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I have been wanting to try out things like AWS and containers and such, but I haven't had the chance yet. I think part of it is that I haven't had the chance in

I have been wanting to try out things like AWS and containers and such, but I haven't had the chance yet. I think part of it is that I haven't had the chance in a work setting to check those things out. We have thousands of physical machines and on-prem VMs. Sometimes I feel like we're kind of "old-world".

sl1ck731 7y ago
Physical infrastructure isn't going away anytime soon. I work in migrating people to public cloud and we are seeing a resurgence of people moving to "private clouds". Mostly vMware and OpenStack. Most people have begun realizing their CTOs cargo-culted AWS for their resumes and its costing more than owning DC or colocating does.
- vortex_panda 7y ago
  I was wondering about that. Every time I looked at AWS pricing, it seemed insanely expensive for the people that just forklifted their on-prem services into the cloud without re-architecting it to fit that type of environment.
  - ocdtrekkie 7y ago
    Most cloud solutions costs 2-3 times more than the on-prem equivalents. The selling point that's usually trotted out is "but it just works and you can fire your IT staff". ...Most people who move to the cloud end up still needing IT staff to manage it, and are now, by proxy, paying for the cloud provider's IT staff too. (Hidden underneath all of those cloud providers are a silent army of IT people.) A recent conversation I had was whether to replace a server (five figures) when a neighboring organization was on the cloud for the same technology (three figures per year per device). The latter sounded a lot cheaper until you multiplied the devices by that three figure amount, and multiplied it by the five years the server's contract covered. The cloud solution became more expensive that the physical service in a little over a year. I have similar conversations about Office 365. It costs twice as much as buying on-prem Microsoft Office, even if you buy Office every version. There's really no reason not to skip every other release of Office, which makes it practically four times the cost of on-prem.
    - quickthrower2 7y ago
      What about reserved pricing? I use Azure and that’s significantly cheaper and more compariable to buying your own servers.
      - ocdtrekkie 7y ago
        Is it though? A dual-core Windows VM with 8 GB of RAM is... 0.037 cents an hour. That works out to 88 cents a day, or $324 per year per VM. If I have about 20 VMs running on a $10,000 server with a $6,000 Windows Server Datacenter license that has a five year warranty, let's math that out: The VMs cost $32,400. And I can spin up more VMs on that server at zero cost, it's not at capacity. Obviously there's plenty of other little dollars and cents you can factor into an equation like this, but I'd argue Azure Reserved Pricing still has it's profit margin well defined.
    - scarface74 7y ago
      The thing is that yes you do need IT people and there is an army of IT people hired by the cloud providers. But, you don’t have to pay the full cost to hire them. Between Managed Service Providers that allow you to outsource your support and the (excellent) business support plan of AWS you can get away with a lot fewer employees in the IT department and their job just becomes managing communications between the business and managing the relationship with the MSP and the cloud provider.
      - ocdtrekkie 7y ago
        From the perspective of an IT employee, the market has not shrunk. Because companies need IT staff, MSPs need IT staff, and cloud providers need IT staff. And while they've shifted a lot, I would argue that it's largely been a zero sum change. I can definitely say last time I was in the job market, the majority of available IT jobs in my area was with MSPs, but there were tons of jobs available.
        scarface74 7y ago
        I’m speaking from the side of a business who is deciding between on prem or cloud. If you move to a cloud provider, change your processes, and reduce your number of IT people and use a combination of an MSP and a business support plan, you can save some money. If you only move to the cloud and don’t do either of the other two. You will spend a lot more money. From the side of an IT person, it can go either way. Now that companies don’t need on prem IT people. The MSPs can rural source (get people a lot cheaper in lower cost of living areas) and outsource lower level IT folks. Either way there will be a lot of jobs, but there will be more people who can do it and wages will be lower for commodity IT folks. On the other end, the true customer facing consultants can make a lot more. But if all you can do is click around on the AWS Console, don’t expect to make a lot. I’m mostly a $long_time developer but I know my way around AWS and my next job will probably be a around AWS consultancy but I really want to stick to developing/architecting on top of AWS and not just doing “lift and shifts”.
- scarface74 7y ago
  Of course AWS costs more if you’re just moving a bunch of VMs to it and not changing your processes, automating, using managed services, and honestly down sizing your IT department.

sl1ck731 7y ago

Physical infrastructure isn't going away anytime soon. I work in migrating people to public cloud and we are seeing a resurgence of people moving to "private clouds". Mostly vMware and OpenStack. Most people have begun realizing their CTOs cargo-culted AWS for their resumes and its costing more than owning DC or colocating does.

vortex_panda 7y ago
I was wondering about that. Every time I looked at AWS pricing, it seemed insanely expensive for the people that just forklifted their on-prem services into the cloud without re-architecting it to fit that type of environment.
- ocdtrekkie 7y ago
  Most cloud solutions costs 2-3 times more than the on-prem equivalents. The selling point that's usually trotted out is "but it just works and you can fire your IT staff". ...Most people who move to the cloud end up still needing IT staff to manage it, and are now, by proxy, paying for the cloud provider's IT staff too. (Hidden underneath all of those cloud providers are a silent army of IT people.) A recent conversation I had was whether to replace a server (five figures) when a neighboring organization was on the cloud for the same technology (three figures per year per device). The latter sounded a lot cheaper until you multiplied the devices by that three figure amount, and multiplied it by the five years the server's contract covered. The cloud solution became more expensive that the physical service in a little over a year. I have similar conversations about Office 365. It costs twice as much as buying on-prem Microsoft Office, even if you buy Office every version. There's really no reason not to skip every other release of Office, which makes it practically four times the cost of on-prem.
  - quickthrower2 7y ago
    What about reserved pricing? I use Azure and that’s significantly cheaper and more compariable to buying your own servers.
    - ocdtrekkie 7y ago
      Is it though? A dual-core Windows VM with 8 GB of RAM is... 0.037 cents an hour. That works out to 88 cents a day, or $324 per year per VM. If I have about 20 VMs running on a $10,000 server with a $6,000 Windows Server Datacenter license that has a five year warranty, let's math that out: The VMs cost $32,400. And I can spin up more VMs on that server at zero cost, it's not at capacity. Obviously there's plenty of other little dollars and cents you can factor into an equation like this, but I'd argue Azure Reserved Pricing still has it's profit margin well defined.
  - scarface74 7y ago
    The thing is that yes you do need IT people and there is an army of IT people hired by the cloud providers. But, you don’t have to pay the full cost to hire them. Between Managed Service Providers that allow you to outsource your support and the (excellent) business support plan of AWS you can get away with a lot fewer employees in the IT department and their job just becomes managing communications between the business and managing the relationship with the MSP and the cloud provider.
    - ocdtrekkie 7y ago
      From the perspective of an IT employee, the market has not shrunk. Because companies need IT staff, MSPs need IT staff, and cloud providers need IT staff. And while they've shifted a lot, I would argue that it's largely been a zero sum change. I can definitely say last time I was in the job market, the majority of available IT jobs in my area was with MSPs, but there were tons of jobs available.
      - scarface74 7y ago
        I’m speaking from the side of a business who is deciding between on prem or cloud. If you move to a cloud provider, change your processes, and reduce your number of IT people and use a combination of an MSP and a business support plan, you can save some money. If you only move to the cloud and don’t do either of the other two. You will spend a lot more money. From the side of an IT person, it can go either way. Now that companies don’t need on prem IT people. The MSPs can rural source (get people a lot cheaper in lower cost of living areas) and outsource lower level IT folks. Either way there will be a lot of jobs, but there will be more people who can do it and wages will be lower for commodity IT folks. On the other end, the true customer facing consultants can make a lot more. But if all you can do is click around on the AWS Console, don’t expect to make a lot. I’m mostly a $long_time developer but I know my way around AWS and my next job will probably be a around AWS consultancy but I really want to stick to developing/architecting on top of AWS and not just doing “lift and shifts”.
scarface74 7y ago
Of course AWS costs more if you’re just moving a bunch of VMs to it and not changing your processes, automating, using managed services, and honestly down sizing your IT department.