Use One Big Server (2022)
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Use One Big Server (2022)
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Re: Use One Big Server (2022)
#2[deleted]
Re: Use One Big Server (2022)
#3Don't forget the cost of managing your one big server and the risk of having such single point of failure.
Re: Use One Big Server (2022)
#4This was written in 2022, but looks
like it's most still relevant today. Would be interesting to see updated numbers on the expected costs of various hosting providers.
Re: Use One Big Server (2022)
#5Don't forget the cost of managing your one big server and the risk of having such single point of failure.
Re: Use One Big Server (2022)
#6A thoroughly good article. It's probably worth also considering adding a CDN if you take this approach at scale. You get to use their WAF and DNS failover.
A big pain point that I personally don't love is that this non-cloud approach normally means running my own database. It's worth considering a provider who also provides cloud databases.
If you go for an 'active/passive' setup, consider saving even more money by using a cloud VM with auto scaling for the 'passive' part.
In terms of pricing the deals available these days on servers are amazing you can get 4GB RAM VPSs with decent CPU and bandwidth for ~$6 or bare metal for ~$90 for 32GB RAM quad core worth using sites like serversearcher.com to compare.
Re: Use One Big Server (2022)
#7Regardless of the cost and capacity analysis, it's just hard to fight the industry trends. The benefits of "just don't think about hardware" are real. I think there is a school of thought that capex should be avoided at all costs (and server hardware is expensive up front). And above all, if an AWS region goes down, it doesn't seem like your org's fault, but if your bespoke private hosting arrangement goes down, then that kinda does seem like your org's fault.
Re: Use One Big Server (2022)
#8Don't forget the cost of managing your one big server and the risk of having such single point of failure.
Don't forget to read the article.
Re: Use One Big Server (2022)
#9Regardless of the cost and capacity analysis, it's just hard to fight the industry trends. The benefits of "just don't think about hardware" are real. I think there is a school of thought that capex should be avoided at all costs (and server hardware is expensive up front). And above all, if an AWS region goes down, it doesn't seem like your org's fault, but if your bespoke private hosting arrangement goes down, then…
To be clear - this isn't an endorsement on my part, just observations of why cloud-only deployment seems common. I guess we shouldn't neglect the pressure towards resume-oriented development either, as it undoubtedly plays a part in infra folks' careers. It probably makes you sound obsolete to be someone who works in a physical data center.
I for one really miss being able to go see the servers that my code runs on. I thought data centers were really interesting places. But I don't see a lot of effort to decide things based on pure dollar cost analysis at this point. There's a lot of other industry forces besides the microeconomics that predetermine people's hosting choices.
Re: Use One Big Server (2022)
#10This isn't even the end game for "one big server". AMD will give the most bang per rack, but there are other factors.
An IBM z17 is effectively one big server too, but provides levels of reliability that are simply not available in most IT environments. It won't outperform the AMD rack, but it will definitely keep up for most practical workloads.
If you sit down and really think honestly about the cost of engineering your systems to an equivalent level of reliability, you may find the cost of the IBM stack to be competitive in a surprising number of cases.