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It's real money being saved. I've been involved in such efforts at four companies now, and in every case the savings have been very significant. The claim you

It's real money being saved. I've been involved in such efforts at four companies now, and in every case the savings have been very significant. The claim you should be suspicious of is the one that says you can save money migrating to bare metal. That may be possible in some cases, but not in any typical large company.

kuschku 9y ago
If you can save money by moving to AWS at its publicly listed prices, your company has absolutely mismanaged its IT infrastructure. You can do 10x cheaper than AWS easily, if you are willing tomake tradeoffs that AWS just can't make globally for all their customers. EDIT: If you’re paying silicon valley wages, and target a global audience with your site/product, and can get from AWS something cheaper than the publicly listed prices, then AWS very likely will be a good deal for you. But many companies have different needs than these, and may be able to save money by dropping things they don’t need.
- leonroy 9y ago
  Care to share on where savings can be made with a DIY approach vs AWS?
  - kuschku 9y ago
    The largest factor is bandwidth. In the EU you can get bandwidth a factor 100x cheaper in most situations than with AWS. The second factor is levels of abstraction. It's cheaper to run your own virtualization software on rented dedicated hardware than to use EC2, and it's cheaper to run your own kubernetes cluster than to use EKS or GKE. The places where having external companies do it sabes the most is (a) in running the actual hardware and networks and (b) providing a platform for your software (e.g. Google app engine). Taking a bunch of rented dedicated servers and configuring kubernetes is cheaper than renting the computational power through GKE or EKS. But basically yeah, these are the same standard solutions to saving money with hosting that have been pretty much known for decades. EDIT: Be aware, this only applies for the publicly listed prices — if your company can get a deal like Snapchat did with Google, or Netflix with Amazon, then the math may work out entirely different. But I don't know what they pay so I can't comment on that.
    - dogma1138 9y ago
      Show me the DC which will provide bandwidth and collocation cheaper than AWS on a rack basis. Also keep in mind that ever since crypto DCs have a very strict limit on power consumption so there are many more hidden fees now.
      - viraptor 9y ago
        > ever since crypto DCs have a very strict limit on power consumption Has it changed much? I haven't done real hardware in a while, but I remember the rack power to be a very limited resource years ago. (I.e. you could easily pack more hardware in the rack than you'd be allowed to power)
        dogma1138 9y ago
        What changed is that they are now agrresively charge you these days. In London area (city and outskirts like Oxford) its £1500-2000 per 10kw and they count the PSU rating regardless of what you actually use. And that is on paper only as many DCs limit a rack to 20A which gives 4.8kw only so if you need more you need to lease another rack which costs more money. And leasing adjacent racks also isn’t really cheap they usually give you maybe 2-3 ones if you need more than that well then you are now leasing floor space which means if you need say one rack with 15kw rated bare metal you may end up having to lease enough room to hold 10 racks if not more.
        chillydawg 9y ago
        Oxford is not outskirts of London. It's 50 miles of farmland and towns away.
        dogma1138 9y ago
        Outskirts in this case is anything that is about an hour from the circular but that could be just me.
    - ukj 9y ago
- sigi45 9y ago
  Its sometimes just easier to use AWS instead of finding those people and with those people, you have more dependency on those people. Now with AWS i can manage a whole infrastructre AND write code where you needed an admin team before.
  - kuschku 9y ago
    Sure, but that’s always a tradeoff. If you just use EC2, though, you’ll find many other providers of virtual or dedicated servers for rent for much cheaper, with similar performance and reliability. If you’re fully integrated in the AWS ecosystem, it is much more convenient, but also of course more expensive. That said, unless you’re in silicon valley, your hiring costs will be so much lower than amazon’s that even your own admin team might end up cheaper than using Amazon’s.
    - Rapzid 9y ago
      Your avg hire comp may be quite a bit lower outside of the major tech cities, but your still gonna pay a lot for the really good people. You may need less of those people and at a later point with AWS though, depending.
    - bpicolo 9y ago
      Just using EC2 is a corner case. The huge benefit is the wide variety of hosted services you get to take advantage of and not roll on your own.
- matwood 9y ago
  > You can do 10x cheaper than AWS easily, if you are willing tomake tradeoffs that AWS just can't make globally for all their customers. Are you really replicating AWS or just EC2? How do you replicate S3? Glacier? What about Aurora (DB replication that actually works!). If all I need is raw compute, I can go back to building machines and beat AWS prices but I will have no where near the same level of functionality, flexibility, and now it is up to me to maintain them.
  - kuschku 9y ago
    That’s the entire point. If you don’t use all the same services, or use them differently, you can make tradeoffs that AWS can’t.
- MBCook 9y ago
  Really? What if you have an occasionaly peaky load with BIG peaks? You have to keep enough hardware on hand to satisfy that even if it only happens, say, 10% of the time. That’s a lot of wasted infrastructure and time managing it.

kuschku 9y ago

If you can save money by moving to AWS at its publicly listed prices, your company has absolutely mismanaged its IT infrastructure. You can do 10x cheaper than AWS easily, if you are willing tomake tradeoffs that AWS just can't make globally for all their customers. EDIT: If you’re paying silicon valley wages, and target a global audience with your site/product, and can get from AWS something cheaper than the publicly listed prices, then AWS very likely will be a good deal for you. But many companies have different needs than these, and may be able to save money by dropping things they don’t need.

leonroy 9y ago
Care to share on where savings can be made with a DIY approach vs AWS?
- kuschku 9y ago
  The largest factor is bandwidth. In the EU you can get bandwidth a factor 100x cheaper in most situations than with AWS. The second factor is levels of abstraction. It's cheaper to run your own virtualization software on rented dedicated hardware than to use EC2, and it's cheaper to run your own kubernetes cluster than to use EKS or GKE. The places where having external companies do it sabes the most is (a) in running the actual hardware and networks and (b) providing a platform for your software (e.g. Google app engine). Taking a bunch of rented dedicated servers and configuring kubernetes is cheaper than renting the computational power through GKE or EKS. But basically yeah, these are the same standard solutions to saving money with hosting that have been pretty much known for decades. EDIT: Be aware, this only applies for the publicly listed prices — if your company can get a deal like Snapchat did with Google, or Netflix with Amazon, then the math may work out entirely different. But I don't know what they pay so I can't comment on that.
  - dogma1138 9y ago
    Show me the DC which will provide bandwidth and collocation cheaper than AWS on a rack basis. Also keep in mind that ever since crypto DCs have a very strict limit on power consumption so there are many more hidden fees now.
    - viraptor 9y ago
      > ever since crypto DCs have a very strict limit on power consumption Has it changed much? I haven't done real hardware in a while, but I remember the rack power to be a very limited resource years ago. (I.e. you could easily pack more hardware in the rack than you'd be allowed to power)
      - dogma1138 9y ago
        What changed is that they are now agrresively charge you these days. In London area (city and outskirts like Oxford) its £1500-2000 per 10kw and they count the PSU rating regardless of what you actually use. And that is on paper only as many DCs limit a rack to 20A which gives 4.8kw only so if you need more you need to lease another rack which costs more money. And leasing adjacent racks also isn’t really cheap they usually give you maybe 2-3 ones if you need more than that well then you are now leasing floor space which means if you need say one rack with 15kw rated bare metal you may end up having to lease enough room to hold 10 racks if not more.
        chillydawg 9y ago
        Oxford is not outskirts of London. It's 50 miles of farmland and towns away.
        dogma1138 9y ago
        Outskirts in this case is anything that is about an hour from the circular but that could be just me.
  - ukj 9y ago
sigi45 9y ago
Its sometimes just easier to use AWS instead of finding those people and with those people, you have more dependency on those people. Now with AWS i can manage a whole infrastructre AND write code where you needed an admin team before.
- kuschku 9y ago
  Sure, but that’s always a tradeoff. If you just use EC2, though, you’ll find many other providers of virtual or dedicated servers for rent for much cheaper, with similar performance and reliability. If you’re fully integrated in the AWS ecosystem, it is much more convenient, but also of course more expensive. That said, unless you’re in silicon valley, your hiring costs will be so much lower than amazon’s that even your own admin team might end up cheaper than using Amazon’s.
  - Rapzid 9y ago
    Your avg hire comp may be quite a bit lower outside of the major tech cities, but your still gonna pay a lot for the really good people. You may need less of those people and at a later point with AWS though, depending.
  - bpicolo 9y ago
    Just using EC2 is a corner case. The huge benefit is the wide variety of hosted services you get to take advantage of and not roll on your own.
matwood 9y ago
> You can do 10x cheaper than AWS easily, if you are willing tomake tradeoffs that AWS just can't make globally for all their customers. Are you really replicating AWS or just EC2? How do you replicate S3? Glacier? What about Aurora (DB replication that actually works!). If all I need is raw compute, I can go back to building machines and beat AWS prices but I will have no where near the same level of functionality, flexibility, and now it is up to me to maintain them.
- kuschku 9y ago
  That’s the entire point. If you don’t use all the same services, or use them differently, you can make tradeoffs that AWS can’t.
MBCook 9y ago
Really? What if you have an occasionaly peaky load with BIG peaks? You have to keep enough hardware on hand to satisfy that even if it only happens, say, 10% of the time. That’s a lot of wasted infrastructure and time managing it.