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Being on AWS does not necessarily mean that you don't need a devops person - especially at the scale where not being on AWS actually makes a difference to your

by karterk 11y ago

Being on AWS does not necessarily mean that you don't need a devops person - especially at the scale where not being on AWS actually makes a difference to your margins. I have seen quite a few people move off AWS successfully onto bare-metal leased hardware. S3 is just about the only service that's difficult to find an alternative for. Personally, I find using something like DynamoDB no different than using an Oracle DB - it's a vendor lock-in. Unless you had enterprise-level support on AWS (which costs a lot) - if you run into issues with Amazon's proprietary services, then good luck to you. AWS is great to get started, but once you know that you're going to need scale (and lots of infra), it's best to move. I say all of this as someone who has extensive operating experience on AWS. YMMV.

UK-AL 11y ago
Oh, with cloud services you defiantly need devops. Without AWS you also need dedicated infrastructure, networking and hardware people as well as devops. You need people who know how to configure cisco networking gear, who understand SAN's, iSCSI, Fibrechannel, Racks, blades lots of stuff even devops people don't think about.
- latch 11y ago
  No. This is true for colocated, but absolutely false for dedicated.
  - toomuchtodo 11y ago
    You are correct! If you're just colocating, you need your own people to manage your gear. Dedicated equipment is managed by the service provider. Disclaimer: Provided hosting services for ~8 years.
    - UK-AL 11y ago
      Companies that provide managed hosting for hardware tend be just as expensive as cloud providers. These comparisons tend to be, oh look you can buy the the Dell Server for cheap, and shove it in data centre and it's a lot cheaper. If you start going route where you ask the provider to do it, the charges tend to be a lot more. It usually the sort thing where you need to do a phone call before you can even get a quote.
      - latch 11y ago
        Again, this is demonstrably false. What's commonly meant by "dedicated hosting" is essentially the same service level you get from EC2 - they they care of the network and hardware, you take care of the software (1). The cost here is 2x-4x lower. In another comment, I quoted E5-2620 v3 w/64GB for $400 which is exactly this type of setup. This is offered by a company that's been in business for longer than AWS has existed and who, in web hosting circles, is well respected. You could definitely go cheaper. You could definitely go to IBM and rackspace and pay as much as EC2, sure...but there are literally thousands of providers in the US, which have been in business for over a decade that'll beat EC2/Rackspace/Softlayer by a wide margin. Some that I've personally used: WebNX (LA), NetDepot (Atlanta), ReliableSite (NY), HiVelocity (Florida). I've also done it on the cheap with OVH (both Quebec and France) and Hetzner (Germany), as well as on the expensive side with Softlayer (you can negotiate softlayer down considerably even on a small order). (1) That's disservice to dedicated hosting, because the quality of the network is often better, and you won't get termination emails from your hosting provider or noisy neighbours the way like you do on EC2.
        UK-AL 11y ago
        Will those guys provide you with SQL Server cluster with at least 2 servers, Setup AlwaysOn, Setup failover clustering with Quorums, Optimal Disk Partition Alignment, DTC, setup subnets, ACLS to secure your cluster and lots of MSSQL Specific stuff I don't know about and then monitor it for you. Because that's what managed service is. And most ask a lot for this because of the specialists it requires. If you pay for RDS, Amazon does this for you, and it would already be well setup below the application level. They have guys monitoring it, and keeping it up. And they can do this cheap because of the benefits of scale across all their customers. If you just ask for machine than yes, that's going to be cheap. But your forgetting you need databases, Application delivery controllers, firewalls, VPN appliances. All of which may require niche vender knowledge to setup, and then they would charge a lot of consultancy fee's to design a solution for you. Amazon puts this stuff behind simple API's where you don't need to know all those vender specific skills.
        11y ago
- tristor 11y ago
  What exactly is "DevOps" to you? I ask, because almost everyone has a different answer. I've been doing "DevOps" for more than ten years, and all of the items you listed as required skill-sets are within my capabilities and have been used at many of the places I've worked. I'd be hard pressed to call someone an ops person if they don't understand the basics of server hardware, networking, and storage. These are essential components which the system relies on, the same system you are responsible for the uptime of. I often hear things like your statements and can't help but wonder if the general quality of ops people is so bad in our industry and I just haven't encountered it, or if the reason ops people are treated so poorly in most organizations is just that developers automatically assume we don't know anything rather than asking.
  - UK-AL 11y ago
    Devops for me would be things like puppet, networking(subnets, load balancing, firewalls etc) deployments, Cloud Formation templates, ARM Templates rather than directly setting up hardware. Where a dedicated networking would know specifics of certain vender. You can make career out of just knowing how to set up CISCO hardware and CISCO's embedded os. Devop's people tend to be broader than that.
    - tristor 11y ago
      All of the items you listed fall under my definition of "DevOps" as well. I loosely define it in two ways: 1) "DevOps is a philosophy, not a title" (this is mostly because of managers thinking otherwise) 2) "DevOps is about focusing on automation of systems infrastructure to improve reliability, flexibility, and security." Regarding #2, though, since my past experience includes building public clouds, my perspective does not limit "DevOps" to only utilizing public clouds. You can automate the build-out of physical hardware too. It's not really possible to automate rack n stack, but you can abstract that away through external logistics vendors that pre-rack/cable gear for you at a certain scalability point. Things like OpenStack Ironic, Dell Crowbar, Cobbler, Foreman, etc. are definitely DevOps tools, yet they are specifically focused on handling automation of physical hardware deployments. As a further example, many networking vendors now provide APIs, but even when they didn't they had SSH interfaces. It was very possible to automate the deployment of large quantities of networking gear using remote-execution tools like Ansible or even just Ruby or BASH scripts. There's no need necessarily to have a dedicated networking person. Of course, as you scale up to a certain point in physical gear, it pays to have specialization. But that's true even in the cloud, where you may need to hire a specialist to deal with your databases, a specialist to deal with complexities of geographical scale/distributed systems, a specialist to deal with complex cloud networking (VPC et al). Just because something is abstracted away into a virtual space doesn't necessarily reduce its complexity or the base skillsets required to operate that infrastructure.
- beachstartup 11y ago
  you don't need any of this stuff, there are providers out there that will give you all of this for a cost less than amazon's. the problem is nobody wants to do it because it's not sexy, or name brand / won't-get-fired-for-hiring-IBM.
  - UK-AL 11y ago
    Well you do want it, if your running 30 million a year website off it. A little amount of downtime can cost a lot.
    - beachstartup 11y ago
      talk about missing the point. it's hard to sign up to a provider nobody has ever heard of. doesn't matter if you're making 30 mil or 3 thousand dollars.
throwaway2016a 11y ago
All valid points. > Being on AWS does not necessarily mean that you don't need a devops person - especially at the scale where not being on AWS actually makes a difference to your margins. Agreed. I didn't mean to imply that. On our scale it means we need 2 instead of 4. And for consulting business, 1 person can handle multiple smaller clients so each client doesn't need to take on the full cost. Incidentally, since moving some of our self-managed servers to AWS services we have seen a drastic decrease in how often our on-call engineer is woken up at 3 AM. Which makes them happy. And happy employees are always a good investment. Admittedly, given enough time we could have made our stuff as resilient as AWS. Also, being able to call Amazon support and get a second eye on things helps. Albeit, the support plan is a bit pricy. In our case $10k a year. > I have seen quite a few people move off AWS successfully onto bare-metal leased hardware. S3 is just about the only service that's difficult to find an alternative for. Personally, I find using something like DynamoDB no different than using an Oracle DB - it's a vendor lock-in. Unless you had enterprise-level support on AWS (which costs a lot) - if you run into issues with Amazon's proprietary services, then good luck to you. Vendor lock-in is a major issue. Which is why we used self-managed databases on AWS for years (vs RDS, Redshift, or DynamoDB). Our conclusion -- after a few years -- was in our case (YMMV) we could accept the vendor lock-in but make sure our code was abstracted in a way that make moving easier. Plus with AWS's new Database Migration System moving databases off (or on) to AWS is pretty easy. Also, there are actually some really good S3 alternatives now. Their names escape me. I'll look them up later. However, I've seen many companies use only S3, Glacier, and CloudFront but not EC2. Your servers don't need to be on AWS to use them, obviously. Almost all AWS services have good open source alternatives. And we have spent the time to make sure system is architected and our code is written in a way that has a clear path to switching. Microservices really help here. > AWS is great to get started, but once you know that you're going to need scale (and lots of infra), it's best to move. I say all of this as someone who has extensive operating experience on AWS. YMMV. Maybe. But once you buy reserved instances in AWS the cost is pretty low. And when hardware fails in AWS it doesn't cost you more. (Assuming your architected without single points of failure) I've found a lot of people did the math before AWS lowered their costs and introduced reserved instances. Either way, this is why I said "cheaper in some ways and more expensive in others"
- 11y ago
homero 11y ago
B2 kills s3
- alainv 11y ago
  Maybe once it leaves beta.

by karterk 11y ago

UK-AL 11y ago

Oh, with cloud services you defiantly need devops. Without AWS you also need dedicated infrastructure, networking and hardware people as well as devops. You need people who know how to configure cisco networking gear, who understand SAN's, iSCSI, Fibrechannel, Racks, blades lots of stuff even devops people don't think about.

latch 11y ago
No. This is true for colocated, but absolutely false for dedicated.
- toomuchtodo 11y ago
  You are correct! If you're just colocating, you need your own people to manage your gear. Dedicated equipment is managed by the service provider. Disclaimer: Provided hosting services for ~8 years.
  - UK-AL 11y ago
    Companies that provide managed hosting for hardware tend be just as expensive as cloud providers. These comparisons tend to be, oh look you can buy the the Dell Server for cheap, and shove it in data centre and it's a lot cheaper. If you start going route where you ask the provider to do it, the charges tend to be a lot more. It usually the sort thing where you need to do a phone call before you can even get a quote.
    - latch 11y ago
      Again, this is demonstrably false. What's commonly meant by "dedicated hosting" is essentially the same service level you get from EC2 - they they care of the network and hardware, you take care of the software (1). The cost here is 2x-4x lower. In another comment, I quoted E5-2620 v3 w/64GB for $400 which is exactly this type of setup. This is offered by a company that's been in business for longer than AWS has existed and who, in web hosting circles, is well respected. You could definitely go cheaper. You could definitely go to IBM and rackspace and pay as much as EC2, sure...but there are literally thousands of providers in the US, which have been in business for over a decade that'll beat EC2/Rackspace/Softlayer by a wide margin. Some that I've personally used: WebNX (LA), NetDepot (Atlanta), ReliableSite (NY), HiVelocity (Florida). I've also done it on the cheap with OVH (both Quebec and France) and Hetzner (Germany), as well as on the expensive side with Softlayer (you can negotiate softlayer down considerably even on a small order). (1) That's disservice to dedicated hosting, because the quality of the network is often better, and you won't get termination emails from your hosting provider or noisy neighbours the way like you do on EC2.
      - UK-AL 11y ago
        Will those guys provide you with SQL Server cluster with at least 2 servers, Setup AlwaysOn, Setup failover clustering with Quorums, Optimal Disk Partition Alignment, DTC, setup subnets, ACLS to secure your cluster and lots of MSSQL Specific stuff I don't know about and then monitor it for you. Because that's what managed service is. And most ask a lot for this because of the specialists it requires. If you pay for RDS, Amazon does this for you, and it would already be well setup below the application level. They have guys monitoring it, and keeping it up. And they can do this cheap because of the benefits of scale across all their customers. If you just ask for machine than yes, that's going to be cheap. But your forgetting you need databases, Application delivery controllers, firewalls, VPN appliances. All of which may require niche vender knowledge to setup, and then they would charge a lot of consultancy fee's to design a solution for you. Amazon puts this stuff behind simple API's where you don't need to know all those vender specific skills.
        11y ago
tristor 11y ago
What exactly is "DevOps" to you? I ask, because almost everyone has a different answer. I've been doing "DevOps" for more than ten years, and all of the items you listed as required skill-sets are within my capabilities and have been used at many of the places I've worked. I'd be hard pressed to call someone an ops person if they don't understand the basics of server hardware, networking, and storage. These are essential components which the system relies on, the same system you are responsible for the uptime of. I often hear things like your statements and can't help but wonder if the general quality of ops people is so bad in our industry and I just haven't encountered it, or if the reason ops people are treated so poorly in most organizations is just that developers automatically assume we don't know anything rather than asking.
- UK-AL 11y ago
  Devops for me would be things like puppet, networking(subnets, load balancing, firewalls etc) deployments, Cloud Formation templates, ARM Templates rather than directly setting up hardware. Where a dedicated networking would know specifics of certain vender. You can make career out of just knowing how to set up CISCO hardware and CISCO's embedded os. Devop's people tend to be broader than that.
  - tristor 11y ago
    All of the items you listed fall under my definition of "DevOps" as well. I loosely define it in two ways: 1) "DevOps is a philosophy, not a title" (this is mostly because of managers thinking otherwise) 2) "DevOps is about focusing on automation of systems infrastructure to improve reliability, flexibility, and security." Regarding #2, though, since my past experience includes building public clouds, my perspective does not limit "DevOps" to only utilizing public clouds. You can automate the build-out of physical hardware too. It's not really possible to automate rack n stack, but you can abstract that away through external logistics vendors that pre-rack/cable gear for you at a certain scalability point. Things like OpenStack Ironic, Dell Crowbar, Cobbler, Foreman, etc. are definitely DevOps tools, yet they are specifically focused on handling automation of physical hardware deployments. As a further example, many networking vendors now provide APIs, but even when they didn't they had SSH interfaces. It was very possible to automate the deployment of large quantities of networking gear using remote-execution tools like Ansible or even just Ruby or BASH scripts. There's no need necessarily to have a dedicated networking person. Of course, as you scale up to a certain point in physical gear, it pays to have specialization. But that's true even in the cloud, where you may need to hire a specialist to deal with your databases, a specialist to deal with complexities of geographical scale/distributed systems, a specialist to deal with complex cloud networking (VPC et al). Just because something is abstracted away into a virtual space doesn't necessarily reduce its complexity or the base skillsets required to operate that infrastructure.
beachstartup 11y ago
you don't need any of this stuff, there are providers out there that will give you all of this for a cost less than amazon's. the problem is nobody wants to do it because it's not sexy, or name brand / won't-get-fired-for-hiring-IBM.
- UK-AL 11y ago
  Well you do want it, if your running 30 million a year website off it. A little amount of downtime can cost a lot.
  - beachstartup 11y ago
    talk about missing the point. it's hard to sign up to a provider nobody has ever heard of. doesn't matter if you're making 30 mil or 3 thousand dollars.

throwaway2016a 11y ago

All valid points. > Being on AWS does not necessarily mean that you don't need a devops person - especially at the scale where not being on AWS actually makes a difference to your margins. Agreed. I didn't mean to imply that. On our scale it means we need 2 instead of 4. And for consulting business, 1 person can handle multiple smaller clients so each client doesn't need to take on the full cost. Incidentally, since moving some of our self-managed servers to AWS services we have seen a drastic decrease in how often our on-call engineer is woken up at 3 AM. Which makes them happy. And happy employees are always a good investment. Admittedly, given enough time we could have made our stuff as resilient as AWS. Also, being able to call Amazon support and get a second eye on things helps. Albeit, the support plan is a bit pricy. In our case $10k a year. > I have seen quite a few people move off AWS successfully onto bare-metal leased hardware. S3 is just about the only service that's difficult to find an alternative for. Personally, I find using something like DynamoDB no different than using an Oracle DB - it's a vendor lock-in. Unless you had enterprise-level support on AWS (which costs a lot) - if you run into issues with Amazon's proprietary services, then good luck to you. Vendor lock-in is a major issue. Which is why we used self-managed databases on AWS for years (vs RDS, Redshift, or DynamoDB). Our conclusion -- after a few years -- was in our case (YMMV) we could accept the vendor lock-in but make sure our code was abstracted in a way that make moving easier. Plus with AWS's new Database Migration System moving databases off (or on) to AWS is pretty easy. Also, there are actually some really good S3 alternatives now. Their names escape me. I'll look them up later. However, I've seen many companies use only S3, Glacier, and CloudFront but not EC2. Your servers don't need to be on AWS to use them, obviously. Almost all AWS services have good open source alternatives. And we have spent the time to make sure system is architected and our code is written in a way that has a clear path to switching. Microservices really help here. > AWS is great to get started, but once you know that you're going to need scale (and lots of infra), it's best to move. I say all of this as someone who has extensive operating experience on AWS. YMMV. Maybe. But once you buy reserved instances in AWS the cost is pretty low. And when hardware fails in AWS it doesn't cost you more. (Assuming your architected without single points of failure) I've found a lot of people did the math before AWS lowered their costs and introduced reserved instances. Either way, this is why I said "cheaper in some ways and more expensive in others"

11y ago

homero 11y ago

B2 kills s3

alainv 11y ago
Maybe once it leaves beta.