote: post #95
jrochkind1 wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Huh, making a manual AWS stack 50 times more expensive than a heroku setup seems like a real trick to me! I'm used to heroku being more expensive than running it yourself -- as I would expect, since you're paying them for a lot of management.

Heroku is both incredibly cheap and incredibly expensive. It's only $7/month to deploy a web application. More if you want some of the paid features and a database instance. It all works out of the box with instant deployment out of the box, it's fantastic. Then it suddenly goes $50 more per gigabyte of RAM, which makes it massively expensive for any serious workload. It's crazy hot much they can try to charge, makes…

If it saves you a FTE or two from managing your own infrastructure, there is a lot of headroom before it's a losing proposition.

Which is what I think the OP misses discussing in as much detail as they could with AWS -- are there ways AWS is saving some customers developer/ops staff time over the cheaper alternatives? Cause that is often more expensive than the resources themselves. Could just be "because that's what we're familiar with" (and that's not illegitimate as cost savings), but could be actually better dashboard UIs, APIs, integrations, whatever.

[I am currently investigating heroku for our low-traffic tiny-team app, after we had our sysadmin/devops position eliminated. The performance characteristics are surprising me negatively (I can't figure out how anyone gets by with a `standard` instead of `performance` dyno, even for a small low-traffic app; currently writing up my findings for public consumption), but the value of the management they are doing so we don't have to is meeting and exceeding my expectations. (We currently manage our own AWS resources directly, so I know what it is we can't do sustainably anymore with the eliminated position, and the value we're getting from not having to do it).]

Re: Is a billion dollars worth of server lying on the ground?

#170

Post by throwaway894345 »

ksec wrote: post #164
throwaway894345 wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would guess SO had a relatively small number of employees and their servers were running a pretty straight-forward CRUD app and a database. Comparing that to the heterogeneous workloads that large organizations deal with is a bit silly. No doubt there's still a lot of fat to trim in those large organizations, but trimming that fat is rarely their largest opportunity (much to the chagrin of those of us who like simp…

It is the World top 50 site by Alexa. Comparatively speaking even compare them to the same CRUD app and DB, most are using 5 to 10x more servers with 1/2 to 1/5 of the traffic.

> Comparatively speaking even compare them to the same CRUD app and DB, most are using 5 to 10x more servers with 1/2 to 1/5 of the traffic.

No doubt, but how large are those other CRUD app organizations? Do they have a staff that is 20x the size all trying to coordinate deployments on the same handful of servers? What are their opportunity costs? Is trimming down server expenses really their most valuable opportunity? No doubt that SO has a great Ops capability, but it's not the only variable at play.

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