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a bit tangential: I think a lot of AWS customers would actually benefit by hosting on their own machines in a data-center. The tools (and hardware) out there ha

a bit tangential: I think a lot of AWS customers would actually benefit by hosting on their own machines in a data-center. The tools (and hardware) out there have become so good that there's minimal benefit to hosting on AWS for more than 4x the price. A lot of DCs also accept shipments so that even makes things easier. The trouble is that we've been conditioned, as an industry, not to think for ourselves or dare question certain accepted norms/practices. AWS/Azure/GCloud is great for some but I suspect it's for a much smaller subset that we want to accept.

koheripbal 6y ago
That's what we (mid/small-sized company) with couple dozen machines. It is probably 10% the cost of AWS - but you do need to have at least one person that can handle the servers when/if there are issues. That one person only needs to devote maybe 2-5% of their time to it (once the systems are setup), so it's still a net gain.
- bcrosby95 6y ago
  Yeah, we use a mix of AWS and self hosted machines. We've had up to 40 servers with this method and devoted similarly trivial amounts of time to it. If you want it to be long term sustainable, you probably want at least 2 people that can handle it, so they can go on vacation. If your goal is to be the next billion dollar company, it probably doesn't matter that much. But if you're self-funding and need a sustainable business model from the beginning, there's a huge growth phase (mid-sized) where the cost savings from doing this sort of thing can be large enough to be worthwhile. I'm not sure why so many developers seem afraid of hardware. Back in the early 2000s it definitely felt more commonplace for developers to be able to deal with it. Maybe it's because we grew up having to deal with our own in the form of desktops. Nowadays it seems like lots of people just use a macbook. And that's their only exposure to hardware
  - scarface74 6y ago
    If you want it to be long term sustainable, you probably want at least 2 people that can handle it, so they can go on vacation. The fully allocated cost of two ops people in my neck of the woods is a little over $300K. That can buy a lot from AWS. I'm not sure why so many developers seem afraid of hardware I want to develop. Yes I’ve been around long before AWS was a thing, I had to manage servers, load balancers, and even an elevated “server” room with a SAN with whopping 3TBs of storage back in the early 2000s. But in my old age, my time is valuable. I’ve done the on call thing before where our database server went down in the middle of the night when the night operations crew was working. I won’t work for a company that is not on a cloud provider and doesn’t have a dedicated ops team. But, if you are a small company. Why are you spending a lot on AWS? Two EC2 instances behind a load balancer and a hosted database shouldn’t cost you over $500 a month and that includes a decent amount of traffic and miscellaneous other charges. Heck if you are that small, just use Lightsail and when you grow, peer your Lightsail VPC that you probably didn’t know existed to a real VPC.
    - koheripbal 6y ago
      ...but they aren't fully allocated. They're allocated at about 5% - maybe less. I manage a couple dozen servers and it's a small minority of my job.
      - sk5t 6y ago
        What are those two ops-focused folks doing with the other 95% of their time? Are we talking about two developers who are willing to spend 5-10% time on non-promotable server chores--while yet being on the hook in the event of a hardware disaster--or people who consider operations their vocation and aren't interested in software development? I agree that it's possible to do that kind of work on a 5-10% basis, but it requires just the right set of circumstances for sustainability. Like, maybe it is your own startup or family business, or one is not particular good at sysop'ing and wants to learn more.
        deleted 6y ago
        [deleted]
unethical_ban 6y ago
I used to feel like "the cloud is just someone else's computer" but I have changed a bit. If you do cloud native, there can definitely be pricing and peace of mind benefits. The idea that you can deploy a globally redundant database with automatic backups, with zero installation or server/software maintenance, is pretty amazing. Lambda is awesome and powerful, AWS IAM security model is revolutionary vs. so many different network/LDAP security policies.

koheripbal 6y ago

That's what we (mid/small-sized company) with couple dozen machines. It is probably 10% the cost of AWS - but you do need to have at least one person that can handle the servers when/if there are issues. That one person only needs to devote maybe 2-5% of their time to it (once the systems are setup), so it's still a net gain.

bcrosby95 6y ago
Yeah, we use a mix of AWS and self hosted machines. We've had up to 40 servers with this method and devoted similarly trivial amounts of time to it. If you want it to be long term sustainable, you probably want at least 2 people that can handle it, so they can go on vacation. If your goal is to be the next billion dollar company, it probably doesn't matter that much. But if you're self-funding and need a sustainable business model from the beginning, there's a huge growth phase (mid-sized) where the cost savings from doing this sort of thing can be large enough to be worthwhile. I'm not sure why so many developers seem afraid of hardware. Back in the early 2000s it definitely felt more commonplace for developers to be able to deal with it. Maybe it's because we grew up having to deal with our own in the form of desktops. Nowadays it seems like lots of people just use a macbook. And that's their only exposure to hardware
- scarface74 6y ago
  If you want it to be long term sustainable, you probably want at least 2 people that can handle it, so they can go on vacation. The fully allocated cost of two ops people in my neck of the woods is a little over $300K. That can buy a lot from AWS. I'm not sure why so many developers seem afraid of hardware I want to develop. Yes I’ve been around long before AWS was a thing, I had to manage servers, load balancers, and even an elevated “server” room with a SAN with whopping 3TBs of storage back in the early 2000s. But in my old age, my time is valuable. I’ve done the on call thing before where our database server went down in the middle of the night when the night operations crew was working. I won’t work for a company that is not on a cloud provider and doesn’t have a dedicated ops team. But, if you are a small company. Why are you spending a lot on AWS? Two EC2 instances behind a load balancer and a hosted database shouldn’t cost you over $500 a month and that includes a decent amount of traffic and miscellaneous other charges. Heck if you are that small, just use Lightsail and when you grow, peer your Lightsail VPC that you probably didn’t know existed to a real VPC.
  - koheripbal 6y ago
    ...but they aren't fully allocated. They're allocated at about 5% - maybe less. I manage a couple dozen servers and it's a small minority of my job.
    - sk5t 6y ago
      What are those two ops-focused folks doing with the other 95% of their time? Are we talking about two developers who are willing to spend 5-10% time on non-promotable server chores--while yet being on the hook in the event of a hardware disaster--or people who consider operations their vocation and aren't interested in software development? I agree that it's possible to do that kind of work on a 5-10% basis, but it requires just the right set of circumstances for sustainability. Like, maybe it is your own startup or family business, or one is not particular good at sysop'ing and wants to learn more.
      - deleted 6y ago
        [deleted]

unethical_ban 6y ago

I used to feel like "the cloud is just someone else's computer" but I have changed a bit. If you do cloud native, there can definitely be pricing and peace of mind benefits. The idea that you can deploy a globally redundant database with automatic backups, with zero installation or server/software maintenance, is pretty amazing. Lambda is awesome and powerful, AWS IAM security model is revolutionary vs. so many different network/LDAP security policies.