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A few years ago, I built a compute-intensive REST API: applied machine learning that did 3D reconstruction of human heads from images. After careful spec'ing of

A few years ago, I built a compute-intensive REST API: applied machine learning that did 3D reconstruction of human heads from images. After careful spec'ing of the system's requirements, it was clear that any of the cloud services were exponentially more expensive than running my own hardware. I needed a $96K per month spend at AWS, the lowest of the cloud services at the time, or I could spend ~$50K and build a globally scaled server cluster of my own. People speak as if there is some issue with locating quality devOps individuals, but I seem to find them seeking work all the time. So I hired one to help me build the cluster: he re-visioned my specs, adding a hardware firewall, I purchased the hardware, we assembled the cluster at a local co-working space, and then we installed it into a local ISP, in a rented cabinet. Total expense to build was about $65K (less than one month of AWS), and the monthly cabinet rental was $600 a month. And the month to month maintenance was a whopping 5-10 minutes a few times a week. This is NOT HARD FOLKS and it SAVES A SHIT TON OF MONEY. Don't believe the cloud hype - it is all hype.

dragonwriter 9y ago
Most apps are much more ops intensive per unit of compute than what you describe, which makes paying cloud compute costs to offload some large fraction of the ops workload to someone else more worthwhile than it seems to have been for your app. And even in your case, I wonder if it would have gotten off the ground if you had to deal with infrastructure up front rather than as an efficiency move after the basic applocation was built, up, running, and stable: even if the cloud was mostly useful for ramping new systems up to the point where the system was basically stabilized and the infrastructure and ops needs were clear and could be assessed at leisure and efficiently provided with dedicated resources, that would still be a huge role.

dragonwriter 9y ago

Most apps are much more ops intensive per unit of compute than what you describe, which makes paying cloud compute costs to offload some large fraction of the ops workload to someone else more worthwhile than it seems to have been for your app. And even in your case, I wonder if it would have gotten off the ground if you had to deal with infrastructure up front rather than as an efficiency move after the basic applocation was built, up, running, and stable: even if the cloud was mostly useful for ramping new systems up to the point where the system was basically stabilized and the infrastructure and ops needs were clear and could be assessed at leisure and efficiently provided with dedicated resources, that would still be a huge role.