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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

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.
  - bogomipz 10y ago
    It's expensive but its also lot cheaper than paying someone full time that might not be needed full time. It depends. The difference in metal vs a cloud provider is that with bare metal you can dive deeper into why things are failing beyond what you might with a cloud provider. That may or may not be important to you. It depends. With a cloud provider you often just spin up new instances and hope they land somewhere better. If you were starting out in IT today it would absolutely make sense to learn hardware. The cloud is just somebody else's hardware.
olau 10y ago
You can rent bare metal with the hardware managed by the hosting center. Hetzner.de provides this. If there's a problem with the software, you fix it, if there's a problem with the hardware, you tell them and they fix it.
- l0b0 10y ago
  Speaking as someone who works at a small startup that transitioned from a hosting centre to AWS a couple years ago, we sliced our monthly hosting costs by about 1/3 immediately, and gained a massive amount of flexibility. Maybe GCE is better is some respects, but we're certainly not regretting the choice.
Annatar 10y ago
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; Except that that is technically impossible! Even if it were somehow magically true, all of that magical infrastructure would be completely useless without an application which could run her own instances in parallel, and do synchronous updates of global data state from all nodes at once. This is a non-trivial computer science problem which has not been reliably solved to this present day, so the entire premise is flawed. There is no getting away from good old fashioned UNIX system and database administration, and in this day and age of distributed applications, the stakes are even higher, as now there is no getting away from system engineering. Incidentally, that includes administering and servicing hardware, but even more importantly, it includes engineering fault tolerant, distributed infrastructure. There is no getting away from that: you learned how to program, now in order to use that knowledge, sooner or later, you will have to learn how to administer systems and databases, and then you will have to learn how to engineer entire systems. Computers used to be fun when you had a Commodore 64, Commodore Amiga, or an Atari ST in front of you and you were a single user on a single system; now they are just complex and hard, and if you want to write a highly available, fault tolerant application which continues to operate correctly even in the face of severe hardware and software failures, there is no getting around learning how to administer and engineer systems.

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.
- bogomipz 10y ago
  It's expensive but its also lot cheaper than paying someone full time that might not be needed full time. It depends. The difference in metal vs a cloud provider is that with bare metal you can dive deeper into why things are failing beyond what you might with a cloud provider. That may or may not be important to you. It depends. With a cloud provider you often just spin up new instances and hope they land somewhere better. If you were starting out in IT today it would absolutely make sense to learn hardware. The cloud is just somebody else's hardware.

olau 10y ago

You can rent bare metal with the hardware managed by the hosting center. Hetzner.de provides this. If there's a problem with the software, you fix it, if there's a problem with the hardware, you tell them and they fix it.

l0b0 10y ago
Speaking as someone who works at a small startup that transitioned from a hosting centre to AWS a couple years ago, we sliced our monthly hosting costs by about 1/3 immediately, and gained a massive amount of flexibility. Maybe GCE is better is some respects, but we're certainly not regretting the choice.

Annatar 10y ago

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; Except that that is technically impossible! Even if it were somehow magically true, all of that magical infrastructure would be completely useless without an application which could run her own instances in parallel, and do synchronous updates of global data state from all nodes at once. This is a non-trivial computer science problem which has not been reliably solved to this present day, so the entire premise is flawed. There is no getting away from good old fashioned UNIX system and database administration, and in this day and age of distributed applications, the stakes are even higher, as now there is no getting away from system engineering. Incidentally, that includes administering and servicing hardware, but even more importantly, it includes engineering fault tolerant, distributed infrastructure. There is no getting away from that: you learned how to program, now in order to use that knowledge, sooner or later, you will have to learn how to administer systems and databases, and then you will have to learn how to engineer entire systems. Computers used to be fun when you had a Commodore 64, Commodore Amiga, or an Atari ST in front of you and you were a single user on a single system; now they are just complex and hard, and if you want to write a highly available, fault tolerant application which continues to operate correctly even in the face of severe hardware and software failures, there is no getting around learning how to administer and engineer systems.