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This is how you end up running on an extremely limited cloud subset, decades behind current offerings. Do you want seamless ability to transfer work to another

by ethbro 7y ago

This is how you end up running on an extremely limited cloud subset, decades behind current offerings. Do you want seamless ability to transfer work to another cloud, or do you want the latest managed services and features? Pick one.

YawningAngel 7y ago
When you're spending ten billion, it seems reasonable to run your own data centres to me.
- ethbro 7y ago
  On government salary-capped architects and engineers? DoD is never going to be able to pay what any of the major companies can for top-tier talent. And there are only so many talented people willing to work below market rate for other reasons. (Not at all a slight to those engineers doing government work. Salutes to all of you!)
  - ryacko 7y ago
    DoD pays for top tier talent when it is a priority. Thousands work as contractors for JPL or the Battelle Institute. The government is currently structure so that only cutting edge research is a priority, not the more humdrum stuff like day to day operations.
  - Supermancho 7y ago
    > On government salary-capped architects and engineers? You mean for the design? Yes. For the actual actual day-to-day operational duties, it's servicemen that perform like any other military post.
  - YawningAngel 7y ago
    Obviously there are lots of ways you can vitiate your ability to do this by being pathologically dysfunctional, all I'm saying is that the proposition isn't a priori unreasonable. Your objection seems flawed to me in that it ignores the fact that goons can screw up just as badly on AWS as they can in a data centre.
    - ethbro 7y ago
      Apples to apples, how does a hypothetically goonish IT department screw up a managed service in the same way they can building up from bare metal?
      - YawningAngel 7y ago
        My first thought is spaffing huge piles of money up the wall by using expensive stuff like DynamoDB really inappropriately, but I think in general AWS is complicated in a way paying someone to plug in colo servers isn't and thus offers more scope to waste money. For random anecdata purposes, I saved $20k /month turning off unused stuff at my ~$50k /month most recent gig. Now scale that up to $1B /year
        ethbro 7y ago
        Absolutely on wasted money and an easier path to financially foot-gunning. But my point was more that managed services do make it harder to technically foot-gun. When there are limited options exposed by an abstraction layer, there are limited mistakes an ignorant user can make.
danenania 7y ago
I think "extremely limited" is hyperbole. The major clouds can all provide every service that 95% of applications need. If you're building something with unique needs that only one cloud can handle, then go ahead and use the advanced feature. A little bit of lock-in here and there for edge cases seems preferable to having your entire multi-billion dollar system deeply coupled to a single company's cloud.
- julianozen 7y ago
  Sort of. AWS Lamba (server functions), dynamodb (hosted nosql) and aurora (hosted sql) are all pretty generic services, have significant auto-scaling benefits to using them, and have competitors on competing platforms. At the same time they are sufficiently differentiated that migration plans would be non-trivial Disclaimer: former aws employee
  - danenania 7y ago
    Right--I'm not saying it's trivial, just that it seems doable with many millions in budget.

by ethbro 7y ago

YawningAngel 7y ago

When you're spending ten billion, it seems reasonable to run your own data centres to me.

ethbro 7y ago
On government salary-capped architects and engineers? DoD is never going to be able to pay what any of the major companies can for top-tier talent. And there are only so many talented people willing to work below market rate for other reasons. (Not at all a slight to those engineers doing government work. Salutes to all of you!)
- ryacko 7y ago
  DoD pays for top tier talent when it is a priority. Thousands work as contractors for JPL or the Battelle Institute. The government is currently structure so that only cutting edge research is a priority, not the more humdrum stuff like day to day operations.
- Supermancho 7y ago
  > On government salary-capped architects and engineers? You mean for the design? Yes. For the actual actual day-to-day operational duties, it's servicemen that perform like any other military post.
- YawningAngel 7y ago
  Obviously there are lots of ways you can vitiate your ability to do this by being pathologically dysfunctional, all I'm saying is that the proposition isn't a priori unreasonable. Your objection seems flawed to me in that it ignores the fact that goons can screw up just as badly on AWS as they can in a data centre.
  - ethbro 7y ago
    Apples to apples, how does a hypothetically goonish IT department screw up a managed service in the same way they can building up from bare metal?
    - YawningAngel 7y ago
      My first thought is spaffing huge piles of money up the wall by using expensive stuff like DynamoDB really inappropriately, but I think in general AWS is complicated in a way paying someone to plug in colo servers isn't and thus offers more scope to waste money. For random anecdata purposes, I saved $20k /month turning off unused stuff at my ~$50k /month most recent gig. Now scale that up to $1B /year
      - ethbro 7y ago
        Absolutely on wasted money and an easier path to financially foot-gunning. But my point was more that managed services do make it harder to technically foot-gun. When there are limited options exposed by an abstraction layer, there are limited mistakes an ignorant user can make.

danenania 7y ago

I think "extremely limited" is hyperbole. The major clouds can all provide every service that 95% of applications need. If you're building something with unique needs that only one cloud can handle, then go ahead and use the advanced feature. A little bit of lock-in here and there for edge cases seems preferable to having your entire multi-billion dollar system deeply coupled to a single company's cloud.

julianozen 7y ago
Sort of. AWS Lamba (server functions), dynamodb (hosted nosql) and aurora (hosted sql) are all pretty generic services, have significant auto-scaling benefits to using them, and have competitors on competing platforms. At the same time they are sufficiently differentiated that migration plans would be non-trivial Disclaimer: former aws employee
- danenania 7y ago
  Right--I'm not saying it's trivial, just that it seems doable with many millions in budget.