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Don't rent the cloud, own instead

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Re: Don't rent the cloud, own instead

#221

Post by couscouspie »

coliveira wrote: post #205
bojangleslover wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The complexity is what gets you. One of AWS's favorite situations is 1) Senior engineer starts on AWS 2) Senior engineer leaves because our industry does not value longevity or loyalty at all whatsoever (not saying it should, just observing that it doesn't) 3) New engineer comes in and panics 4) Ends up using a "managed service" to relieve the panic 5) New engineer leaves 6) Second new engineer comes in and not only…

The end result of all this is that the percentage of people who know how to implement systems without AWS/Azure will be a single digit. From that point on, this will be the only "economic" way, it doesn't matter what the prices are.

That's not a factual statement over reality, but more of a normative judgement to justify resignation. Yes, professionals that know how to actually do these things are not abundantly available, but available enough to achieve the transition. The talent exists and is absolutely passionate about software freedom and hence highly intrinsically motivated to work on it. The only thing that is lacking so far is the demand and the talent available will skyrocket, when the market starts demanding it.

Re: Don't rent the cloud, own instead

#222

Post by patrick451 »

coliveira wrote: post #207
infecto wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What managed service? Curious, I don’t use the full suite of aws services but wondering what would take 45mins, maybe it was a large cluster of some sort that needed rolling changes?

My observation is that all these services are exploding in complexity, and they justify saying that there are more features now, so everyone needs to accept spending more and more time and effort for the same results.

It's basically the same dynamic as hedonic adjustment in the CPI calculations. Cars may cost twice as much now they have usb chargers built in so inflation isn't really that bad.

Re: Don't rent the cloud, own instead

#223

Post by [deleted] »

wulfstan wrote: post #165
Lucasoato wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hetzner is definitely an interesting option. I’m a bit scared of managing the services on my own (like Postgres, Site2Site VPN, …) but the price difference makes it so appealing. From our financial models, Hetzner can win over AWS when you spend over 10~15K per month on infrastructure and you’re hiring really well. It’s still a risk, but a risk that definitely can be worthy.

I've just shifted my SWE infrastructure from AWS to Hetzner (literally in the last month). My current analysis looks like it will be about 15-20% of the cost - £240 vs 40-50 euros. Expect a significant exit expense, though, especially if you are shifting large volumes of S3 data. That's been our biggest expense. I've moved this to Wasabi at about 8 euros a month (vs about $70-80 a month on S3), but I've paid transit…

[deleted]

Re: Don't rent the cloud, own instead

#224

Post by g8oz »

objektif wrote: post #203
Lucasoato wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hetzner is definitely an interesting option. I’m a bit scared of managing the services on my own (like Postgres, Site2Site VPN, …) but the price difference makes it so appealing. From our financial models, Hetzner can win over AWS when you spend over 10~15K per month on infrastructure and you’re hiring really well. It’s still a risk, but a risk that definitely can be worthy.

No amount of money will make me maintain my own dbs. We tried it at first and it was a nightmare.

It's worth becoming good at.

Re: Don't rent the cloud, own instead

#225

Post by bix6 »

couscouspie wrote: post #221
coliveira wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The end result of all this is that the percentage of people who know how to implement systems without AWS/Azure will be a single digit. From that point on, this will be the only "economic" way, it doesn't matter what the prices are.

That's not a factual statement over reality, but more of a normative judgement to justify resignation. Yes, professionals that know how to actually do these things are not abundantly available, but available enough to achieve the transition. The talent exists and is absolutely passionate about software freedom and hence highly intrinsically motivated to work on it. The only thing that is lacking so far is the demand…

> The only thing that is lacking so far is the demand and the talent available will skyrocket, when the market starts demanding it.

But will the market demand it? AWS just continues to grow.

Re: Don't rent the cloud, own instead

#226

Post by doublerabbit »

vidarh wrote: post #166
doublerabbit wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I colocate in London, a single server / firewall comes to around £5k a year. I also colocate two other servers in some northern UK location in some industrial estate for £2k as my backups. I've never enjoyed the cloud and dedicated server's have their own caveats too. Budget hosts such as Hetzner/OVH have been known to suddenly pull the plug for no reason. My kit is old, second hand old (Cisco UCS 220 M5, 2xDell some…

> Budget hosts such as Hetzner/OVH have been known to suddenly pull the plug for no reason. The same would apply for any number of hosts. Hetzner/OVH are cheap, but as your own numbers show the location price gap is more than sufficient to cover the costs of servers. In fact you can colocate with Hetzner too, and you'd get a similar price gap - the lower cost of real-estate is a large part of the reason why they can…

Thanks. I hadn't seen it as such and you're right. I guess it comes down to personal preference.

Where I feel that data has become a commodity in that I can sell your username and email for a few pence, I would rather prefer to have my own hardware in my own possession and that any request of it has to go to me, nor some server provider.

Re: Don't rent the cloud, own instead

#227

Post by clickety_clack »

faust201 wrote: post #106
olavgg wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I would rather pay a competent cloud provider than being responsible for reliability issues. Why do so many developers and sysadmins think they're not competent for hosting services. It is a lot easier than you think, and its also fun to solve technical issues you may have.

> Why do so many developers and sysadmins think they're not competent for hosting services. It is a lot easier than you think, and its also fun to solve technical issues you may have. It is a different skillset. SRE is also an under-valued/paid (unless one is in FAANGO).

It’s all downside. If nothing goes wrong, then the company feels like they’re wasting money on a salary. If things go wrong they’re all your fault.

Re: Don't rent the cloud, own instead

#228

Post by bayindirh »

iso1631 wrote: post #111
bayindirh wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Opex is faster. Login, click, SSH, get a tea. Capex needs work. A couple of years, at least. If you are willing to put in the work. Your mundane computer is always better than the shiny one you don't own.

That's because of company policies. An SME owner will buy a server and have it in the rack the next day. Of course creating a VM is still a teraform commit away (you're not using clickops in prod surely)

SME and "a server" is doing some big weight lifting here.

If you want a custom server, one or a thousand, it's at least a couple of weeks.

If you want a powerful GPU server, that's rack + power + cooling (and a significant lead time). A respectable GPU server means ~2KW of power dissipation and considerable heat.

If you want a datacenter of any size, now that's a year at least from breaking ground to power-on.

Re: Don't rent the cloud, own instead

#229

Post by davsti4 »

CodeCompost wrote: post #164

Microsoft made the TCO argument and won. Self-hosting is only an option if you can afford expensive SysOps/DevOps/WhateverWeAreCalledTheseDays to manage it.

So.... you're saying they must be understaffed and paying poverty range wages to afford the San Diego climate and still cut a profit? ;)

Re: Don't rent the cloud, own instead

#230

Post by tomcam »

kryptiskt wrote: post #217
mgaunard wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Personally I haven't seen a scenario where it makes sense beyond a small experimental lab where you value the ability to tinker physically with the hardware regularly. Offices are usually very expensive real estate in city centers and with very limited cooling capabilities. Then again the US is a different place, they don't have cities like in Europe (bar NYC).

If you are a bank or a bookmaker or similar you may well want to have total control of physical access to the machines. I know one bookmaker I worked with had their own mini-datacenter, mainly because of physical security.

I am pretty forward-thinking but even when I started writing my first web server 30+ years ago I didn’t foresee the day when the phrase “my bookie’s datacenter” might cross my lips.
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