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Don't rent the cloud, own instead

blog.comma.ai

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Re: Don't rent the cloud, own instead

#31

Post by hbogert »

mbreese wrote: post #15
hbogert wrote: post #9

Datacenters need cool dry air? No, low isn't good perse. I worked in a datacenter which in winters had less than 40%, ram was failing all over the place. Low humidity causes static electricity.

Low is good if you are also adding more humidity back in. If you want to maintain 45-50% (guessing), then you would want It is much cheaper to use external air for cooling if you can.

Yeah but the article makes it sound as if lower is better, which it is definitely not. And yeah you need to control humidity, that might mean sometimes lowering, and sometimes increase it by whatever solution you have.

Also this is where cutting corner indeed results in lower cost, which was the reason for the OP to begin with. It just means you won't get as good a datacenter as people who are actually tuning this whole day and have decades of experience.

Re: Don't rent the cloud, own instead

#32

Post by g-b-r »

comrade1234 wrote: post #8

15-years ago or so a spreadsheet was floating around where you could enter server costs, compute power, etc and it would tell you when you would break-even by buying instead of going with AWS. I think it was leaked from Amazon because it was always three-years to break-even even as hardware changed over time.

Did the AWS part include the egress costs to extract your data from AWS, if you ever want to leave them?

Re: Don't rent the cloud, own instead

#33

Post by bayindirh »

d1sxeyes wrote: post #14
simianwords wrote: post #13

The reason companies don’t go with on premises even if cloud is way more expensive is because of the risk involved in on premises. You can see it quite clearly here that there’s so many steps to take. Now a good company would concentrate risk on their differentiating factor or the specific part they have competitive advantage in. It’s never about “is the expected cost in on premises less than cloud”, it’s about the r…

It’s also opex vs capex, which is a battle opex wins most of the time.

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.

Re: Don't rent the cloud, own instead

#35

Post by tirant »

intalentive wrote: post #27

I like Hotz’s style: simply and straightforwardly attempting the difficult and complex. I always get the impression: “You don’t need to be too fancy or clever. You don’t need permission or credentials. You just need to go out and do the thing. What are you waiting for?”

This was written by Harald Schäfer, the CTO of comma.ai. I'm not so sure if G. Hotz is still involved in comma.ai.

Re: Don't rent the cloud, own instead

#38

Post by simianwords »

d1sxeyes wrote: post #20
simianwords wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it wins because opex is seen as stable recurring cost and capex is seen as the money you put in your primary differentiation for long term gains.

True, but for a lot of companies “our servers are on-prem” is not a primary differentiator.

i think we are saying the same thing?

Re: Don't rent the cloud, own instead

#40

Post by intalentive »

tirant wrote: post #35
intalentive wrote: post #27

I like Hotz’s style: simply and straightforwardly attempting the difficult and complex. I always get the impression: “You don’t need to be too fancy or clever. You don’t need permission or credentials. You just need to go out and do the thing. What are you waiting for?”

This was written by Harald Schäfer, the CTO of comma.ai. I'm not so sure if G. Hotz is still involved in comma.ai.

Ah I missed that.
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