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You’re free to host stuff on a desktop PC if you want. Some people do. However the devil is in the details. For example you was a redundant power supply, then y

You’re free to host stuff on a desktop PC if you want. Some people do. However the devil is in the details. For example you was a redundant power supply, then you’ll need a server case with dual PSUs, two power rails backed by two UPSs. You’d probably then want some kind of out-of-band management console which means you then need a VPN server too. And of course that would need the same redundancy with power too. And all that is fine until you realise your router is a central point of failure, so you’d then want two switches and two hardware firewalls. But what if the hardware failes on your PC? You’d then want a battery-backed RAID controller and a device for making off site backups (since you’re not using the cloud, that probably means a tape drive or DVD writer- depending on the volume of data you’re storing). However you’re still reliant on one PC so you’d need to double that up too. And since you now have 4 network devices, 4 servers and 2 UPSs, you’d probably need to store than investment somewhere secure - like a dedicated room with a camera and keypad lock on the door. Best install some air conditioning too while you’re at it. And you’ve still yet to address the looming problem of the builders next door accidentally digging through your leased line (this has literally happened to me before). Costs can quickly spiral when you’re self-hosting internet services for paying customers who expect their internet services available 24/7. Which is why the cloud is so attractive - it allows you to build your product without paying the upfront cost of self hosting. That all said, I do honestly get the appeal of self hosting. It’s fun owning your own hardware. That is until it fails....

zzzcpan 8y ago
You got resilience pretty wrong here. If you start with a single PC at home and a single ISP, you actually get like three nines of availability, not everywhere of course, but in urban areas you mostly do. Which is almost exactly what a datacenter can get you. But interestingly enough, you can get even better resilience at home than in a datacenter by having just another PC connected to another independent ISP. That's because an ISP is a pretty significant point of failure and you can't get another independent ISP in a datacenter (not that you need it, as using a different independent datacenter instead is much better for resilience).
- pushpop 8y ago
  ok, let’s play out your scenario: so now you need to buy two houses in two different towns so you get two different ISPs and running your server on two different power substations (since you’re no longer building that resilience in at the server room level). That is still going to cost you way way way more than deploying something on AWS in a multi a-z or multi region. And you still haven’t addressed the issue of secure out-of-band management. The only benefit with your solution is that the second home is at least an capital asset; but even still, it’s more than any small or medium sized company would be willing to stump up (I say this from experience since I’ve worked on disaster recovery solutions for SMBs in the pre-cloud computing era)
  - zzzcpan 8y ago
    I guess you didn't get my point. You can subscribe to multiple independent ISPs in one house. You don't get that while renting a server in a datacenter.
    - pushpop 8y ago
      I did get your point, however you’re still dependent on one pipe into the house which then doesn’t solve the issue I highlighted. You could buy additional leased lines with a different physical route out but those are not cheap either and you still haven’t solved the issue of redundancy in any other system aside your gateway.
z3t4 8y ago
The complexity grows the more users you need to serve. And the available percentage you need. For example, maintaining your own e-mail client, on your own computer, is not that much work, compared to what Google needs to host Gmail.com
- pushpop 8y ago
  Absolutely agree. I do actually run a server in my house for personal services however the difference between running personal infrastructure and running a service for paying customers is night and day. You may not need your own data centres ala Google but that doesn’t mean the only other option is running everything on a PC stashed away in your closet. In fact the very advantage of cloud computing is you can scale your infrastructure to meet your demand (and I don’t just mean auto-scaling; but also the instance sizes you run and infrastructure you deploy). Which is the point I was making in my previous post: you can build the infrastructure which suits your problem and let the cloud provider deal with many of the “enterprisey” problems for you. Then when you reach the point where you need to start worrying about the big problems, well you can decide how you want to design your solutions there after.

zzzcpan 8y ago

You got resilience pretty wrong here. If you start with a single PC at home and a single ISP, you actually get like three nines of availability, not everywhere of course, but in urban areas you mostly do. Which is almost exactly what a datacenter can get you. But interestingly enough, you can get even better resilience at home than in a datacenter by having just another PC connected to another independent ISP. That's because an ISP is a pretty significant point of failure and you can't get another independent ISP in a datacenter (not that you need it, as using a different independent datacenter instead is much better for resilience).

pushpop 8y ago
ok, let’s play out your scenario: so now you need to buy two houses in two different towns so you get two different ISPs and running your server on two different power substations (since you’re no longer building that resilience in at the server room level). That is still going to cost you way way way more than deploying something on AWS in a multi a-z or multi region. And you still haven’t addressed the issue of secure out-of-band management. The only benefit with your solution is that the second home is at least an capital asset; but even still, it’s more than any small or medium sized company would be willing to stump up (I say this from experience since I’ve worked on disaster recovery solutions for SMBs in the pre-cloud computing era)
- zzzcpan 8y ago
  I guess you didn't get my point. You can subscribe to multiple independent ISPs in one house. You don't get that while renting a server in a datacenter.
  - pushpop 8y ago
    I did get your point, however you’re still dependent on one pipe into the house which then doesn’t solve the issue I highlighted. You could buy additional leased lines with a different physical route out but those are not cheap either and you still haven’t solved the issue of redundancy in any other system aside your gateway.

z3t4 8y ago

The complexity grows the more users you need to serve. And the available percentage you need. For example, maintaining your own e-mail client, on your own computer, is not that much work, compared to what Google needs to host Gmail.com

pushpop 8y ago
Absolutely agree. I do actually run a server in my house for personal services however the difference between running personal infrastructure and running a service for paying customers is night and day. You may not need your own data centres ala Google but that doesn’t mean the only other option is running everything on a PC stashed away in your closet. In fact the very advantage of cloud computing is you can scale your infrastructure to meet your demand (and I don’t just mean auto-scaling; but also the instance sizes you run and infrastructure you deploy). Which is the point I was making in my previous post: you can build the infrastructure which suits your problem and let the cloud provider deal with many of the “enterprisey” problems for you. Then when you reach the point where you need to start worrying about the big problems, well you can decide how you want to design your solutions there after.