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Reclaiming the lost art of Linux server administration

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Re: Reclaiming the lost art of Linux server administration

#371

Post by kortilla »

fnord77 wrote: post #310
senko wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Here's what the bare metal server didn't come with: [bunch of stuff I don't need] Exactly. Imagine paying for all that when all you need is bare metal. Now imagine paying for all that just because you've read on the Internet that it's best practice and that's what the big guys do. Way back the best practice was what Microsoft, Oracle or Cisco wanted you to buy. Now it's what Amazon wants you to buy. Buy what you ne…

I'm too busy to tend to the care and feeding of a database server. I'll gladly pay amazon to do it for me.

Typical statement from someone that doesn’t actually pay the bill (a.k.a a software engineer in most companies).

It’s easy to trivialize $20-30k a month when it’s someone else’s money and it’s less work for you.

Re: Reclaiming the lost art of Linux server administration

#372

Post by pjmlp »

shirro wrote: post #369

We have returned to "You never get fired for buying IBM" but with various cloud services and layers of abstraction, profit taking, obfuscation and performance penalties. I am too old to care. I run my family servers to keep my skills and earn pocket money from time to time. I never learned to become a salesperson for Gsuite, Azure, AWS, Cloudflare Docker, whatever. Don't really care. I skip the majority of the blog s…

Having to start using UNIX back in the day where we only had thin terminals, using telnet and X Windows to access our account, the cloudification is kind of ironic.

We are back in timesharing days, only using SSH and Web instead.

I guess I can at least switch my cloud shell colours to green to feel at home.

Re: Reclaiming the lost art of Linux server administration

#373

Post by 2Gkashmiri »

lrvick wrote: post #274
hnthrowaway0315 wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This sounds very interesting. Do you have a blog describing your experience just curious? Thanks for sharing~~

No but I founded and help run https://hashbang.sh where we give out free shell services and mentor people in security, privacy, and digital sovereignty.

curious that the souce metions MIT license at top but in the bottom it says "2. Don't use our resources for closed source projects";

was that intentional? my current understanding of MIT license is a "do anything, i don't care, just don't blame me".

if i were you and wanted to use "dont use our resources" part, i would set it as AGPL or even SSPL if you are brave enough.

Re: Reclaiming the lost art of Linux server administration

#374

Post by reph2097 »

According to popular HN opinion, nobody runs servers anymore. Hipster coders leveraging AWS techno BS are never going to realize they are absolutely clueless and burning money by the ton. Same as in the gaming industry. Why bother starting from scratch. We want MVP right NOW, so just slap a bunch of random libraries together. People are going to buy faster GPUs anyway, right, and we'll fix issues later.

Re: Reclaiming the lost art of Linux server administration

#375

Post by bamboozled »

kafkaIncarnate wrote: post #361
bamboozled wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which is ok if there isn’t a local disaster which wipes out your office and your friends?

If there's a local disaster that wipes out your office and your friends and all you can think about is data then you should ask a professional to screen you for sociopathy and whether you have any treatable mental illness. No shame in it, I myself have one, but you shouldn't be concerned with this scenario even if it happens. Life is too short to waste on ruining your life over planning on how to ruin your life even…

> If there's a local disaster that wipes out your office and your friends and all you can think about is data then you should ask a professional to screen you for sociopathy and whether you have any treatable mental illness.

So you'd lose your friends and potentially your livelihood and any ability to financial support yourself, or any surviving friends or family, just because you don't want to use cloud backups or a professional backup service with the correct contingencies in-place ?

One could easily imagine a less dramatic scenario where your office is close to your work, you go home with your backups in your backpack; However a flood hits your town, you accidentally leave your your backpack behind at evacuation time. Your office and home are flooded and then your backups and actual data set is destroyed, no one dies but you've lost your company and not just phsycial assets. Seems a little unnecessary ?

I actually have lived in towns where floods, lighting storms and tornadoes have caused situations where this scenario could've easily played out.

I also feel the need to point out there's no need to suggest people need a psychiatrist when planning for a worst case scenario, some people are are just prepared for the worst, whether or not it's just how they're born or their paid /trained to do so.

Re: Reclaiming the lost art of Linux server administration

#376

Post by cerved »

DarylZero wrote: post #202
cerved wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

bruh nobody's looking down on people running they're own metal Server hardware is fun but it's not trivial to manage, buy or run. So when someone talks about how they've managed servers for 2 decades, own a house where they can install a 42 rack and how much better it is than a hosted solution. A lot of people rightly point out that this is hardly feasible for most people

People don't need a 42U rack to put a server in their closet though. You buy some surplus server on ebay and throw it on a shelf, no big deal.

It's really not that easy. There's a lot of considerations to make. Which rack size, model you want. Finding someone who will ship that brick to you. Not trivial

Re: Reclaiming the lost art of Linux server administration

#377

Post by cerved »

Andrew_nenakhov wrote: post #124
bmurphy1976 wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't need a 42u rack. You can run a cluster of Raspberry Pi's hidden in your basement ceiling rafters like me.

Racks are not that expensive, and are a very good way to keep things connected, powered, accessible and tidy. Heaps of Pis in rafters will quickly turn into a cable spaghetti hell tied into ugly knots.

what if you live in van, studio or apartment? You can't just fit a rack anywhere

Re: Reclaiming the lost art of Linux server administration

#378

Post by cerved »

willjp wrote: post #320
lrvick wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I threw a NAS in a friends house that is configured to bootup and reverse ssh tunnel to my rack where it then accepts scheduled encrypted duplicity backups. I do not even need to trust my friend as duplicity encrypts all data against a yubikey held pgp keychain before it leaves. The backup NAS could phone home from anywhere with internet access.

This is very slick. Apparently, I need to make some techie friends. Tarsnap is pretty affordable for off-site backups though!

the friend doesn't need to be techy just have a house

Re: Reclaiming the lost art of Linux server administration

#379

Post by ddorian43 »

viraptor wrote: post #139
c2h5oh wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I remember how surprised people were when I demoed a $200/month bare metal server outperforming by a huge margin RDS MySQL instance that they were paying something upwards of 16k/month. IIRC we ended up using it as a disposable replica for some non-real time but heavy operations.

Here's what the bare metal server didn't come with: API access for managing configuration, version updates/rollbacks, and ACL. A solution for unlimited scheduled snapshots without affecting performance. Close to immediate replacement of identical setup within seconds of failure. API-managed VPC/VPN built in. No underlying OS management. (Probably forgot a few...) I get that going bare metal is a good solution for som…

It also comes with 100x bandwidth pricing.

Re: Reclaiming the lost art of Linux server administration

#380

Post by znpy »

viraptor wrote: post #139
c2h5oh wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I remember how surprised people were when I demoed a $200/month bare metal server outperforming by a huge margin RDS MySQL instance that they were paying something upwards of 16k/month. IIRC we ended up using it as a disposable replica for some non-real time but heavy operations.

Here's what the bare metal server didn't come with: API access for managing configuration, version updates/rollbacks, and ACL. A solution for unlimited scheduled snapshots without affecting performance. Close to immediate replacement of identical setup within seconds of failure. API-managed VPC/VPN built in. No underlying OS management. (Probably forgot a few...) I get that going bare metal is a good solution for som…

That's the point, duh.

When you're using the cloud you're paying someone else a very good margin to do all of those things for you.

If you do them yourself you can save quite a lot. Hardware is surprisingly cheap these days, even with the chip shortage factored in, if compared to cloud offerings.

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