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Cloud Pricing is ridiculous ... made the comparison between a dedicated server and cloud offerings of microsoft, google, amazon ... rackspace (SO EXPENSIVE) and

Cloud Pricing is ridiculous ... made the comparison between a dedicated server and cloud offerings of microsoft, google, amazon ... rackspace (SO EXPENSIVE) and you pay 5 times in the cloud for the same.

Someone1234 10y ago
While undeniably true, you have to look at the levels of redundancy. With a dedicated server, if the box dies you're offline, if the storage dies you may lose data, etc. Plus, there's also a premium just for access to the ecosystem/APIs. You are often paying for the theoretical convenience of being able to spawn additional instances programmatically.
- jamroom 10y ago
  Absolutely true - however, in a true "apples to apples" comparison, if you're only running a single EC2 instance (for example) and it dies you're offline as well - AWS does not "automatically" have a failover setup for you. In this case 2 dedicated instances with a load balancer is going to get you the same setup you'd get on AWS (only likely cheaper and a lot more powerful setup).
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
- rubber_duck 10y ago
  Like someone else said, your VM can die as well, the cloud provides some HA services but there are hosted/standalone versions as well. I think the real question is how spiky is your usage, even with renting bare metal you still can't scale dynamically like you can with cloud VM - if you need 5x the capacity to cover spikes you might as well use cloud and all the fancy stuff you get with it. And you can use both at the same time (dynamically scale up through cloud, bare metal predictable workloads)
ju-st 10y ago
Nobody ever got fired for buying cloud
- dexterdog 10y ago
  Actually the guy I just replaced did, but that's because he didn't know what he was doing.
  - bigiain 10y ago
    An ex-gig of mine lost their major customer, the new agency moved them to AWS (and poached a few staff, which is how I heard this story). The hosting(inc bandwidth) costs jumped to _nine times_ the previous arrangement, and the website performance dropped. So far as I know, the guy who masterminded that has not been fired...
untog 10y ago
Yes, but cloud scales in a way dedicated servers simply cannot. I agree that a lot of people use cloud when they shouldn't, but there are a number of cases where it remains very relevant.
- jamroom 10y ago
  Not "cannot" - just "easier" :)
  - awj 10y ago
    I do releases by baking a new virtual machine with the code+config built in and booting it. I guess it's possible to do that on real hardware, but calling it simply "harder" borders on disingenuous.
    - paulddraper 10y ago
      You can deploy virtual machines to real hardware. That's what kubernetes, etc. are for.
    - Nullabillity 10y ago
      I basically do that for my Xen VMs with NixOps in the "no provisioner" mode. Would be exactly the same for bare metal, plus I get dev VMs that match the prod environment for free.
- dragontamer 10y ago
  Dedicated scales in a way that cloud cannot: vertically. Want to build a 1TB DDR4 RAM beast with 40 cores? Yeah, you can do that with dedicated.
  - computerphage 10y ago
    https://aws.amazon.com/ec2/instance-types/x1/ https://aws.amazon.com/ec2/instance-types/x1/
Scirra_Tom 10y ago
We're moving to AWS for our next release, managed by Rackspace. Had the same philosophy as you for years, and have saved a lot of money with DIY (maybe in the tens of thousands). Turns out server admin is not my skillset, and it's caused problems, headaches and risks in the past. I consider the additional cost going forwards in effect as our next hire and an important one. For small startups looking to save money DIY can be a good option, but moving onto the cloud at a later date can be a big burden.
- imaginenore 10y ago
  You still need a server admin, cloud or not. It's not like there's a magic button in the cloud that replaces an admin.
  - dexterdog 10y ago
    A good cloud admin can manage far more in less time in the cloud
  - Scirra_Tom 10y ago
    Yep, which is why we have Rackspace actively managing our cloud setup
    - deleted 10y ago
      [deleted]
  - foxylad 10y ago
    Appengine (and I believe Elastic Beanstalk) are those magic buttons. I've used Appengine for years, and have loved not having to worry about patching, OS upgrades, scaling or redundancy. If you're a small shop, this lets you concentrate on your core product instead of your systems. And by "small shop", I really mean "pretty big shop" - you're going to be a globally significant player before your Appengine charges get near a sysadmin's salary.
- bluedino 10y ago
  I can't imagine Rackspace managing anything being a positive
awj 10y ago
What comparison? Can I simply ask the colo for a brand new dedicated server every time the machine dies or I want to do a new release? Do they offer services to provision, start, and load balance to new dedicated servers when the ones I have are at high utilization? No? They don't? Maybe that's because you're comparing fundamentally different things that are only superficially similar to each other.
- pmalynin 10y ago
  OVH does
paulddraper 10y ago
Restaurant prices are ridiculous ... made the comparison between groceries and menu offerings of McDonalds, Taco Bell, Burger King ... Olive Garden (SO EXPENSIVE) and you pay 5 times at a restaurant for the same. --- You're not paying for hardware. You're paying for hardware, expertise, services, and convenience. On-prem or colocation may be a good choice. But limiting your comparison to raw computing power mischaracterizes the decision.
- caminante 10y ago
  Great analogy re: food! I'm going to steal that.
elchief 10y ago
It makes sense if you need to spin up several servers really fast. Like, "I can't wait 2 weeks for my Supermicro reseller to ship and build them" fast. There is likely some optimal schedule where you start w cloud, order DIY replacements, and migrate, and repeat as you scale. Labour-intensive though.
- dpark 10y ago
  Labor isn't cheap. If you spend more on labor to manage this shuffling than you save on cloud costs, it's decidedly suboptimal.
- kuschku 10y ago
  In that case, rent a dedicated server from Hetzner or OVH, it’s online in 120 seconds, and still 5 times cheaper than AWS.
gsam 10y ago
You're paying people to maintain your machines. You're eliminating the need for your own sys-admins to keep your servers up to date and patched. For small businesses who have no IT staff for instance, this is exactly what you want.
- ddorian43 10y ago
  ec2!=heroku
bigiain 10y ago
Keep in mind you get up to 75% discount at AWS for 3yr term upfront payments for reserved instances... (In reality, anything I use only seems to get a ~60% discount for that) But nobody uses AWS 'cause it's "cheapest". That's completely missing the point.
- bdcravens 10y ago
  Even the worst reserved pricing gets you 30%-40% off of published rates (nothing upfront, just commit to a year)
- quicksilver03 10y ago
  3yr reserved instances is something that baffled me when I was doing the research for https://www.hostingforappdevelopers.com https://www.hostingforappdevelopers.com . What reasons push people to pay upfront and to commit to a solution whose main benefit is elasticity?
  - bigiain 10y ago
    For those sweet sweet discounts? Because who cares about costs next year or the year after, I'm just on a 6 month contract here! (Even more cynically, "because it's just like buying servers, but comes on the OpEx budget not the CapEx one, so _my_ KPIs look _awesome!_")

Someone1234 10y ago

While undeniably true, you have to look at the levels of redundancy. With a dedicated server, if the box dies you're offline, if the storage dies you may lose data, etc. Plus, there's also a premium just for access to the ecosystem/APIs. You are often paying for the theoretical convenience of being able to spawn additional instances programmatically.

jamroom 10y ago
Absolutely true - however, in a true "apples to apples" comparison, if you're only running a single EC2 instance (for example) and it dies you're offline as well - AWS does not "automatically" have a failover setup for you. In this case 2 dedicated instances with a load balancer is going to get you the same setup you'd get on AWS (only likely cheaper and a lot more powerful setup).
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
rubber_duck 10y ago
Like someone else said, your VM can die as well, the cloud provides some HA services but there are hosted/standalone versions as well. I think the real question is how spiky is your usage, even with renting bare metal you still can't scale dynamically like you can with cloud VM - if you need 5x the capacity to cover spikes you might as well use cloud and all the fancy stuff you get with it. And you can use both at the same time (dynamically scale up through cloud, bare metal predictable workloads)

ju-st 10y ago

Nobody ever got fired for buying cloud

dexterdog 10y ago
Actually the guy I just replaced did, but that's because he didn't know what he was doing.
- bigiain 10y ago
  An ex-gig of mine lost their major customer, the new agency moved them to AWS (and poached a few staff, which is how I heard this story). The hosting(inc bandwidth) costs jumped to _nine times_ the previous arrangement, and the website performance dropped. So far as I know, the guy who masterminded that has not been fired...

untog 10y ago

Yes, but cloud scales in a way dedicated servers simply cannot. I agree that a lot of people use cloud when they shouldn't, but there are a number of cases where it remains very relevant.

jamroom 10y ago
Not "cannot" - just "easier" :)
- awj 10y ago
  I do releases by baking a new virtual machine with the code+config built in and booting it. I guess it's possible to do that on real hardware, but calling it simply "harder" borders on disingenuous.
  - paulddraper 10y ago
    You can deploy virtual machines to real hardware. That's what kubernetes, etc. are for.
  - Nullabillity 10y ago
    I basically do that for my Xen VMs with NixOps in the "no provisioner" mode. Would be exactly the same for bare metal, plus I get dev VMs that match the prod environment for free.
dragontamer 10y ago
Dedicated scales in a way that cloud cannot: vertically. Want to build a 1TB DDR4 RAM beast with 40 cores? Yeah, you can do that with dedicated.
- computerphage 10y ago
  https://aws.amazon.com/ec2/instance-types/x1/ https://aws.amazon.com/ec2/instance-types/x1/

Scirra_Tom 10y ago

We're moving to AWS for our next release, managed by Rackspace. Had the same philosophy as you for years, and have saved a lot of money with DIY (maybe in the tens of thousands). Turns out server admin is not my skillset, and it's caused problems, headaches and risks in the past. I consider the additional cost going forwards in effect as our next hire and an important one. For small startups looking to save money DIY can be a good option, but moving onto the cloud at a later date can be a big burden.

imaginenore 10y ago
You still need a server admin, cloud or not. It's not like there's a magic button in the cloud that replaces an admin.
- dexterdog 10y ago
  A good cloud admin can manage far more in less time in the cloud
- Scirra_Tom 10y ago
  Yep, which is why we have Rackspace actively managing our cloud setup
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
- foxylad 10y ago
  Appengine (and I believe Elastic Beanstalk) are those magic buttons. I've used Appengine for years, and have loved not having to worry about patching, OS upgrades, scaling or redundancy. If you're a small shop, this lets you concentrate on your core product instead of your systems. And by "small shop", I really mean "pretty big shop" - you're going to be a globally significant player before your Appengine charges get near a sysadmin's salary.
bluedino 10y ago
I can't imagine Rackspace managing anything being a positive

awj 10y ago

What comparison? Can I simply ask the colo for a brand new dedicated server every time the machine dies or I want to do a new release? Do they offer services to provision, start, and load balance to new dedicated servers when the ones I have are at high utilization? No? They don't? Maybe that's because you're comparing fundamentally different things that are only superficially similar to each other.

pmalynin 10y ago
OVH does

paulddraper 10y ago

Restaurant prices are ridiculous ... made the comparison between groceries and menu offerings of McDonalds, Taco Bell, Burger King ... Olive Garden (SO EXPENSIVE) and you pay 5 times at a restaurant for the same. --- You're not paying for hardware. You're paying for hardware, expertise, services, and convenience. On-prem or colocation may be a good choice. But limiting your comparison to raw computing power mischaracterizes the decision.

caminante 10y ago
Great analogy re: food! I'm going to steal that.

elchief 10y ago

It makes sense if you need to spin up several servers really fast. Like, "I can't wait 2 weeks for my Supermicro reseller to ship and build them" fast. There is likely some optimal schedule where you start w cloud, order DIY replacements, and migrate, and repeat as you scale. Labour-intensive though.

dpark 10y ago
Labor isn't cheap. If you spend more on labor to manage this shuffling than you save on cloud costs, it's decidedly suboptimal.
kuschku 10y ago
In that case, rent a dedicated server from Hetzner or OVH, it’s online in 120 seconds, and still 5 times cheaper than AWS.

gsam 10y ago

You're paying people to maintain your machines. You're eliminating the need for your own sys-admins to keep your servers up to date and patched. For small businesses who have no IT staff for instance, this is exactly what you want.

ddorian43 10y ago
ec2!=heroku

bigiain 10y ago

Keep in mind you get up to 75% discount at AWS for 3yr term upfront payments for reserved instances... (In reality, anything I use only seems to get a ~60% discount for that) But nobody uses AWS 'cause it's "cheapest". That's completely missing the point.

bdcravens 10y ago
Even the worst reserved pricing gets you 30%-40% off of published rates (nothing upfront, just commit to a year)
quicksilver03 10y ago
3yr reserved instances is something that baffled me when I was doing the research for https://www.hostingforappdevelopers.com https://www.hostingforappdevelopers.com . What reasons push people to pay upfront and to commit to a solution whose main benefit is elasticity?
- bigiain 10y ago
  For those sweet sweet discounts? Because who cares about costs next year or the year after, I'm just on a 6 month contract here! (Even more cynically, "because it's just like buying servers, but comes on the OpEx budget not the CapEx one, so _my_ KPIs look _awesome!_")