Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

So you want to build your own data center

blog.railway.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

171–180 of 287 posts

Re: So you want to build your own data center

#171

Post by motorest »

matt-p wrote: post #52
xiconfjs wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have to second this. While it takes mich effort and in-depth knowledge do build up from an “empty” cage it’s still far from dealing with everything from building permits, to plan and realize a data center to code including redundant power lines, AC and fibre. Still kudos going this path in the cloud-centric time we live in.

Yes, the second is much more work, orders of magnitude at least.

> Yes, the second is much more work, orders of magnitude at least.

I feel it's important to stress that the difficulty level of collocating something, let alone actually building a data center, is exactly what makes cloud computing so enticing and popular.

Everyone focuses on trivia items like OpEx vs CapEx and dynamic scaling, but the massive task of actually plugging in the hardware in a secure setting and get it to work reliably is a massive undertaking.

Re: So you want to build your own data center

#172

Post by motorest »

inopinatus wrote: post #133
jonatron wrote: post #16

Why would you call colocation "building your own data center"? You could call it "colocation" or "renting space in a data center". What are you building? You're racking. Can you say what you mean?

Come to my office and tell me how it’s not actually my office because it’s leased by my company from the investment vehicle for institutional investors that owns the building that stands on land owned by someone else again that was stolen by the British anyway and therefore calling it “my office” makes me a fool and a liar and I should just “say what I mean”.

> Come to my office and tell me how it’s not actually my office (...)

I think you're failing to understand the meaning and the point of "building your own datacenter".

Yes, you can talk about your office all you'd like. Much like OP can talk about there server farm and their backend infrastructure.

What you cannot talk about is your own office center. You do not own it. You rent office space. You only have a small fraction of the work required to operate an office, because you effectively offloaded the hard part to your landlord.

Re: So you want to build your own data center

#173

Post by motorest »

chatmasta wrote: post #51
jonatron wrote: post #16

Why would you call colocation "building your own data center"? You could call it "colocation" or "renting space in a data center". What are you building? You're racking. Can you say what you mean?

It seems a bit disingenuous but it’s common practice. Even the hyperscalers, who do have their own datacenters, include their colocation servers in the term “datacenter.” Good luck finding the actual, physical location of a server in GCP europe-west2-a (“London”). Maybe it’s in a real Google datacenter in London! Or it could be in an Equinix datacenter in Slough, one room away from AWS eu-west-1. Cloudflare has also…

> It seems a bit disingenuous but it’s common practice. Even the hyperscalers, who do have their own datacenters, include their colocation servers in the term “datacenter.”

I think you're conflating things.

Those hypothetical hyperscalers can advertise their availability zones and deployment regions, but they do not claim they built the data centers. They provide a service, but they do not make broad claims on how they built infrastructure.

Re: So you want to build your own data center

#174

Post by motorest »

chatmasta wrote: post #130
Over2Chars wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed, I've seen "data center" maps, and was surprised they were just a tenant in some other guys data center.

Which makes you a subletter, and the one with the highest fee of the whole chain…

> Which makes you a subletter, and the one with the highest fee of the whole chain…

I don't know what point you tried to make. Any business in the whole world survives because they sell things for more money than what it takes to keep their business running. Is it surprising that they charge their customers more than their infrastructure costs?

Re: So you want to build your own data center

#175

Post by motorest »

motoboi wrote: post #122

I’m my experience and based on writeups like this: Google hates having customers. Someone decided they have to have a public cloud, so they did it, but they want to keep clients away with a 3 meter pole. My AWS account manager is someone I am 100% certain would roll in the mud with me if necessary. Would sleep in the floor with us if we asked in a crisis. Our Google cloud representatives make me sad because I can see…

> Microsoft (...) have a very strange cloud… thing.

Risking a going off on a tangent, this is something I rarely see discussed but is perhaps one of the main problems with Azure. The whole cloud service feels like something someone oblivious to cloud computing would design if all they knew was renting bare metal servers. It's cloud computing in a way that completely defeats the whole concept of cloud computing.

Re: So you want to build your own data center

#176

Post by kqr »

fishstock25 wrote: post #147
inopinatus wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Come to my office and tell me how it’s not actually my office because it’s leased by my company from the investment vehicle for institutional investors that owns the building that stands on land owned by someone else again that was stolen by the British anyway and therefore calling it “my office” makes me a fool and a liar and I should just “say what I mean”.

When you invite a girl/guy over, do you say "let's meet at my place" or "let's meet at the place I'm renting"? The possessive pronoun does not necessarily express ownership, it can just as well express occupancy.

I wouldn't oppose telling a client "we can meet at your data centre". I would not tell my wife "we need to discuss building our apartment complex" when we are planning interior decorations in our flat.

Re: So you want to build your own data center

#177

Post by [deleted] »

motorest wrote: post #172
inopinatus wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Come to my office and tell me how it’s not actually my office because it’s leased by my company from the investment vehicle for institutional investors that owns the building that stands on land owned by someone else again that was stolen by the British anyway and therefore calling it “my office” makes me a fool and a liar and I should just “say what I mean”.

> Come to my office and tell me how it’s not actually my office (...) I think you're failing to understand the meaning and the point of "building your own datacenter". Yes, you can talk about your office all you'd like. Much like OP can talk about there server farm and their backend infrastructure. What you cannot talk about is your own office center. You do not own it. You rent office space. You only have a small fr…

[deleted]

Re: So you want to build your own data center

#178

Post by inopinatus »

dkersten wrote: post #164
inopinatus wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Come to my office and tell me how it’s not actually my office because it’s leased by my company from the investment vehicle for institutional investors that owns the building that stands on land owned by someone else again that was stolen by the British anyway and therefore calling it “my office” makes me a fool and a liar and I should just “say what I mean”.

But if I said I’m building an office, would you assume I’m furnishing an empty rented space, or constructing the building?

I’d imagine you were recently elected and hiring staffers.

Re: So you want to build your own data center

#179

Post by inopinatus »

motorest wrote: post #172
inopinatus wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Come to my office and tell me how it’s not actually my office because it’s leased by my company from the investment vehicle for institutional investors that owns the building that stands on land owned by someone else again that was stolen by the British anyway and therefore calling it “my office” makes me a fool and a liar and I should just “say what I mean”.

> Come to my office and tell me how it’s not actually my office (...) I think you're failing to understand the meaning and the point of "building your own datacenter". Yes, you can talk about your office all you'd like. Much like OP can talk about there server farm and their backend infrastructure. What you cannot talk about is your own office center. You do not own it. You rent office space. You only have a small fr…

Let’s chat about inferring meaning from pragmatic context at your data.

Re: So you want to build your own data center

#180

Post by inopinatus »

kqr wrote: post #176
fishstock25 wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When you invite a girl/guy over, do you say "let's meet at my place" or "let's meet at the place I'm renting"? The possessive pronoun does not necessarily express ownership, it can just as well express occupancy.

I wouldn't oppose telling a client "we can meet at your data centre". I would not tell my wife "we need to discuss building our apartment complex" when we are planning interior decorations in our flat.

If I said to my wife, “let’s build a home together”, she would be halfway done with engaging a promising firm of radical young architects and negotiating for April delivery of pre-stressed concrete, Italian art glass, and Japanese tatami mats by close of business.
Post reply on HN