FedEx to close data centers, retire mainframes • Hacker News Board

Re: FedEx to close data centers, retire mainframes

#361

Post by amluto » Tue, Jul 05, 2022, 5:30 PM UTC

tbrownaw wrote: post #218

sofixa wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not only about size, there's also workloads to take into consideration. Take FedEx, their operations are highly dynamic - per day but also per period. The number of packages sent, and being transported, vary greatly between a random Tuesday 15:00 and the weeks before holidays. In such a scenario, with your own infrastructure, you need to overprovision, by a lot, to be able to handle the heaviest load possible, a…

Someone, somewhere, has to actually buy the computers. "Only pay for what you use" isn't magic, whatever fraction actually gets used (across all customers) has to end up paying for the whole computer. Taxis are "only pay for what you use", but owning your own car is often cheaper (even if you only use it, what, 1/12 of the day?) and more convenient.

This is all true, except that the markup for a rental can be so high that owning something, even for fairly low utilization, can be less expensive.

Re: FedEx to close data centers, retire mainframes

#362

Post by marcosdumay » Tue, Jul 05, 2022, 5:31 PM UTC

thdxr wrote: post #214

kragen wrote: post #19

Ultimately companies that abdicate their informatics operations like this will give their profits to their data-center operators, who will be empowered to charge them whatever price they want. Because what's their BATNA? Migrating from Azure to AWS when Microsoft doesn't want to let them? Renting your information infrastructure is a great way to reduce startup costs, but down the road, that information infrastructure…

it was exactly this kind of thinking that lead to Japanese automakers crushing American ones vendor relationships do not have to be hostile. AWS has been around for a while and has never raised prices, some services have gotten 99% cheaper. yes there's some hypothetical day where they say "tricked you, all that stuff about margin being opportunity was a lie" and they try to extract value short term while burning thei…

Hum... The US business all already converted from the GP's mindset, and the US automakers still need to be rescued from time to time.

I'm betting it is not this kind of thinking exactly that causes the problem.

(Oh, and do take a look at the vertical consolidation of the Japanese industry.)

Re: FedEx to close data centers, retire mainframes

#363

Post by bombcar » Tue, Jul 05, 2022, 5:31 PM UTC

jjoonathan wrote: post #298

sjtgraham wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bodybuilders make progress though :)

Isn't there a ceiling? Or if we lived as long as those turtles, would you go to the gym and see spheres of muscle?

Some of the extreme pictures I've seen look like people that can't move, let alone lift, but I guess it works.

Re: FedEx to close data centers, retire mainframes

#364

Post by wvh » Tue, Jul 05, 2022, 5:34 PM UTC

Here we are, meticulously crafting open-source programming languages, libraries, operating and distributed systems, only for people to squander the knowledge and freedom on closed ecosystems like Apple's and Google's, and, in the data-center world, the top three cloud behemoths. Assuming typical lock-in, this won't save anything in the long run, nor help with resilience and freedom of choice in the market.

Re: FedEx to close data centers, retire mainframes

#365

Post by Shorel » Tue, Jul 05, 2022, 5:35 PM UTC

Not saving, just giving those $400m to AWS or Azure, over some amount of time =)

Re: FedEx to close data centers, retire mainframes

#366

Post by jordemort » Tue, Jul 05, 2022, 5:35 PM UTC

Is there a website where I can bet on the outcome of this?

I've seen lots of companies announce their intentions to move off of their mainframes, but I'm not sure I've ever actually seen one pull it off.

Re: FedEx to close data centers, retire mainframes

#367

Post by bombcar » Tue, Jul 05, 2022, 5:35 PM UTC

SoftTalker wrote: post #272

bluGill wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You need to deal with overhead. Nobody does their own HVAC in house because you rarely need them, and would have to pay to train people on that despite them not using it. In some cases you can even get a discount. Utilities are. Big customer of tree trimming, the companies doing that work can give a great deal because the utility doesn't care that they take a week off after a storm for high profit margin consumer tri…

Lots of places have their own HVAC techs in house, if they have enough HVAC work to justify it. Even if it's not their core line of business. They will do whatever costs less, +/- some amount of subjective "hassle factor."

Especially when it's "line critical" to their business, or if the person can do other things as well.

Larger hotels often have dedicated staff for things like HVAC, etc, because the importance of getting things fixed quick if possible is worth the cost of having someone onsite/available.

And you see similar things with colleges, etc; they often have a maintenance deportment that can be pretty large (though no doubt they've spun it off and brought it back in-house for the same "change is progress" reasons).

Re: FedEx to close data centers, retire mainframes

#368

Post by marcosdumay » Tue, Jul 05, 2022, 5:36 PM UTC

JamesAdir wrote: post #227

mhh__ wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mainframe = locked in to IBM, is probably the logic.

How is it any different than being locked to AWS/Azure/Oracle/Google?

The lock-in is less severe on AWS/Azure/Oracle/Google.

Re: FedEx to close data centers, retire mainframes

#369

Post by jeroenhd » Tue, Jul 05, 2022, 5:39 PM UTC

jchook wrote: post #230

Interesting story as I recall Bank of America saving 5x that amount per year by doing the exact opposite move. https://www.businessinsider.com/bank-of-americas-350-million...

The difference may be that they're sticking with their own data center but they don't have a mainframe setup. Mainframes come with expensive, locked out hardware, expensive maintenance, expensive experts, you name it.

With modern open source tooling, ridiculously powerful graphics cards, easily accessible FPGAs and free data center hosting software like OpenStack, Kubernetes, and glusterfs you can replicate many of the features that made mainframes enticing many years ago.

It'll require a heck of a lot of work to get the same performance out of a custom built solution, but long term it's probably cheaper than relying on IBM.

I doubt that they'll be saving any money by moving to the cloud unless they're horribly inefficient with their contracts right now. Just moving away from mainframes alone should save a significant buck, but if they were planning on restructuring their digital infrastructure anyway then now is probably the best time.

Re: FedEx to close data centers, retire mainframes

#370

Post by spookthesunset » Tue, Jul 05, 2022, 5:42 PM UTC

jeffbee wrote: post #201

pid-1 wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That seems to be a common take on HN - cloud is too expensive. I'm curious whether the folks claiming that have any data center ops experience. Because, personally, I'd rather retire than deal with Dell, HP, Cisco, fibers, cooling issues, physical security, hardware failling... And that's just the hardware. Then you still need to pay VMWare for a decent virtualization platform, monitoring tools, etc.... Seriously, no…

1000% this. HN loves to talk about Dropbox. I spent most of my (short, praise God) career at Dropbox diagnosing a fleet of dodgy database servers we bought from HPE. Turns out they were full of little flecks of metal inside. Thousands of em, full of iron filings. You think that kind of thing happens when you are an AWS customer? If you are sophisticated enough to engage an ODM, build your own facilities, and put hvac…

> You think that kind of thing happens when you are an AWS customer?

You bet it does! But as the AWS customer you'd never notice because some poor ops dude in AWS-land gets to call up the vendor and bitch at them instead of you. It ain't your problem!