I feel like it just depends on what you’re trying to do. * data driven website with some internal api integration, maybe some client-side application or tooling? Put a server rack in a closet and get a fiber line. * trying to serve the general public in a bursty, not-cacheable way? Probably going to have to carry a lot of machines that usually don’t do much, cloud might make more sense * lots of ingress or DNS rules?…
What kind of capacities as a rule of thumb would you use? You can fit an awful lot of storage and compute on a single rack, and the cost for large DBs on AWS and others is extremely high, so savings are larger as well.