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Don't rent the cloud, own instead

blog.comma.ai

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Re: Don't rent the cloud, own instead

#41

Post by Symbiote »

TonyStr wrote: post #19
comrade1234 wrote: post #8

15-years ago or so a spreadsheet was floating around where you could enter server costs, compute power, etc and it would tell you when you would break-even by buying instead of going with AWS. I think it was leaked from Amazon because it was always three-years to break-even even as hardware changed over time.

Azure provides their own "Total Cost of Ownership" calculator for this purpose [0]. Notably, this makes you estimate peripheral costs such as cost of having a server administrator, electricity, etc. [0] - https://azure-int.microsoft.com/en-us/pricing/tco/calculator...

I plugged in our own numbers (60 servers we own in a data centre we rent) and Microsoft thinks this costs us an order of magnitude more than it does.

Their "assumption" for hardware purchase prices seems way off compared to what we buy from Dell or HP.

It's interesting that the "IT labour" cost they estimate is $140k for DIY, and $120k for Azure.

Their saving is 5 times more than what we spend...

Re: Don't rent the cloud, own instead

#42

Post by vidarh »

cgsmith wrote: post #6

I used to colocate a 2U server that I purchased with a local data center. It was a great learning experience for me. Im curious why a company wouldn't colocate their own hardware? Proximity isnt an issue when you can have the datacenter perform physical tasks. Bravo to the comma team regardless. It'll be a great learning experience and make each person on their team better. Ps... bx cable instead of conduit for elect…

The main reason not to colocate is if you're somewhere with high real estate costs... E.g Hetzner managed servers competes on price w/co-location for me because I'm in London.

Re: Don't rent the cloud, own instead

#43

Post by fauigerzigerk »

simianwords wrote: post #13

The reason companies don’t go with on premises even if cloud is way more expensive is because of the risk involved in on premises. You can see it quite clearly here that there’s so many steps to take. Now a good company would concentrate risk on their differentiating factor or the specific part they have competitive advantage in. It’s never about “is the expected cost in on premises less than cloud”, it’s about the r…

I'm starting to wonder though whether companies even have the in-house competence to compare the options and price this risk correctly.

>Now a good company would concentrate risk on their differentiating factor or the specific part they have competitive advantage in.

Yes, but one differentiating factor is always price and you don't want to lose all your margins to some infrastructure provider.

Re: Don't rent the cloud, own instead

#44

Post by g-b-r »

jillesvangurp wrote: post #29

At scale (like comma.ai), it's probably cheaper. But until then it's a long term cost optimization with really high upfront capital expenditure and risk. Which means it doesn't make much sense for the majority of startup companies until they become late stage and their hosting cost actually becomes a big cost burden. There are in between solutions. Renting bare metal instead of renting virtual machines can be quite n…

You should keep in mind that for a lot of things you can use a servicing contract, rather than hiring full-time employees.

It's typically going to cost significantly less; it can make a lot of sense for small companies, especially.

Re: Don't rent the cloud, own instead

#45

Post by vidarh »

comrade1234 wrote: post #8

15-years ago or so a spreadsheet was floating around where you could enter server costs, compute power, etc and it would tell you when you would break-even by buying instead of going with AWS. I think it was leaked from Amazon because it was always three-years to break-even even as hardware changed over time.

If you buy, maybe. Leasing or renting tends to be cheaper from day one. Tack on migration costs and ca. 6 months is a more realistic target. If the spreadsheet always said 3 years, it sounds like an intentional "leak".

Re: Don't rent the cloud, own instead

#47

Post by satvikpendem »

I just read about Railway doing something similar, sadly their prices are still high compared to other bare metal providers and even VPS such as Hetzner with Dokploy, very similar feature set yet for the same 5 dollars you get way more CPU, storage and RAM.

https://blog.railway.com/p/launch-week-02-welcome

Re: Don't rent the cloud, own instead

#48

Post by ashu1461 »

jillesvangurp wrote: post #29

At scale (like comma.ai), it's probably cheaper. But until then it's a long term cost optimization with really high upfront capital expenditure and risk. Which means it doesn't make much sense for the majority of startup companies until they become late stage and their hosting cost actually becomes a big cost burden. There are in between solutions. Renting bare metal instead of renting virtual machines can be quite n…

And not just any FTEs, probably few senior / staff level engineers who would cost a lot more.

Re: Don't rent the cloud, own instead

#49

Post by speedgoose »

I would suggest to use both on-premise hardware and cloud computing. Which is probably what comma is doing.

For critical infrastructure, I would rather pay a competent cloud provider than being responsible for reliability issues. Maintaining one server room in the headquarters is something, but two servers rooms in different locations, with resilient power and network is a bit too much effort IMHO.

For running many slurm jobs on good servers, cloud computing is very expensive and you sometimes save money in a matter of months. And who cares if the server room is a total loss after a while, worst case you write some more YAML and Terraform and deploy a temporary replacement in the cloud.

Another thing between is colocation, where you put hardware you own in a managed data center. It’s a bit old fashioned, but it may make sense in some cases.

I can also mention that research HPCs may be worth considering. In research, we have some of the world fastest computers at a fraction of the cost of cloud computing. It’s great as long as you don’t mind not being root and having to use slurm.

I don’t know in USA, but in Norway you can run your private company slurm AI workloads on research HPCs, though you will pay quite a bit more than universities and research institutions. But you can also have research projects together with universities or research institutions, and everyone will be happy if your business benefits a lot from the collaboration.

Re: Don't rent the cloud, own instead

#50

Post by AndroTux »

sschueller wrote: post #3
sys42590 wrote: post #2

It would be interesting to hear their contingency plan for any kind of disaster (most commonly a fire) that hits their data center.

Yep, does anyone remember the OVH fire[1][2]? [1] https://www.techradar.com/news/remember-the-ovhcloud-data-ce... [2] https://blocksandfiles.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/ovhclo...

contingency plan: Don't build your data center out of wood.
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