Why we are not leaving the cloud • Hacker News Board

Re: Why we are not leaving the cloud

#41

Post by protomyth » Thu, Mar 02, 2017, 7:26 PM UTC

tbrowbdidnso wrote: post #34

So everyone says the cloud is the future. I get it. But is this the truth, or what all the tech giants want people to believe? Don your foil hats for a moment and listen to me. All the original internet companies run their own hardware. They rent out excess production capacity to us peons in the form of cloud services. These companies that all run their own hardware exclusively are telling everyone that it's stupid t…

I agree with your overall point, but it was my understanding that Netflix does use Netflix but runs its own CDN with FreeBSD machines some of which are located at the local ISP.

Re: Why we are not leaving the cloud

#42

Post by tbrowbdidnso » Thu, Mar 02, 2017, 7:30 PM UTC

closeparen wrote: post #38

tbrowbdidnso wrote: post #34

So everyone says the cloud is the future. I get it. But is this the truth, or what all the tech giants want people to believe? Don your foil hats for a moment and listen to me. All the original internet companies run their own hardware. They rent out excess production capacity to us peons in the form of cloud services. These companies that all run their own hardware exclusively are telling everyone that it's stupid t…

I don't think it's in doubt that it makes sense to own everything from the land to the silicon when you're the size of one of these "original internet companies." The question is, does it make sense for businesses with a handful of servers running their office environment, to a few thousand servers running production for a moderately popular web service, to pay consultants to drive out and tend the servers in their o…

Running on rented hardware is the equivalent of a traditional product company renting all of their factories. Almost any company of reasonable size will want vertical integration of their supply chain and web companies are no different.

Using Netflix as an example again, if they're pitted against a company that runs their own hardware but is otherwise equal, they will lose. A portion of their profit is siphoned off as Amazon's profit. What's already happened is Netflix is directly funding development of Amazon Prime Video.

Re: Why we are not leaving the cloud

#43

Post by morgante » Thu, Mar 02, 2017, 7:33 PM UTC

tbrowbdidnso wrote: post #39

lbotos wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, sure, you might not save money being in the "cloud" but running hardware is a different skillset than building software. If you can pay someone else to run your hardware, someone else who wants to be really good at running hardware, you might be able to focus more on your software, and get really good at making that?

There is nothing hard about running hardware. The current VM trend gives you bare metal access. the only difference is you have to plug in your machines, and you get to look at them every once in a while. Really, what software dev hasn't put together a desktop PC and plugged in some Ethernet jacks? That's all you need to Colocate. Your response echos what cloud providers want everyone to think. Hardware is too hard f…

I'm sorry, but your comments in this thread are incredibly out of touch.

It's absolutely hard to run your own hardware. There's a reason that companies which run their own hardware have entire teams devoted to it.

You seem to be thinking like an engineer, not a business person. For most businesses, cloud providers offer a substantial cost savings.

Re: Why we are not leaving the cloud

#44

Post by bdamm » Thu, Mar 02, 2017, 7:33 PM UTC

tbrowbdidnso wrote: post #39

lbotos wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, sure, you might not save money being in the "cloud" but running hardware is a different skillset than building software. If you can pay someone else to run your hardware, someone else who wants to be really good at running hardware, you might be able to focus more on your software, and get really good at making that?

There is nothing hard about running hardware. The current VM trend gives you bare metal access. the only difference is you have to plug in your machines, and you get to look at them every once in a while. Really, what software dev hasn't put together a desktop PC and plugged in some Ethernet jacks? That's all you need to Colocate. Your response echos what cloud providers want everyone to think. Hardware is too hard f…

As a professional that came from software engineering let me tell you... that plugging in one machine is easy.

Plugging in 150 machines is significantly more challenging. Providing disaster response, backups, stable power, and VLANs to secure services, quickly ratchets up the cost. And nobody wants to pay one engineer per machine to babysit one machine, x 150. That wouldn't even be a good idea, because engineers get bored and start mucking with stuff that needs to be left alone.

Data center administration is a first class professional grouping. Software engineers who don't know that are a real hazard to any business.

Re: Why we are not leaving the cloud

#45

Post by sytse » Thu, Mar 02, 2017, 7:33 PM UTC

Rezo wrote: post #30

frabbit wrote: post #5

Buried towards the bottom is the interesting decision to dump CephFS and go with NFS instead.

I wonder if Amazon's new managed EFS service would make sense? It's exposed as a NFS mount to the OS. The claims are: - Up to thousands of Amazon EC2 instances, from multiple AZs, can connect concurrently to a file system. - Data is stored redundantly across multiple AZs. - Low, consistent latency. - Multiple GBs per second.

EFS is pretty great. But for our use case there are a few drawbacks:

1. It doesn't scale to the size we need for all repositories, so we still need sharding.

2. It is expensive, $300/TB-month

3. You're still sending all traffic over the network, we prefer the latency of local storage we can achieve by developing Gitaly https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitaly

Re: Why we are not leaving the cloud

#46

Post by throwtotheway » Thu, Mar 02, 2017, 7:33 PM UTC

tbrowbdidnso wrote: post #39

lbotos wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, sure, you might not save money being in the "cloud" but running hardware is a different skillset than building software. If you can pay someone else to run your hardware, someone else who wants to be really good at running hardware, you might be able to focus more on your software, and get really good at making that?

There is nothing hard about running hardware. The current VM trend gives you bare metal access. the only difference is you have to plug in your machines, and you get to look at them every once in a while. Really, what software dev hasn't put together a desktop PC and plugged in some Ethernet jacks? That's all you need to Colocate. Your response echos what cloud providers want everyone to think. Hardware is too hard f…

You're comparing a home desktop (or a single data center) to a battle tested globally accessible infrastructure. With experts running it.

Yes that's a loaded statement but so is comparing "the cloud" to "a desktop".

Re: Why we are not leaving the cloud

#47

Post by sithadmin » Thu, Mar 02, 2017, 7:35 PM UTC

tbrowbdidnso wrote: post #42

closeparen wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think it's in doubt that it makes sense to own everything from the land to the silicon when you're the size of one of these "original internet companies." The question is, does it make sense for businesses with a handful of servers running their office environment, to a few thousand servers running production for a moderately popular web service, to pay consultants to drive out and tend the servers in their o…

Running on rented hardware is the equivalent of a traditional product company renting all of their factories. Almost any company of reasonable size will want vertical integration of their supply chain and web companies are no different. Using Netflix as an example again, if they're pitted against a company that runs their own hardware but is otherwise equal, they will lose. A portion of their profit is siphoned off a…

>Almost any company of reasonable size will want vertical integration of their supply chain

Meanwhile, the most successful hardware vendors are all farming production out to third party manufacturers...

Re: Why we are not leaving the cloud

#48

Post by scott_s » Thu, Mar 02, 2017, 7:36 PM UTC

dasil003 wrote: post #37

keepper wrote: post #16

Why was hybrid not considered? With providers like megaport providing really inexpensive direct connect, this is almost a no brainer. This may seem harsh, but relying on random commenters shows a huge flaw in how you guys went about this. Physical environments DO work well, but they do require experience to run them. I have used AWS for as long as its been around, but nothing beats physical environments for "known wo…

> This may seem harsh, but relying on random commenters shows a huge flaw in how you guys went about this. Your other points and experience are well taken, but this is definitely too harsh. Think about the nature of GitLab as an open company building dev tools and paying below-market salaries. They have a huge amount of developer mindshare relative to their internal head count. They are not very competitive for hirin…

It's not just too harsh, it's not true. See the comments from those involved in the decision in this thread.

Re: Why we are not leaving the cloud

#49

Post by morgante » Thu, Mar 02, 2017, 7:36 PM UTC

dsr_ wrote: post #40

tbrowbdidnso wrote: post #34

So everyone says the cloud is the future. I get it. But is this the truth, or what all the tech giants want people to believe? Don your foil hats for a moment and listen to me. All the original internet companies run their own hardware. They rent out excess production capacity to us peons in the form of cloud services. These companies that all run their own hardware exclusively are telling everyone that it's stupid t…

The cloud isn't a money-saving tactic. It enables you to test demand for a service for a very low absolute cost. Spin up a tiny machine for $60/year? And you can pay for it by the month, or the hour? That's great. You can find out if anybody is going to buy your thing at all. You can probably get to ramen-profitable. As soon as you can confidently predict sufficient demand, the economically rational decision is to hi…

> and the costs of cloud service are zooming up, potentially leaving you without the margin to invest.

What do you mean by this, because it sounds like a straight up lie?

Amazon and Google are in an ongoing price war and cut costs regularly.

Re: Why we are not leaving the cloud

#50

Post by mbesto » Thu, Mar 02, 2017, 7:37 PM UTC

tbrowbdidnso wrote: post #34

So everyone says the cloud is the future. I get it. But is this the truth, or what all the tech giants want people to believe? Don your foil hats for a moment and listen to me. All the original internet companies run their own hardware. They rent out excess production capacity to us peons in the form of cloud services. These companies that all run their own hardware exclusively are telling everyone that it's stupid t…

This is incredibly misguided.

> The cloud as a money saving venture is and always has been a damn lie.

I personally have conducted migration savings assessments for companies going from data centers (owned/lease hardware) to cloud services. I can tell you with 100% certainty that the savings are there and have seen financial proof of the savings.

It's either that, or I'm a liar.