Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

AWS Adds support for nested virtualization

github.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 124 posts

Re: AWS Adds support for nested virtualization

#71

Post by re-thc »

PunchyHamster wrote: post #68
direwolf20 wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can use an expensive AWS VM instead of an expensive AWS bare–metal image. Does anyone realise how expensive AWS is, even in the best case?

It is expensive. But the point where it stops being expensive is far above most companies use case. If you're paying less than a developers salary for hosting you most likely won't see all that many benefits from moving. Renting a server from cheaper hosting providers can be massive savings but you now need to re-invent all of the AWS APIs you use or might use and it's big CAPEX time investment. And any new feature y…

> but you now need to re-invent all of the AWS APIs you use or might use and it's big CAPEX time investment

Or maybe you just never needed most of these in the first place. People got into this "AWS" mentality like it is the only way to do things. Everything had to be in a queue, event driven etc.

I'd argue not using AWS means simplifying things and it'll be less expensive not just in server cost but developer time.

Re: AWS Adds support for nested virtualization

#72

Post by tryauuum »

ssl-3 wrote: post #12
blibble wrote: post #3

welcome AWS to 2018!

Yep. It's pretty boring. I've been using it at home for years and years with libvirt on very not-special consumer hardware. I guess the AWS clown is finally catching up on this one little not-new-at-all thing.

the only thing I know about nested virtualization is from the libvirt/KVM world too:

* you are right, it just works

* but there were scary notes about the stuff which might happen when you live migrate a virtual machine between hypervisors and the machine has nested virtual machines inside it. I remember the words "neither safe nor secure"

Re: AWS Adds support for nested virtualization

#73

Post by sorenbs »

HumanOstrich wrote: post #57
iJohnDoe wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Was hoping this comment would be here. Firecracker and microVMs are good use-case. Also, being able to simply test and develop is a nice to have. Nested virtualization can mean a lot of things. Not just full VMs.

> Firecracker and microVMs are good use-case. Good use-case for what?

We operate a postgres service on Firecracker. You can create as many databases as you want, and we memory-snapshot them after 5 seconds of inactivity, and spin them up again in 50ms when a query arrives.

https://www.prisma.io/postgres

Re: AWS Adds support for nested virtualization

#74

Post by notyourwork »

PunchyHamster wrote: post #68
direwolf20 wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can use an expensive AWS VM instead of an expensive AWS bare–metal image. Does anyone realise how expensive AWS is, even in the best case?

It is expensive. But the point where it stops being expensive is far above most companies use case. If you're paying less than a developers salary for hosting you most likely won't see all that many benefits from moving. Renting a server from cheaper hosting providers can be massive savings but you now need to re-invent all of the AWS APIs you use or might use and it's big CAPEX time investment. And any new feature y…

Agreed. Some threads make the suggestion you replied to and seemingly fail to ignore the reality of business. Not all businesses want to insource all problems.

Re: AWS Adds support for nested virtualization

#77

Post by whopdrizzard »

firesteelrain wrote: post #50
anurag wrote: post #11

This is a big deal because you can now run Firecracker/other microVMs in an AWS VM instead of expensive AWS bare-metal instances. GCP has had nested virtualization for a while.

Azure has had nested virt available for a while too. I used to run HyperV in cloud

Azure has recently announced "direct virtualization", which is a sort of logical nesting, in which users can sub-partition their L1 VMs into virtual L2 VMs that are technically siblings.

https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/blog/azurecompute/scalin...

(I work there)

Re: AWS Adds support for nested virtualization

#78

Post by stoneforger »

re-thc wrote: post #71
PunchyHamster wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is expensive. But the point where it stops being expensive is far above most companies use case. If you're paying less than a developers salary for hosting you most likely won't see all that many benefits from moving. Renting a server from cheaper hosting providers can be massive savings but you now need to re-invent all of the AWS APIs you use or might use and it's big CAPEX time investment. And any new feature y…

> but you now need to re-invent all of the AWS APIs you use or might use and it's big CAPEX time investment Or maybe you just never needed most of these in the first place. People got into this "AWS" mentality like it is the only way to do things. Everything had to be in a queue, event driven etc. I'd argue not using AWS means simplifying things and it'll be less expensive not just in server cost but developer time.

You don't get how this works. You buy in AWS because everyone else is , so it's expected. It diffuses risk to your stock options. This also begets a whole generation of people who can only use cloud services so now you are more hard pressed to find people with experience to run things without the cloud. You also create a bigger expenses sheet so it shows you're investing and growing, attracting more investors. "We pay 10 mil in AWS , we're that big". It's classic perverse incentives feeding into a monoculture.
Post reply on HN