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37signals Leaves the Cloud

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21–30 of 93 posts

Re: 37signals Leaves the Cloud

#21

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 (de…

> There are plenty of providers out there who will handle the logistics for you with an interface similar to AWS EC2...

I am sorry but how's it different from leaving BigCloud for SmallCloud? That's like saying, I'd no longer use Java/Kotlin because Oracle/Google but I'll however use Clojure because JVM.

Re: 37signals Leaves the Cloud

#22
Interesting. I helped put together a cost estimates for Amazon Workspaces for our development infrastructure and we quickly found it costing us up to a quarter million compared to moving it to a colocated server. AWS is not looking that affordable anymore.

Re: 37signals Leaves the Cloud

#23

Interesting. I helped put together a cost estimates for Amazon Workspaces for our development infrastructure and we quickly found it costing us up to a quarter million compared to moving it to a colocated server. AWS is not looking that affordable anymore.

AWS is never affordable, but offers interesting commodities as a service that these days many companies could not afford to build or maintain themselves.

So it's a matter of choice.

Re: 37signals Leaves the Cloud

#24

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

Go back and re-read :)

They [believe that they] don't need to hire anyone. They already have a staff of ops folks that run their cloud operations. And those folks will run their on-prem operations.

Re: 37signals Leaves the Cloud

#26
post #17

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.

37signals pays SV rates for global staff on principle. They publish their salary information, based on job family and job level.

Re: 37signals Leaves the Cloud

#27
post #17

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.

Very important point. There are plenty of skilled people who live in places that don't require that kind of salary in order to afford a decent place to live. Why not hire a guy in Kansas to remote manage your infrastructure?

Silicon Valley culture isn't nearly so critical or valuable that your organization requires it in order to do the necessary work.

Re: 37signals Leaves the Cloud

#28
post #2

Curious to know how to which degree they are self hosting, seems they'll buy their own servers but I doubt they'll go all the way to buying land and building their own data centers?

When I was there, they rented space in a DC outside Chicago (near the airport), and later near NY for a backup location. The DC in Chicago was fantastic. We had a whole load of racks (about a row in the DC), and we bought our own servers. Running our own DC would have crossed the line, it's a whole huge thing you need to do and it only makes sense at scale if you want to do it well, Basecamp used a tiny fraction of the DC capacity.

Re: 37signals Leaves the Cloud

#29

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.

MSB don't pay $250k/yr. For $100k/yr they will find someone in USA who will enjoy racking servers, wiring, configuring networks, installing OS, etc. If they look outside of US, they will find it for cheap.

Re: 37signals Leaves the Cloud

#30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 (de…

> There are plenty of providers out there who will handle the logistics for you with an interface similar to AWS EC2... I am sorry but how's it different from leaving BigCloud for SmallCloud? That's like saying, I'd no longer use Java/Kotlin because Oracle/Google but I'll however use Clojure because JVM.

what do you get for $250 a month on ec2? is it 24c/48t dual xeon with 96gb ram, 2x 960gb nvme, with bare metal performance? https://us.ovhcloud.com/bare-metal/infra/infra-4-le/
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