> Sure, but isn't the REAL other selling point of AWS aside from an elastic virtual datacenter that it automates away sys admin tasks and ultimately people? Ye

> Sure, but isn't the REAL other selling point of AWS aside from an elastic virtual datacenter that it automates away sys admin tasks and ultimately people? Yes. AWS shines when you have a small team with no competent DevOps people and a desire to build a single datacenter setup. However, at that scale...we are talking a small business / startup with less than 50 employees. If you are still doing that when you've grown past that point, you've got architectural problems. Once you scale past that point, you still need a competent sysadmin to build a reproducible process...at which point even leasing hardware from any provider works. You cannot build a multi-DC setup that integrates redundant providers without a competent sysadmin. Even if you stick with how AWS has you do things it will eat you alive if you do not optimize your workloads. I'm not sure how you would do that effectively without an experienced sysadmin acting as an analyst.