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Why not run eight servers all the time? If you are running at a scale where that is a cost you notice at all, you are not only in a very early stage, you're act

Why not run eight servers all the time? If you are running at a scale where that is a cost you notice at all, you are not only in a very early stage, you're actually not even a company.

scarface74 8y ago
9 servers (8 reads and 1 writer) running all of the time with asynchronous replication (as opposed to synchronous replication) with duplicate data - yes the storage is shared between all of the replicas. Not to mention the four lower environments some of which the databases are automatically spun up from 0 and scaled up as needed (Aurora Serverless) Should we also maintain those same read replicas servers in our other environments when we want to do performance testing? Should we maintain servers overseas for our outsourced workers? Here we are just talking about Aurora/MySQL databases. I haven’t even gotten into our VMs, load balancer, object store (S3), queueing server (or lack there of since we use SQS/SNS), our OLAP database (Redshift - no we are not “locked in” it users standard Postgres drivers), etc. AWS is not about saving money on like for like resources as you would on bare metal, but in the case of databases where your load is spiky you do. It’s about provisioning resources as needed when needed and not having to either pay as many infrastructure folks. Heck before my manager who hired me and one other person came in, the company had no one onsite that had any formal AWS expertise. They completely relied on a managed service provider - who they pay much less than they would pay for one dedicated infrastructure guy. I’m first and foremost a developer/lead/software architect (depending on which way the wind is blowing at any given point in my career), but yes I have managed infrastructure on prem as part of my job years ago, including replicated MySQL servers. There is absolutely no way that I could spin up and manage all of the resources I need for a project and develop at the efficacy level at a colo as I can with just a CloudFormation template with AWS. I’ve worked at a company that rented stacks of servers that sat idle most of the time but we used to simulate thousands of mobile connections to our backend servers - we did large B2B field services deployments. Today, it would be running a Pythom script that spun up an autoscaling group of VMs to whatever number we needed.
zbentley 8y ago
There are many, MANY software companies whose infrastructure needs are on the order of single digits of normal-strength servers and who are profitable to the tune of millions of dollars a year. These aren’t companies staffed with penny-pinching optimization savants; some software, even at scale, just doesn’t need that kind of gear.
- user5994461 8y ago
  A multi million dollars tech company with tens of employees cannot run a sane infrastructure with a single digit of servers. For a trivial website in production: 2 web servers + 1 database + 1 replica. For internal tooling: 1 CI and build server + 2 development and testing servers + 1 storage, file share, ftp server + 1 backup server. For desktop support: At least 1 server for DHCP, DNS, Active Directory + firewall + router. That's already 10 servers and not counting networking equipment. Less than that and you're cutting corners.
  - scarface74 8y ago
    Web servers - lambda Build server - CodeBuild you either run with prebuilt Docker containers or you use a custom built Docker container that automatically gets launched when you push your code to GitHub/CodeCommit. No server involved. Fileshare - a lot of companies just use Dropbox or OneDrive. No server involved FTP - managed AWS SFTP Service. No server involved. DHCP - Managed VPN Service by AWS. No server involved. DNS - Route 53 and with Amazon Certificate Manager it will manage SSL certificates attached to your load balancer and CDN and auto renew. No servers involved. Active Directory - Managed by AWS no server involved. Firewall and router - no server to Manage. You create security groups and attach them to your EC2 instances, databases, etc. You set your routing table up and attach it to your VMs. Networking equipment and routers - again that’s a CloudFormatiom template or go old school and just configuration on a website.
    - user5994461 8y ago
      Dropbox and OneDrive are terrible to share any large document or large team. I really hope you get a NAS / Windows Share in for the office. SFTP is not FTP. Amateur mistake that proves you have no experience running any this. Well, you missed the point entirely. Employees are not going to work in the cloud without computers or internet connectivity. Gonna have to run a DHCP + DNS + Active Directory + VPN + much more for the office.

Why not run eight servers all the time? If you are running at a scale where that is a cost you notice at all, you are not only in a very early stage, you're actually not even a company.

scarface74 8y ago

9 servers (8 reads and 1 writer) running all of the time with asynchronous replication (as opposed to synchronous replication) with duplicate data - yes the storage is shared between all of the replicas. Not to mention the four lower environments some of which the databases are automatically spun up from 0 and scaled up as needed (Aurora Serverless) Should we also maintain those same read replicas servers in our other environments when we want to do performance testing? Should we maintain servers overseas for our outsourced workers? Here we are just talking about Aurora/MySQL databases. I haven’t even gotten into our VMs, load balancer, object store (S3), queueing server (or lack there of since we use SQS/SNS), our OLAP database (Redshift - no we are not “locked in” it users standard Postgres drivers), etc. AWS is not about saving money on like for like resources as you would on bare metal, but in the case of databases where your load is spiky you do. It’s about provisioning resources as needed when needed and not having to either pay as many infrastructure folks. Heck before my manager who hired me and one other person came in, the company had no one onsite that had any formal AWS expertise. They completely relied on a managed service provider - who they pay much less than they would pay for one dedicated infrastructure guy. I’m first and foremost a developer/lead/software architect (depending on which way the wind is blowing at any given point in my career), but yes I have managed infrastructure on prem as part of my job years ago, including replicated MySQL servers. There is absolutely no way that I could spin up and manage all of the resources I need for a project and develop at the efficacy level at a colo as I can with just a CloudFormation template with AWS. I’ve worked at a company that rented stacks of servers that sat idle most of the time but we used to simulate thousands of mobile connections to our backend servers - we did large B2B field services deployments. Today, it would be running a Pythom script that spun up an autoscaling group of VMs to whatever number we needed.

zbentley 8y ago

There are many, MANY software companies whose infrastructure needs are on the order of single digits of normal-strength servers and who are profitable to the tune of millions of dollars a year. These aren’t companies staffed with penny-pinching optimization savants; some software, even at scale, just doesn’t need that kind of gear.

user5994461 8y ago
A multi million dollars tech company with tens of employees cannot run a sane infrastructure with a single digit of servers. For a trivial website in production: 2 web servers + 1 database + 1 replica. For internal tooling: 1 CI and build server + 2 development and testing servers + 1 storage, file share, ftp server + 1 backup server. For desktop support: At least 1 server for DHCP, DNS, Active Directory + firewall + router. That's already 10 servers and not counting networking equipment. Less than that and you're cutting corners.
- scarface74 8y ago
  Web servers - lambda Build server - CodeBuild you either run with prebuilt Docker containers or you use a custom built Docker container that automatically gets launched when you push your code to GitHub/CodeCommit. No server involved. Fileshare - a lot of companies just use Dropbox or OneDrive. No server involved FTP - managed AWS SFTP Service. No server involved. DHCP - Managed VPN Service by AWS. No server involved. DNS - Route 53 and with Amazon Certificate Manager it will manage SSL certificates attached to your load balancer and CDN and auto renew. No servers involved. Active Directory - Managed by AWS no server involved. Firewall and router - no server to Manage. You create security groups and attach them to your EC2 instances, databases, etc. You set your routing table up and attach it to your VMs. Networking equipment and routers - again that’s a CloudFormatiom template or go old school and just configuration on a website.
  - user5994461 8y ago
    Dropbox and OneDrive are terrible to share any large document or large team. I really hope you get a NAS / Windows Share in for the office. SFTP is not FTP. Amateur mistake that proves you have no experience running any this. Well, you missed the point entirely. Employees are not going to work in the cloud without computers or internet connectivity. Gonna have to run a DHCP + DNS + Active Directory + VPN + much more for the office.