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How does employee cost factor into that, though? I don't do devops, so I don't know at what scale you start needing dedicated people to manage hardware and con

How does employee cost factor into that, though? I don't do devops, so I don't know at what scale you start needing dedicated people to manage hardware and configuration at a colo. However, employees are really expensive in comparison to just about everything else, so even if you're spending an extra $10K a year on AWS than you would at a colo, if using it saves you just 10% of one person's time you're coming out ahead.

bsder 9y ago
Except that, invariably, I'm not saving that person's time. It's a real myth that the cloud magically saves me a sysadmin. I have found almost exactly the opposite. Using the cloud effectively takes more time and more expertise. Debugging the cloud effectively takes WAY more expertise. Combine this with the fact that someone has to be able to architect a system to fit within the constraints of being on the cloud, and you're down extra employees. The difference is in: "Eh, it's been down for 3 days? Sigh. Just reboot it." vs. "Um, that request hung for 93 seconds. Why?" In the first case, the cloud is fine. In the second case, someone is going to have to traipse over an enormous amount of systems (which you don't own and can't always instrument) and variables (some of which you aren't even aware of existing) to hunt it down. If, however, you can say "Pull that off the cloud into our own systems and keep an eye on it." you have made your debugging life a lot easier. Of course, once you have the ability to do that, your team realizes and starts asking: "Given how much time we spend debugging issues with the cloud that aren't actually our fault, why are we on the cloud again?" I always smile when that realization kicks in. Now I generally have to stop the team from pulling everything off the cloud. However, that's a much easier task.
stephenr 9y ago
For the software side of things, you still need admins with a "cloud" provider. For the hardware side of things every colo I've seen has a "remote hands" service.
hueving 9y ago
Because the employee that has to manage all of the aws accounts is free?
- user5994461 9y ago
  It's a lot easier to use the AWS console than to deal with DELL and Equinix. AWS is also about 2749 times faster and more efficient, as measured by me the last time we ordered hardware on AWS and dell simultaneously.

bsder 9y ago

Except that, invariably, I'm not saving that person's time. It's a real myth that the cloud magically saves me a sysadmin. I have found almost exactly the opposite. Using the cloud effectively takes more time and more expertise. Debugging the cloud effectively takes WAY more expertise. Combine this with the fact that someone has to be able to architect a system to fit within the constraints of being on the cloud, and you're down extra employees. The difference is in: "Eh, it's been down for 3 days? Sigh. Just reboot it." vs. "Um, that request hung for 93 seconds. Why?" In the first case, the cloud is fine. In the second case, someone is going to have to traipse over an enormous amount of systems (which you don't own and can't always instrument) and variables (some of which you aren't even aware of existing) to hunt it down. If, however, you can say "Pull that off the cloud into our own systems and keep an eye on it." you have made your debugging life a lot easier. Of course, once you have the ability to do that, your team realizes and starts asking: "Given how much time we spend debugging issues with the cloud that aren't actually our fault, why are we on the cloud again?" I always smile when that realization kicks in. Now I generally have to stop the team from pulling everything off the cloud. However, that's a much easier task.

stephenr 9y ago

For the software side of things, you still need admins with a "cloud" provider. For the hardware side of things every colo I've seen has a "remote hands" service.

hueving 9y ago

Because the employee that has to manage all of the aws accounts is free?

user5994461 9y ago
It's a lot easier to use the AWS console than to deal with DELL and Equinix. AWS is also about 2749 times faster and more efficient, as measured by me the last time we ordered hardware on AWS and dell simultaneously.