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I took all my projects off the cloud, saving thousands of dollars

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Re: I took all my projects off the cloud, saving thousands of dollars

#221

Post by mrweasel »

While I love a good cloud bashing, it's really not black and white. If you're really small, it probably doesn't matter much if you're using Hetzner or AWS, but co-location might be a bit to expensive. If you run an absolutely massive company, cloud vs. self-hosted comes down to whether or not you can build tooling as good as AWS, GCP or Azure, with all the billing infrastructure and reporting.

The issues are mostly in the SME segment and where it really depends on what your business is. Do you need completely separate system for each customer? In that case, AWS is going to be easier and probably cheaper. Are you running a constant low 24/7? Then you should consider buying your own servers.

It's really hard to apply a blanket conclusion to all industries, in regards to cloud cost and whether or not it's worth it. My criticism in regards to opting for cloud is that people want all the benefits of the cloud, but not use any of the features, because that would lock them into e.g. AWS. If you're using AWS as a virtual machine platform only, there's always going to be cheaper (and maybe better) options.

Re: I took all my projects off the cloud, saving thousands of dollars

#222

Post by Dylan16807 »

ngc248 wrote: post #188
Dylan16807 wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Figuring out how to do db backups _can_ also be fairly time consuming. apt install automysqlbackup autopostgresqlbackup Though if you have proper filesystem snapshots then they should always see your database as consistent, right? So you can even skip database tools and just learn to make and download snapshots.

nah filesystem snapshots may not lead to consistent DB backups. DB backup software usually use a plugin to tell the DB to coalesce data before taking a snapshot.

Databases have to be ready for power loss, don't they? They might not be happy about it, but if that corrupts anything then the design has failed.

And again I'll emphasize proper snapshot, cutting off writes at an exact point in time. A normal file copy cannot safely back up an active database.

Re: I took all my projects off the cloud, saving thousands of dollars

#223

Post by happymellon »

big_maybe wrote: post #125
PantaloonFlames wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

+1 words matter Clarity of expression is a superpower I don’t feel it’s pedantic at all.

People commonly use this expression in everyday conversation, such as, "you could save 10 times as much if you would just shop at Costco." So I agree with OP, their comment is correct but pedantic.

> People commonly

Your example them was a weasel worded advert that uses meaningless terminology to make something sound big (savings in this case).

People don't use that expression.

Re: I took all my projects off the cloud, saving thousands of dollars

#224

Post by t_mann »

In principle, you don't even need a "server", ie purpose-built hardware like what he's showing. An old laptop will be fine for many projects, although I'd be interested if someone can help put a perspective on how to decide whether your specific project/load will be too much for your specific hardware. My bigger concern with 'true' self-hosting would be how to get a good/reliable enough internet connection.

Re: I took all my projects off the cloud, saving thousands of dollars

#225

Post by pfix »

mattmanser wrote: post #173
pfix wrote: post #28

I would really be interested in an actual comparison, where e.g. someone compares the full TCO of a mysql server with backup, hot standby in another data center and admin costs. On AWS an Aurora RDS is not cheap. But I don't have to spend time or money on an admin. Is the cost justified? Because that's what cloud is. Not even talking about the level of compliance I get from having every layer encrypted when my hosted…

I've never had a server go down. Most companies don't need a hot server because it's never going to be needed. AWS + Azure have both gone down with major outages indivudually more over the last 10 years than any of the servers in companies I worked with in the 10 years before that. And in comparable periods, not a single server failed or disk failed or whatever. So I get SOME companies need hot standby servers, almos…

I've had a lot of servers going down. I've had data centers going down. For various reasons - but normally not a failed disk but configuration errors due to human error.

And I've had enough cases where the company relied on just that one guy who knew how things worked - and when they retired or left, you had big work ahead understanding the systems that guy maintained and never let anyone else touch. Yes, this might also be a leadership issue - but it's also an issue if you have no one else with that specific knowledge. So I prefer standardized, prepackaged, off the shelf solutions that I can hire replacable people for.

Re: I took all my projects off the cloud, saving thousands of dollars

#227

Post by 8fingerlouie »

mrweasel wrote: post #221

While I love a good cloud bashing, it's really not black and white. If you're really small, it probably doesn't matter much if you're using Hetzner or AWS, but co-location might be a bit to expensive. If you run an absolutely massive company, cloud vs. self-hosted comes down to whether or not you can build tooling as good as AWS, GCP or Azure, with all the billing infrastructure and reporting. The issues are mostly i…

If you have high volume traffic depending on time of month, ie finance around ultimo/primo, you might need to scale your performance to 5-10x your normal idle load.

If running on your own data center, or renting physical/virtual machines from ie Hetzner, you will pay for that capability overhead for 30.5 days per month, when in reality you only need it for 2-3 days.

With the cloud you can simply scale dynamically, and while you end up paying more for the capacity, you only pay when you use it, meaning you save money for most of the month.

Re: I took all my projects off the cloud, saving thousands of dollars

#228

Post by recursivecaveat »

beeflet wrote: post #48
ascorbic wrote: post #29

Cheap shot maybe, but the fact that the page takes 10 seconds to load when it hits the HN front page is a great, inadvertant illustration of why you might want to use the cloud sometimes.

The failure mode of self-hosting is that your site gets hugged to death, the failure mode of the cloud is that you lose a ton of money. For a blog that doesn't earn you anything, the choice is clear. Besides, you can just put it behind cloudflare for free.

> the failure mode of the cloud is that you lose a ton of money

I'm perfectly happy to use cloud stuff for work. I will never ever give any cloud platform my personal credit card. I don't want to be the position of a misconfiguration leaving my finances at the mercy of the AWS forgiveness gods.

Re: I took all my projects off the cloud, saving thousands of dollars

#229

Post by deepsummer »

I recently had the same realization and moved all my functions to a simple stand-alone server. Besides the normal AWS costs, what scares me most about AWS is the possibility that someone could try to DOS me, leaving me with a huge AWS bill, because there is no real way to limit AWS spending.

The main reason why I keep coming back to cloud providers is databases. I don't feel comfortable setting up a high-availability db setup, and I don't want the responsibility of managing backups. But if you go to, say, Hetzner, you won't be able to use a cloud database in the same network.

Re: I took all my projects off the cloud, saving thousands of dollars

#230

Post by amrocha »

8fingerlouie wrote: post #227
mrweasel wrote: post #221

While I love a good cloud bashing, it's really not black and white. If you're really small, it probably doesn't matter much if you're using Hetzner or AWS, but co-location might be a bit to expensive. If you run an absolutely massive company, cloud vs. self-hosted comes down to whether or not you can build tooling as good as AWS, GCP or Azure, with all the billing infrastructure and reporting. The issues are mostly i…

If you have high volume traffic depending on time of month, ie finance around ultimo/primo, you might need to scale your performance to 5-10x your normal idle load. If running on your own data center, or renting physical/virtual machines from ie Hetzner, you will pay for that capability overhead for 30.5 days per month, when in reality you only need it for 2-3 days. With the cloud you can simply scale dynamically, an…

You can use the cloud to dynamically scale when needed while still running most of your own infra, best of both worlds.

Tricky networking though.

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