> You're forgetting the human part in this cost. Installing, securing and maintaining the machines costs as well. I'm not sure where to even to start with this

> You're forgetting the human part in this cost. Installing, securing and maintaining the machines costs as well. I'm not sure where to even to start with this. It's not even wrong ... For hosted and colo servers, you can have "remote hands" unbox, rack and cable your servers. My colo facility, he.net in Calif., does that for free, including IPMI configuration. AWS does not secure your servers. They have a "shared security responsibility" cutout in all their contractual language. So they have private networks, but you're responsible for iptables, application security, etc. Their AMIs aren't even encrypted, ffs. That's right, 99% of AWS customers don't do disk encryption, even if they're required to do so for compliance reasons, because you have to do an extra step yourself to encrypt it with your KMS. (GCP does encrypt.)