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37signals Leaves the Cloud

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Re: 37signals Leaves the Cloud

#11

Post by brenogazzola »

senttoschool wrote: post #8

So their AWS bill is $500k/year. Hire one person to buy, configure, manage hardware is what? $250k/year? And is this self-hosting more reliable than AWS? For an email service, you'd think that you want the most reliable host. Weird.

Their RDS and ES are 500k. They still need to pay for EC2, S3 and any other services they might be using, like ELB and Elasticache. So probably higher than that.

He also did not mention if they are going to self-host, colocate, or rent bare metal in a more traditional host (like softlayer). Probably colocate as I think that’s how they used to run?

Both your points are still valid though.

Re: 37signals Leaves the Cloud

#12

Post by senttoschool »

brenogazzola wrote: post #11
senttoschool wrote: post #8

So their AWS bill is $500k/year. Hire one person to buy, configure, manage hardware is what? $250k/year? And is this self-hosting more reliable than AWS? For an email service, you'd think that you want the most reliable host. Weird.

Their RDS and ES are 500k. They still need to pay for EC2, S3 and any other services they might be using, like ELB and Elasticache. So probably higher than that. He also did not mention if they are going to self-host, colocate, or rent bare metal in a more traditional host (like softlayer). Probably colocate as I think that’s how they used to run? Both your points are still valid though.

So they'd need to hire a person to setup and manage hardware. And another person to setup and manage RDS, ES, etc.

If it's $250k each, that's already $500k. Unless they can find someone who can do both for... $300k?

I don't know.

He doesn't provide enough details to make the math work.

Re: 37signals Leaves the Cloud

#13

Post by senttoschool »

mattbrewsbytes wrote: post #9

Very valid points. Its hard to describe the complexities and weird error or latency or other conditions that happen in cloud environments. OPs people kinda shrug and ask that you essentially turn it off and back on again and that usually resolves the issue at that time. There are so many abstraction layers when all the infrastructure is software run and I bet a lot of those introduce performance degradation. Another…

>Its hard to describe the complexities and weird error or latency or other conditions that happen in cloud environments.

As oppose to complexities of self-host using self purchased hardware?

Re: 37signals Leaves the Cloud

#14

Post by 0xblinq »

senttoschool wrote: post #8

So their AWS bill is $500k/year. Hire one person to buy, configure, manage hardware is what? $250k/year? And is this self-hosting more reliable than AWS? For an email service, you'd think that you want the most reliable host. Weird.

Yeah... I don't agree at all with their conclusions about running your own stuff "not that complicated".

Sure, it is not "that complicated" for basic stuff, simple sites, hobby projects or overall quick'n dirty solutions because you're under a budget, as with everything.

Doing infrastructure properly, with SLAs and a very high level of availability and redundancy (both in systems, and in people with the know-how) is incredibly complicated in my opinion.

I bet what they're going to save on the the Cloud provider is going to be spent (and probably even more) in salaries, if they keep the same levels of service.

Specially true considering they pay pretty good salaries.

Re: 37signals Leaves the Cloud

#15

Post by mch82 »

Nextgrid wrote: post #6
klelatti wrote: post #4

Could anyone expand on why it makes sense for Netflix to use AWS so extensively?

The bulk of the media is served from appliances they give out to ISPs, so their AWS costs might be reasonable. It's also a huge company and a massive distributed system, so moving that off from AWS is an insane amount of effort and there might be legitimate benefits from AWS' management and autoscaling layer that aren't as valuable for 37Signals which runs simpler, monolithic systems.

Additionally, Netflix falls into one category of website DHH writes about: unpredictable, significant bursts of traffic. When they publish Tiger King during the pandemic there’s a spike in streaming no one could have predicted. When people finish the show it goes away. The arrival time of the next breakout show is likely uncertain, even if it can be modeled using a statistical distribution.

Re: 37signals Leaves the Cloud

#16

Post by kmos17 »

senttoschool wrote: post #8

So their AWS bill is $500k/year. Hire one person to buy, configure, manage hardware is what? $250k/year? And is this self-hosting more reliable than AWS? For an email service, you'd think that you want the most reliable host. Weird.

Managing AWS services also requires staffing, so most likely these would be the same people in a small organization. Self hosting in my experience can be very reliable if you over provision redundant enterprise grade hardware, once it’s running you can get 6-10 years of usable service life. The hardware cost itself is negligible even more so when amortized over a long life cycle.

Re: 37signals Leaves the Cloud

#17

Post by 988747 »

senttoschool wrote: post #12
brenogazzola wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Their RDS and ES are 500k. They still need to pay for EC2, S3 and any other services they might be using, like ELB and Elasticache. So probably higher than that. He also did not mention if they are going to self-host, colocate, or rent bare metal in a more traditional host (like softlayer). Probably colocate as I think that’s how they used to run? Both your points are still valid though.

So they'd need to hire a person to setup and manage hardware. And another person to setup and manage RDS, ES, etc. If it's $250k each, that's already $500k. Unless they can find someone who can do both for... $300k? I don't know. He doesn't provide enough details to make the math work.

$250k is Sillicon Valley rate. In Europe similarly skilled people earn less than that, typically $80k.

Re: 37signals Leaves the Cloud

#18

Post by Nextgrid »

senttoschool wrote: post #8

So their AWS bill is $500k/year. Hire one person to buy, configure, manage hardware is what? $250k/year? And is this self-hosting more reliable than AWS? For an email service, you'd think that you want the most reliable host. Weird.

> Hire one person to buy, configure, manage hardware is what?

This point gets raised every single time bare-metal comes up for discussion and at this point I'm not sure if people are legitimately unaware or if there are hidden agendas at play.

There are plenty of providers out there who will handle the logistics for you with an interface similar to AWS EC2 - ask for server and get SSH access in minutes/days/weeks (depending if it's an off-the-shelf or custom build).

From there, your existing DevOps guy (which you must have to navigate AWS' complexity) can take over.

It's only at either extremely large scale or very unusual requirements that managing your own hardware makes sense. Until then, you will never be able to beat the economies of scale of managed bare-metal providers.

Re: 37signals Leaves the Cloud

#19

Post by pmontra »

988747 wrote: post #17
senttoschool wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So they'd need to hire a person to setup and manage hardware. And another person to setup and manage RDS, ES, etc. If it's $250k each, that's already $500k. Unless they can find someone who can do both for... $300k? I don't know. He doesn't provide enough details to make the math work.

$250k is Sillicon Valley rate. In Europe similarly skilled people earn less than that, typically $80k.

Even $25k if you look at small companies in southern Europe.

Re: 37signals Leaves the Cloud

#20

Post by Nextgrid »

senttoschool wrote: post #13
mattbrewsbytes wrote: post #9

Very valid points. Its hard to describe the complexities and weird error or latency or other conditions that happen in cloud environments. OPs people kinda shrug and ask that you essentially turn it off and back on again and that usually resolves the issue at that time. There are so many abstraction layers when all the infrastructure is software run and I bet a lot of those introduce performance degradation. Another…

>Its hard to describe the complexities and weird error or latency or other conditions that happen in cloud environments. As oppose to complexities of self-host using self purchased hardware?

They are much less frequent, and at the very least you have full access to the hardware to debug if needed. Can you get me access to the AWS control plane's logs so I can understand why my RDS instance is stuck in "modifying" for 12+ hours?
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