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Reclaiming the lost art of Linux server administration

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Re: Reclaiming the lost art of Linux server administration

#331

Post by bcrosby95 »

Underphil wrote: post #215
bcrosby95 wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah. We run servers into the ground where I work. We have around 20 of them. Average age is around 11 years old. Oldest is around 18.

Holy crap. I work in a relatively young sector and we retire them no later than 5 years. Do you mind sharing the type of business you work for?

It's a smallish, family ran company. We don't have any particular sector, and historically have done both business and consumer software. Currently we're primarily working on a game - where many of us definitely feel like a fish out of water - but we have a few old websites and apps that pay the bills.

Everything has been bootstrapped going back to around 1999.

Re: Reclaiming the lost art of Linux server administration

#332

Post by hackerfromthefu »

bamboozled wrote: post #316
lrvick wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You forget the wonders of TLS when you control both ends.

I'm not talking about people snooping your data, I'm talking about a configuration error or exploit which gives people access to your information. Maybe I am naive, but I think the chances of this happening on a cloud based service like Dropbox are going to be a lot lower.

It used to be the running joke that another large commercial database was just found unsecured on AWS! It's not as common in the last year or so which is a good sign!

Re: Reclaiming the lost art of Linux server administration

#333

Post by Lamad123 »

TacticalCoder wrote: post #74

A very weird thread that degenerated into: "PaaS vs self-hosted/self-owned hardware" . I'm pretty sure most people sysadmin'ing their Linux servers are actually doing it with rented dedicated servers. TFA btw specifically mentions: "don't manage physical hardware" . Big companies like Hetzner and OVH have hundreds of thousands of servers and they're not the only players in that space. They don't take care of "everyth…

How good is their 50 euro package? I wanna try it just for fun and dicking around.

Re: Reclaiming the lost art of Linux server administration

#334

Post by awslattery »

Nextgrid wrote: post #224
mwcampbell wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would be more worried about violating the ISP's terms of service. Running a business based on that seems pretty precarious.

What’s the worst that can realistically happen?

If you don't have another provider option, you stand to lose Internet as a utility for your residence, which many would consider a pretty poor situation.

Re: Reclaiming the lost art of Linux server administration

#335

Post by Ericson2314 »

SkipperCat wrote: post #2

Time is money, and the more time I spend on infrastructure, the less time I spend on product. And thus is born the incredible demand of infrastructure as a service. Thankfully one person's cloud is another person's on prem infrastructure so sysadmin skills will always be in demand. From my perspective in enterprise computing, I now see people taking 2 paths. One where they become super deep sysadmins and work on infr…

But the cloud is...full of crap that wastes ton of my time. Simple ass server saves a lot of time.

The cloud is also too damn expensive.

People are getting ripped off big time and don't want to be embarrassed by the truth, plane and simple.

Re: Reclaiming the lost art of Linux server administration

#336

Post by Lamad123 »

daveevad wrote: post #226
mark242 wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Is cloud administration less time consuming than system administration? Infinitely, and if you look at it from a startup lens it only makes sense. One needs to point only at the recent log4j incident. This is obviously a gigantic black swan event, but even just ongoing security patching at the OS level can be a full-time gig. There is absolutely no substitution for being able to ship code to a platform that just ru…

> in the future, 100% of the code that you write will be business logic How much business logic is there across all businesses? I'm aware of a joke at Google about how it could reduce 90% of the employees without any impact on the business.

The remaining useful 10% probably only does the "mundane" server administration that nobody wants to do!

Re: Reclaiming the lost art of Linux server administration

#337

Post by viraptor »

willjp wrote: post #317
viraptor wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's what the bare metal server didn't come with: API access for managing configuration, version updates/rollbacks, and ACL. A solution for unlimited scheduled snapshots without affecting performance. Close to immediate replacement of identical setup within seconds of failure. API-managed VPC/VPN built in. No underlying OS management. (Probably forgot a few...) I get that going bare metal is a good solution for som…

I'm not sure, I guess it depends what you're looking for. I'm a hobbyist, with no real professional experience in server admin, so I am probably missing some important things. But most of this can be replicated with ZFS and FreeBSD jails (or on linux, BTRFS and LXC containers). >> 1. A solution for unlimited scheduled snapshots without affecting performance. You can very comfortably have instant and virtually unlimit…

> You can very comfortably have instant and virtually unlimited snapshots with zfs/jails

Yes, but that both requires manual scripting it and remains local to the server. Compare to scheduled RDS backups which go to S3 with all its consistency guarantees.

> There is a lot of choices for configuration management (saltstack, chef, ansible, ..)

Sure, those are an improvement over doing things manually. But for the recovery they can do only so much. Basically think how fast can you restore service if your rack goes up in flames.

> I don't know what this is, but I'm curious and looking it up :D

It means - who deals with kernel, SSL, storage, etc. updates, who updates the firmware, who monitors SMART alerts. How much time do you spend on that machine which is not 100% related to the database behaviour.

I wasn't recommending everyone use RDS. If your use case is ok with a laptop-level reliability, go for it! You simply can't compare the cost of RDS to a monthly cost of a colo server - they're massively different things.

Re: Reclaiming the lost art of Linux server administration

#338

Post by viraptor »

senko wrote: post #160
viraptor wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's what the bare metal server didn't come with: API access for managing configuration, version updates/rollbacks, and ACL. A solution for unlimited scheduled snapshots without affecting performance. Close to immediate replacement of identical setup within seconds of failure. API-managed VPC/VPN built in. No underlying OS management. (Probably forgot a few...) I get that going bare metal is a good solution for som…

> Here's what the bare metal server didn't come with: [bunch of stuff I don't need] Exactly. Imagine paying for all that when all you need is bare metal. Now imagine paying for all that just because you've read on the Internet that it's best practice and that's what the big guys do. Way back the best practice was what Microsoft, Oracle or Cisco wanted you to buy. Now it's what Amazon wants you to buy. Buy what you ne…

> bunch of stuff I don't need

And that's fine. People should make choices like that. I was objecting to saying people paid X for RDS and others paid Y for one bare metal server. Those are not in the same category, there's no point comparing those prices without a lot more information.

Re: Reclaiming the lost art of Linux server administration

#339

Post by lstodd »

thequux wrote: post #261
glutamate wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://www.hetzner.com/dedicated-rootserver/matrix-ax

For €400/mo all in, split between my friend and I, I've got an air-conditioned office at the local business park with the back room stuffed with ~10 servers, redundant internet links with BGP announcements of our /24 so failover is transparent, and all of that is 10 minutes walk from home. Granted, the setup is more than a bit YOLO; the servers are in two piles rather than a proper rack and the fiber to the servers i…

> Also, if you think that the "professional" hosts do any better, consider that that Hetzner box you linked is a desktop machine shoved onto a rack shelf.

This.

People think "professional" and act like it hides the fact that it's all the same people running stuff on a shoestring budget.

That $50/mo boxes in Hetzner tend to stay up for years it a testament to that there isn't any black magic or huge costs to keep them running.

Re: Reclaiming the lost art of Linux server administration

#340

Post by hiptobecubic »

acoard wrote: post #89
rank0 wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have a static IP? I have a homelab too but getting “enterprise grade” service from comcast seems to be my biggest barrier to scaling without leaning on aws.

Dynamic DNS (dDNS) works here[0]. You have free services like no-ip, and also most paid domain registrars support this. I know both Namecheap and AWS Route 53 support it if you want it at your own domain. Essentially, it's a cron curling with an API key from the host machine, that's it. Works great in my experience.

I use this. It's fabulous.
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