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Self-Hosting Still Pays

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Re: Self-Hosting Still Pays

#261

Post by strogonoff »

Rantenki wrote: post #26
shiftpgdn wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you actually use AWS or are you just parroting something you've read? Do you understand that with AWS you still have to setup instances, manage security updates, permission and deal with disaster response (US-East-1 outage?) If you've run anything at any scale for any length of time you'll know that EC2 hosts frequently get rebooted with short notice.

I have extensive infrastructure running across 3 separate org accounts for blast radius, with multiple separate VPCs per org, RDS databases across multiple AZs, and a large variety of instances. Everything is built up and torn down via Terraform, and ZERO maintenance tasks are done via the console. Changes to infrastructure configuration are managed via CAB which approves PRs on Github which are automatically deploye…

Setting up and maintaining Terraform scripts to manage your AWS infrastructure takes time and effort; besides, there’s this nagging feeling that should something happens to Terraform you’d suddenly be left trying to keep track of hundreds of resources (which cost you money each hour, or millisecond in case of Lambda) and their access policies “by hand”.

On the other hand, it could be a very powerful combo.

Re: Self-Hosting Still Pays

#262

Post by xupybd »

I just had a simple PHP application move from simple VPS hosting to full blown AWS with load balancers, RDS databases and EFS storage.

It's still the same app the load balancer can only send the traffic to one machine. RDS now means DB connections are TCP not pipes. The EFS is slower than an SSD. So it's slower and costs more.

Why did this happen? Because an external consultant said AWS is what the big players use. I argued that our app needs to be engineered to take advantage of AWS or this is an expensive waste. But what would I know, we went with the consultants and payed them tens of thousands to set up a bunch of AWS infrastructure I could have run on a $10 a month VPS...

Re: Self-Hosting Still Pays

#263

Post by nmfisher »

cultofmetatron wrote: post #178
nicoburns wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The system I inherited at my current job was built with "scalability" in mind. That meant use of the Firebase databases and splitting everything out into lots of microservices. Ironically this actually caused scaling issues (even with the very small scale we have at the moment) because the lack of query flexibility in the database meant downloading entire collections in order to provide the necessary functionality. W…

firebase is probably the most hyped and overused tech I've seen. I've run into far too many startups that went to firebase because they wanted to scale fast and didn't realize how limited firebase was for queries. If you're starting a startup, use postgres for your database. it will handle damn near anything and you can spawn off functionality into microservices as they become bottle necks as you scale. Hell, postgre…

Two reasons I use Firebase for my app (although with an admittedly trivial schema/data):

a) I have a thousand things to do that are higher priority than configuring/hosting a Postgres server. b) Integration with Firebase Auth is a godsend.

I doubt people choose Firebase for technical or scaling reasons. More likely they choose it because it's trivial to integrate, so you can spend the limited hours you have in each day on more important (customer-facing) work.

Re: Self-Hosting Still Pays

#264

Post by apple4ever »

busterarm wrote: post #244
ldng wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except that in smaller places time is of the essence I we don't have enough to learn the full extent of AWS and I'll save my time and money by using a droplet. Learning AWS does have a cost. Money I'd rather spend on learning and mastering standard, open and portable systems.

> Money I'd rather spend on learning and mastering standard, open and portable systems. That's where Terraform comes in.

You still have to learn Terraform though, and have the time to set up a full config. Might not be worth it for a small shop

Re: Self-Hosting Still Pays

#265

Post by apple4ever »

ldng wrote: post #241
candiodari wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And yet, AWS isn't for a really larger company either. At some point the bills become so huge that running your own IT and datacenters is cheaper. Usually a lot. Even when it means building some AWS services yourself. https://www.bmc.com/blogs/dropbox-aws/

Yes, it really is a curve bell but I get deride every time I say it ... the power of marketing.

A bell curve is a great way to describe it.

Re: Self-Hosting Still Pays

#266

Post by apple4ever »

ProAm wrote: post #84
Rantenki wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have extensive infrastructure running across 3 separate org accounts for blast radius, with multiple separate VPCs per org, RDS databases across multiple AZs, and a large variety of instances. Everything is built up and torn down via Terraform, and ZERO maintenance tasks are done via the console. Changes to infrastructure configuration are managed via CAB which approves PRs on Github which are automatically deploye…

We see just as much downtown with AWS with DR/HA/MTTR as with colo. You still have to set it all up and maintain it, its just different setup and maintenance than if you actually have a servers in DCs. Most people still have the learning curve with AWS and usually do it incorrectly, or have to wait for Amazon to admit degradation of a service is occurring. It's really a matter of who within the company wants to know…

That's the thing about this argument- it gets sold as not having to worry about something (racking etc) except the reality is it's just a different worry.

Re: Self-Hosting Still Pays

#267

Post by lmz »

dragonsh wrote: post #238

The biggest advantage of using self-hosted infrastructure is real freedom from the whims of large cloud providers and the governments who indirectly exercise control over which company, country and individual such cloud providers can do business with. On a large cloud provider a government notice is enough to remove access to compute resources and data hosted in it. This in essence means company or individual using t…

Do you really think your colo provider is going to ignore government notices to disconnect you?

Re: Self-Hosting Still Pays

#268

Post by apple4ever »

therealx wrote: post #234
iptrans wrote: post #88

I find it interesting that these comparisons always pit AWS againsta colocation. It would be much more interesting if the comparison was between AWS and dedicated servers. Dedicated servers have all the benefits of colocation, only you don't need to deal with the hardware. The DC takes care of the hardware, all you have to do it administer the server. I find dedicated servers to be very cost effective. You can get of…

Yesh, I'm so tired of the idea that AWS doesn't involve the same management overhead as any other server. It's so far removed from the truth that I wonder if they are shills.

It's just a different set of problems to deal with not less problems. Not sure why they feel the need to hide it.

Re: Self-Hosting Still Pays

#269

Post by busterarm »

calvinmorrison wrote: post #259
busterarm wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was in an almost exactly similar situation to yours where I learned to do this and I've been able to scale it up to companies with 1000x more demanding infrastructure. The funnier thing in my case was that three years after I left, the infrastructure was humming along fine with nobody actively looking at it. They never hired anyone to look after it because it never gave them any problems and they would have been f…

Funnily I'm in a different position at a different company and in house is a huge win for us over aws/azure due to very specific hardware requirements. There's a time and a place for everything - but the days of colocation are gone for people who don't actually need it

Understandable...and as I've mentioned elsewhere, we do also use physical hardware in datacenters. It's a situation of only for the things that need it for us.

Re: Self-Hosting Still Pays

#270

Post by apple4ever »

busterarm wrote: post #258
mattbeckman wrote: post #212

Our small team spends roughly $40-50k/mo at AWS. If you're just hosting a website with a SQL database (glorified LAMP stack), you're probably in it for the wrong reasons. Stick to a dedicated box or DigitalOcean etc. AWS is like co-locating your hardware, and then the data center having 1000s of employees offering highly reliable services you can access from your infrastructure that lets you move WAY faster for thing…

I think the point that you're making here is subtle and that people are missing it. Your small team can _comfortably manage_ 50k/mo worth of AWS resources. That's _INCREDIBLE_. I think people mistakenly think that cloud costs only go up exponentially and that costs are an unmanageable mess. I've worked with teams with hundreds of engineers serving a major enterprise and only an AWS bill 3-5x yours. And they only had…

> To do similar with physical servers requires a massive stack of people and salaries. The ongoing recruiting costs to maintain staffing would dwarf what the AWS bill is.

No no they wouldn't. Number of people is equal for both, its just different tasks they have to do.

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