4 ms·

Why is bare metal so "uncool"? I am certain that a lot of companies don't need the flexibility provided by AWS. I can understand that you don't need additional

by nik736 10y ago

Why is bare metal so "uncool"? I am certain that a lot of companies don't need the flexibility provided by AWS. I can understand that you don't need additional staff by going with the AWS route, but in the end you get a bare vm which is kinda similar to a bare metal server – you have to manage it yourself. Things like RDS isn't good idea anyways, let it be in the startup phase (expensive) or later on (inflexible, etc.)... The only service I could think of which is really helpful is SES, because handling email is very stressful. And even if you need the flexibility you can still run your predictable stuff on bare metal, while, when the traffic spikes, spin on some cloud servers as you need them. But things like load balancing are always better handled on own servers, where you actually know what the fuck is happening.

Sleaker 10y ago
this is the same conclusion that I came to as soon as the article started listing specs and mentioning SSD.
snuxoll 10y ago
I have no idea, every time someone in the company talks about moving anything to the cloud except our off-site backups and MAYBE a DR plan I cringe hard. The vast majority of our infrastructure is fixed, we have a bunch of MSSQL databases, Exchange, AD, Laserfiche, VMWare VDI, our IBM i running our billing software, and a bunch of production application servers. We don't have any benefit to the "flexibility" of the cloud, we rarely spin up new servers as our load is very static, and it's all internal. We have millions of dollars invested in our current IT infrastructure and that is chump change compared to what we'd pay to move to Azure/AWS/Google for no real reason. Hell, I have physical hardware in my home (a Lenovo TD340 running XenServer and a HP ProLiant ML10 running FreeNAS) for my personal / small project use because for the upfront investment cost me as much as 1 month of the same capacity on the cloud, especially factoring in my 14TB RAW / 7TB available storage sitting in my SA120 enclosure and having 72GB of RAM between them. The cloud is great for really small things where a $5-20/mo VPS from Linode or DigitalOcean will do you just fine, but once you get past that if you aren't running a small steady-state with the need to burst on-demand it's just a money-pit.
abrookewood 10y ago
Bare metal isn't uncool .. it just requires someone who is willing to manage it. That includes rushing to the data centre at 3 a.m. to fix a failed power supply or a hard drive. In comparison, with a cloud provider and a proper architecture, a huge number of problems just disappear: if your server stops responding, it is automatically killed off and replaced; there is no need to worry about the operational overhead of managing a DB (backups, clustering, recovery etc) when you just consume it as a service; you don't really need to worry about maintaining a separate disaster recovery site when it is actually easier just to run in active-active mode; when your box is no longer adequately sized, you just stop it and restart it as something larger. Cloud computing provides a huge number of benefits - once you have used it, it is pretty hard to go back to managing your own hardware. That said, it isn't always the best option and it certainly isn't always the cheapest.
- bogomipz 10y ago
  There's something called "remote hands" and the big DC operators like Equnix offer it. I haven't been in a DC in years. Also just because its bare metal doesn't mean you don't need to design for failure just the same as do with AWS. And those problems don't just disappear by using AWS they just turn into different problems, certainly more opaque, like IP addresses that disappear from underneath you and the noisy neighbor problem. Its interesting to me that there is now a generation that isn't familiar with hardware. Knowing hardware will never count against you, especially if you want to do consulting or go work for a cloud provider or need to run a hybrid cloud.
  - abrookewood 10y ago
    You're right, remote hands is available, but in my experience (7+ years managing a DC in another country), it is expensive, inexperienced and slow to respond. If an issue occurs in a DC that's a drive away, I'll usually send a staff member because I know that the job will be done correctly and (usually) quicker. You're also right that the problems don't disappear, but they are certainly easier to resolve in a cloud environment. I have had boxes fail and get replaced in the time that it would normally take me to wake up and logon to work out what the issue is. I also agree that knowing hardware 'doesn't hurt' (it's where I started), but it also comes at a cost - the time required to learn and understand it. If you were starting out in IT today, would it make sense to spend time on that, or maybe learn about programming or architecture or something else. I don't know the answer, but it's certainly something to think about.
blackoil 10y ago
For startup phase, its all about speed, I can provision new machines, databases in minutes which have sane defaults and predictable behavior. I do not have to worry about configuration, backups etc. And, its not about difficulty, its about speed, if I have to recruit one less person (which is ungodly difficult tasks), or spend more time on product, I'll go for cloud. For large companies its again about flexibility, while they can manage/own data center. Core products with predictable load are good for data center. But in SOA or microservices, where a team is responsible end to end for service, cloud is godsend. Getting a new bare metal server is slow and bureaucratic. Boxes are assigned to cost center and getting them moving around is difficult. Getting temporary servers for an experiment is difficult. So the company has to go for internal cloud or external like AWS

by nik736 10y ago

Sleaker 10y ago

this is the same conclusion that I came to as soon as the article started listing specs and mentioning SSD.

snuxoll 10y ago

I have no idea, every time someone in the company talks about moving anything to the cloud except our off-site backups and MAYBE a DR plan I cringe hard. The vast majority of our infrastructure is fixed, we have a bunch of MSSQL databases, Exchange, AD, Laserfiche, VMWare VDI, our IBM i running our billing software, and a bunch of production application servers. We don't have any benefit to the "flexibility" of the cloud, we rarely spin up new servers as our load is very static, and it's all internal. We have millions of dollars invested in our current IT infrastructure and that is chump change compared to what we'd pay to move to Azure/AWS/Google for no real reason. Hell, I have physical hardware in my home (a Lenovo TD340 running XenServer and a HP ProLiant ML10 running FreeNAS) for my personal / small project use because for the upfront investment cost me as much as 1 month of the same capacity on the cloud, especially factoring in my 14TB RAW / 7TB available storage sitting in my SA120 enclosure and having 72GB of RAM between them. The cloud is great for really small things where a $5-20/mo VPS from Linode or DigitalOcean will do you just fine, but once you get past that if you aren't running a small steady-state with the need to burst on-demand it's just a money-pit.

abrookewood 10y ago

Bare metal isn't uncool .. it just requires someone who is willing to manage it. That includes rushing to the data centre at 3 a.m. to fix a failed power supply or a hard drive. In comparison, with a cloud provider and a proper architecture, a huge number of problems just disappear: if your server stops responding, it is automatically killed off and replaced; there is no need to worry about the operational overhead of managing a DB (backups, clustering, recovery etc) when you just consume it as a service; you don't really need to worry about maintaining a separate disaster recovery site when it is actually easier just to run in active-active mode; when your box is no longer adequately sized, you just stop it and restart it as something larger. Cloud computing provides a huge number of benefits - once you have used it, it is pretty hard to go back to managing your own hardware. That said, it isn't always the best option and it certainly isn't always the cheapest.

bogomipz 10y ago
There's something called "remote hands" and the big DC operators like Equnix offer it. I haven't been in a DC in years. Also just because its bare metal doesn't mean you don't need to design for failure just the same as do with AWS. And those problems don't just disappear by using AWS they just turn into different problems, certainly more opaque, like IP addresses that disappear from underneath you and the noisy neighbor problem. Its interesting to me that there is now a generation that isn't familiar with hardware. Knowing hardware will never count against you, especially if you want to do consulting or go work for a cloud provider or need to run a hybrid cloud.
- abrookewood 10y ago
  You're right, remote hands is available, but in my experience (7+ years managing a DC in another country), it is expensive, inexperienced and slow to respond. If an issue occurs in a DC that's a drive away, I'll usually send a staff member because I know that the job will be done correctly and (usually) quicker. You're also right that the problems don't disappear, but they are certainly easier to resolve in a cloud environment. I have had boxes fail and get replaced in the time that it would normally take me to wake up and logon to work out what the issue is. I also agree that knowing hardware 'doesn't hurt' (it's where I started), but it also comes at a cost - the time required to learn and understand it. If you were starting out in IT today, would it make sense to spend time on that, or maybe learn about programming or architecture or something else. I don't know the answer, but it's certainly something to think about.

blackoil 10y ago

For startup phase, its all about speed, I can provision new machines, databases in minutes which have sane defaults and predictable behavior. I do not have to worry about configuration, backups etc. And, its not about difficulty, its about speed, if I have to recruit one less person (which is ungodly difficult tasks), or spend more time on product, I'll go for cloud. For large companies its again about flexibility, while they can manage/own data center. Core products with predictable load are good for data center. But in SOA or microservices, where a team is responsible end to end for service, cloud is godsend. Getting a new bare metal server is slow and bureaucratic. Boxes are assigned to cost center and getting them moving around is difficult. Getting temporary servers for an experiment is difficult. So the company has to go for internal cloud or external like AWS