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The money you save in the cloud isn’t on hardware, it’s in not having to pay a sysadmin so you can work on business problems. And that benefit only improves wi

The money you save in the cloud isn’t on hardware, it’s in not having to pay a sysadmin so you can work on business problems. And that benefit only improves with scale.

SketchySeaBeast 7y ago
Didn't you see? You're just supposed to learn some sysadmin skills yourself. The trick is to make yourself the linchpin, so that once the site grows large enough you can never leave, as you're the only one able to keep that writhing mass of wires up and running.
- leetbulb 7y ago
  Yeah, been there, though against my will. Boy was I happy when the system (which actually worked extremely well) was shut down and replaced with a SaaS-based product.
mey 7y ago
That job doesn't go away, it just changes focus. See DevOps. Generally it is a net positive in my book, but don't believe that operations goes away.
- pferde 7y ago
  Indeed. Even despite all the shiny web console controls, someone has to know what all the items on the invoice from the cloud provider do, and how they work together.
hartator 7y ago
What's different between managing a VPS and an actual server?
- LoSboccacc 7y ago
  who drives to the center to change the disk when it fails
  - zakki 7y ago
    Most data centers provide smart hand service. You can ask them to do (any) physical task for you.
  - hartator 7y ago
    Virtual disk fails as well.
  - Slartie 7y ago
    I actually have had physical boxes with Hetzner, as suggested by the author, for over 10 years, and ran multiple projects on them. Of course I had my share of disk failures. You tell them the disk serial via a special form, tell them when the necessary downtime for the swap is least disturbing for you, and someone switches the disk as requested. 5 minutes later the machine is up again, you trigger RAID rebuild, and that's it. Doesn't cost a dime to do this, and not more than 20 minutes of work and 10 minutes downtime from my side.
    - mark242 7y ago
      "Doesn't cost a dime to do this, and not more than 20 minutes of work and 10 minutes downtime from my side." Your work isn't free. Application downtime is costing you.
      - Slartie 7y ago
        The exact monetary cost of work time and application downtime (if there even is any, maybe you just shift the load to the second box) varies greatly depending on the context in which the respective project is run (hobby vs. paid-for, I've had both types), which is why I offered time estimates for these costs instead of a monetary amount. The stated monetary amount of "zero" refers to the provider not charging me anything for the new disk itself and the work of changing the disk.
pmlnr 7y ago
Those who think they won't need sysadmins and/or SREs with the cloud are delusional.
- boomskats 7y ago
  *Those who think they won't need sysadmins that are even more expensive
- stickfigure 7y ago
  I ran a successful marketplace selling and printing >$100MM/yr of tshirts on Google App Engine with no ops or devops. AMA.
tyingq 7y ago
There more benefit than that. One example...development teams can't force the same level of tech debt that they can on-prem. If Amazon's upgrading some service or competent, there isn't any bargaining or exceptions. Many similar benefits when you have a huge for-profit entity running the infrastructure at their scale. They optimize a lot for you.
- pvorb 7y ago
  But you usually also have to wait longer for new versions of services -- which might not be a problem for the majority, but can be a show-stopper for some.
- dragonwriter 7y ago
  > If Amazon's upgrading some service or competent AWS almost never forcibly spins down legacy functionality, even if they stop advertising it, unless literally no one is left using it. That's actually a selling point of AWS to enterprise: while idealistic devs may like “our cloud vendor will force us to use the latest and greatest so we don't have to have that fight”, enterprise buyers don't want “we’re going to be compelled to reengineer our working systems on someone else's timetable”.
  - tyingq 7y ago
    RDS might be one example. No forced upgrades from AWS on it? Or AMIs? K8S versions in EKS? Etc.
    - dragonwriter 7y ago
      RDS has user-controlled optional automatic patching and (for SQL Server at least) minor version upgrades. It doesn't have forced upgrades, AFAIK.
gopalv 7y ago
> it’s in not having to pay a sysadmin so you can work on business problems. ... > that benefit only improves with scale. That's hard to derive from the same statement - there's a point after which you can afford your own 8 member SRE team across 3 timezones. The cloud is incredibly attractive when you consider your scale problems as unknown (as a startup, the blitz scale day isn't a good time to go rack nodes yourself) & mostly as way to scale down the costs faster than physical infrastructure + associated human costs can. I've started looking at this as slightly different model - I'm no longer hiring a good operations manager for those 8 people, I'm hiring a decent programmer who can automate and have code handling deployment tasks instead of a human being taking orders (i.e rack an NVMe + reboot this). Honestly, even with your physical infrastructure, the trend is towards API based deployment models. My time at Zynga working on ZCloud, migrating off EC2 to on-prem, that is what I saw. The API based deployment model + reactions from machines (on failure), was worth building everywhere - now that applies to k8s.
dragonwriter 7y ago
> The money you save in the cloud isn’t on hardware, it’s in not having to pay a sysadmin so you can work on business problems Maybe, but you probably have to go pretty far on the cloud maturity spectrum (using cloud native services effectively, not simple VMs like EC2 or even comparatively thin services that abstract just the machine/OS layer like non-Aurora RDS) before you are saving more in local-machine-focused ops teams than you are paying in cloud-focussed ops teams. The latter are more likely to be timeslices of time of team members that are primarily developers, but its still work with a cost.
robertAngst 7y ago
I worry a company will bait and switch with me. I have seen products get discontinued. But yes, this is outsourcing a problem for a cost.

The money you save in the cloud isn’t on hardware, it’s in not having to pay a sysadmin so you can work on business problems. And that benefit only improves with scale.

SketchySeaBeast 7y ago

Didn't you see? You're just supposed to learn some sysadmin skills yourself. The trick is to make yourself the linchpin, so that once the site grows large enough you can never leave, as you're the only one able to keep that writhing mass of wires up and running.

leetbulb 7y ago
Yeah, been there, though against my will. Boy was I happy when the system (which actually worked extremely well) was shut down and replaced with a SaaS-based product.

mey 7y ago

That job doesn't go away, it just changes focus. See DevOps. Generally it is a net positive in my book, but don't believe that operations goes away.

pferde 7y ago
Indeed. Even despite all the shiny web console controls, someone has to know what all the items on the invoice from the cloud provider do, and how they work together.

hartator 7y ago

What's different between managing a VPS and an actual server?

LoSboccacc 7y ago
who drives to the center to change the disk when it fails
- zakki 7y ago
  Most data centers provide smart hand service. You can ask them to do (any) physical task for you.
- hartator 7y ago
  Virtual disk fails as well.
- Slartie 7y ago
  I actually have had physical boxes with Hetzner, as suggested by the author, for over 10 years, and ran multiple projects on them. Of course I had my share of disk failures. You tell them the disk serial via a special form, tell them when the necessary downtime for the swap is least disturbing for you, and someone switches the disk as requested. 5 minutes later the machine is up again, you trigger RAID rebuild, and that's it. Doesn't cost a dime to do this, and not more than 20 minutes of work and 10 minutes downtime from my side.
  - mark242 7y ago
    "Doesn't cost a dime to do this, and not more than 20 minutes of work and 10 minutes downtime from my side." Your work isn't free. Application downtime is costing you.
    - Slartie 7y ago
      The exact monetary cost of work time and application downtime (if there even is any, maybe you just shift the load to the second box) varies greatly depending on the context in which the respective project is run (hobby vs. paid-for, I've had both types), which is why I offered time estimates for these costs instead of a monetary amount. The stated monetary amount of "zero" refers to the provider not charging me anything for the new disk itself and the work of changing the disk.

pmlnr 7y ago

Those who think they won't need sysadmins and/or SREs with the cloud are delusional.

boomskats 7y ago
*Those who think they won't need sysadmins that are even more expensive
stickfigure 7y ago
I ran a successful marketplace selling and printing >$100MM/yr of tshirts on Google App Engine with no ops or devops. AMA.

tyingq 7y ago

There more benefit than that. One example...development teams can't force the same level of tech debt that they can on-prem. If Amazon's upgrading some service or competent, there isn't any bargaining or exceptions. Many similar benefits when you have a huge for-profit entity running the infrastructure at their scale. They optimize a lot for you.

pvorb 7y ago
But you usually also have to wait longer for new versions of services -- which might not be a problem for the majority, but can be a show-stopper for some.
dragonwriter 7y ago
> If Amazon's upgrading some service or competent AWS almost never forcibly spins down legacy functionality, even if they stop advertising it, unless literally no one is left using it. That's actually a selling point of AWS to enterprise: while idealistic devs may like “our cloud vendor will force us to use the latest and greatest so we don't have to have that fight”, enterprise buyers don't want “we’re going to be compelled to reengineer our working systems on someone else's timetable”.
- tyingq 7y ago
  RDS might be one example. No forced upgrades from AWS on it? Or AMIs? K8S versions in EKS? Etc.
  - dragonwriter 7y ago
    RDS has user-controlled optional automatic patching and (for SQL Server at least) minor version upgrades. It doesn't have forced upgrades, AFAIK.

gopalv 7y ago

> it’s in not having to pay a sysadmin so you can work on business problems. ... > that benefit only improves with scale. That's hard to derive from the same statement - there's a point after which you can afford your own 8 member SRE team across 3 timezones. The cloud is incredibly attractive when you consider your scale problems as unknown (as a startup, the blitz scale day isn't a good time to go rack nodes yourself) & mostly as way to scale down the costs faster than physical infrastructure + associated human costs can. I've started looking at this as slightly different model - I'm no longer hiring a good operations manager for those 8 people, I'm hiring a decent programmer who can automate and have code handling deployment tasks instead of a human being taking orders (i.e rack an NVMe + reboot this). Honestly, even with your physical infrastructure, the trend is towards API based deployment models. My time at Zynga working on ZCloud, migrating off EC2 to on-prem, that is what I saw. The API based deployment model + reactions from machines (on failure), was worth building everywhere - now that applies to k8s.

dragonwriter 7y ago

> The money you save in the cloud isn’t on hardware, it’s in not having to pay a sysadmin so you can work on business problems Maybe, but you probably have to go pretty far on the cloud maturity spectrum (using cloud native services effectively, not simple VMs like EC2 or even comparatively thin services that abstract just the machine/OS layer like non-Aurora RDS) before you are saving more in local-machine-focused ops teams than you are paying in cloud-focussed ops teams. The latter are more likely to be timeslices of time of team members that are primarily developers, but its still work with a cost.

robertAngst 7y ago

I worry a company will bait and switch with me. I have seen products get discontinued. But yes, this is outsourcing a problem for a cost.