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> In general, serverless computing tasks cost 100-1000× more per cpu cycle than a counterpart running on a cloud server. Citation needed. With Serverless you h

> In general, serverless computing tasks cost 100-1000× more per cpu cycle than a counterpart running on a cloud server. Citation needed. With Serverless you have to do zero system administration, patching, maintenance, security hardening, etc. In the early 1900s, cars required tons of maintenance. You had to hand crank the engine to start it, and if you went on a long trip, you needed to bring along a mechanic, as your car was likely to break down. I know it's tempting for engineers like ourselves to believe we can do system administration better than Amazon, but it's just not true. Do you think automobile owners long for the days when they had to hand crank their engine to start it, and do maintenance just to travel 100 miles? In a decade or two, the idea of doing manual system administration, load balancing, scaling, etc, will be just as archaic.

jondubois 9y ago
>> With Serverless you have to do zero system administration, patching, maintenance, security hardening, etc That is assuming that the system is ready and no further changes need to be made to it. Every time changes are made, deployment of new features do still require administration and security checking. But pretty much the same can be said about non-serverless tech stacks. If you don't make changes to the system then a single person can administer a potentially huge system. The reality is that systems constantly need to change so serverless doesn't actually add much value and it takes away something very important: Flexibility.
- illumin8 9y ago
  I'm talking about all the lower levels below your code. Of course, you need to do something to upgrade your code, but when was the last time you ever had to SSH to your Lambda function and install an OpenSSL patch due to a security vulnerability?
013a 9y ago
Nearly every trucking firm I've worked with has their own in-house shop, with mechanics and everything. Turns out, outsourcing the maintenance of vehicles that experience tens of thousands of miles every quarter is more expensive than just paying your own people to do it. Same with municipal fleets. Same with taxi fleets. There are many variables that enter into a cost-benefit calculation when thinking about this. But what it really comes down to is Scale. Projects on the low end of scaling will find it cheaper to outsource everything they can. But at higher scale? Think about it like this: Instead of building their own data centers, does it make sense for Amazon or Google to just colo space in other people's data centers to build AWS or GCP? Of course it doesn't. So, those are the bounds of our "scale scale". At some point it becomes cheaper to move off managed products and onto VMs in the cloud. At some point after that, it becomes cheaper to deploy your own metal. The challenge companies need to solve is determining where they're at, and cost-optimizing parts where they can save money. A great example is Netflix; they're nearly totally on AWS, but they've cost-optimized their CDN significantly to save money on bandwidth by getting out of AWS. QoS is another consideration. Deploying your own metal is hard, and the quality of the service you provide might degrade. But don't marginalize the other end of that scale; there are QoS downsides to going full managed like with Lambda. Its another variable to consider. Lambda -> EC2 is the same kind of cost-optimization movement, just further down in scaling. At some point Lambda will become too expensive. Then, you'll probably want to move to something like managed Kubernetes/ECS, which has almost no administrative overhead compared to just EC2 instances but still makes scaling relatively easy.
- illumin8 9y ago
  I agree that you need to make the right decision depending on what scale you are at. The reality is that most companies are at the scale of a small shop, and it would be better (total cost of ownership) to use Amazon's highly automated services. However, every sysadmin I've met (and I used to be one) would like to think they are managing Walmart's trucking fleet, when the reality is they are more like Joe's local furniture delivery.
- illumin8 9y ago
  One other thing to mention - truck maintenance still requires human technicians - we haven't automated it yet so that robots could do it, but system administration most definitely can be automated at Amazon scale.
mintplant 9y ago
> With Serverless you have to do zero system administration, patching, maintenance, security hardening, etc. Sounds like "serverless" is just a new buzzword for shared hosting, with all the same downsides plus increased vendor lock-in.
- jacques_chester 9y ago
  I've seen analogies drawn with CGI.

jondubois 9y ago

>> With Serverless you have to do zero system administration, patching, maintenance, security hardening, etc That is assuming that the system is ready and no further changes need to be made to it. Every time changes are made, deployment of new features do still require administration and security checking. But pretty much the same can be said about non-serverless tech stacks. If you don't make changes to the system then a single person can administer a potentially huge system. The reality is that systems constantly need to change so serverless doesn't actually add much value and it takes away something very important: Flexibility.

illumin8 9y ago
I'm talking about all the lower levels below your code. Of course, you need to do something to upgrade your code, but when was the last time you ever had to SSH to your Lambda function and install an OpenSSL patch due to a security vulnerability?

013a 9y ago

Nearly every trucking firm I've worked with has their own in-house shop, with mechanics and everything. Turns out, outsourcing the maintenance of vehicles that experience tens of thousands of miles every quarter is more expensive than just paying your own people to do it. Same with municipal fleets. Same with taxi fleets. There are many variables that enter into a cost-benefit calculation when thinking about this. But what it really comes down to is Scale. Projects on the low end of scaling will find it cheaper to outsource everything they can. But at higher scale? Think about it like this: Instead of building their own data centers, does it make sense for Amazon or Google to just colo space in other people's data centers to build AWS or GCP? Of course it doesn't. So, those are the bounds of our "scale scale". At some point it becomes cheaper to move off managed products and onto VMs in the cloud. At some point after that, it becomes cheaper to deploy your own metal. The challenge companies need to solve is determining where they're at, and cost-optimizing parts where they can save money. A great example is Netflix; they're nearly totally on AWS, but they've cost-optimized their CDN significantly to save money on bandwidth by getting out of AWS. QoS is another consideration. Deploying your own metal is hard, and the quality of the service you provide might degrade. But don't marginalize the other end of that scale; there are QoS downsides to going full managed like with Lambda. Its another variable to consider. Lambda -> EC2 is the same kind of cost-optimization movement, just further down in scaling. At some point Lambda will become too expensive. Then, you'll probably want to move to something like managed Kubernetes/ECS, which has almost no administrative overhead compared to just EC2 instances but still makes scaling relatively easy.

illumin8 9y ago
I agree that you need to make the right decision depending on what scale you are at. The reality is that most companies are at the scale of a small shop, and it would be better (total cost of ownership) to use Amazon's highly automated services. However, every sysadmin I've met (and I used to be one) would like to think they are managing Walmart's trucking fleet, when the reality is they are more like Joe's local furniture delivery.
illumin8 9y ago
One other thing to mention - truck maintenance still requires human technicians - we haven't automated it yet so that robots could do it, but system administration most definitely can be automated at Amazon scale.

mintplant 9y ago

> With Serverless you have to do zero system administration, patching, maintenance, security hardening, etc. Sounds like "serverless" is just a new buzzword for shared hosting, with all the same downsides plus increased vendor lock-in.

jacques_chester 9y ago
I've seen analogies drawn with CGI.