4 ms·

I value four hours of my time at considerably more than $200 and the reason I'm able to do that is because I know things like how to configure a database server

by maxk42 6y ago

I value four hours of my time at considerably more than $200 and the reason I'm able to do that is because I know things like how to configure a database server. But your argument is nonsensical because a one-time investment of time (much less than four hours for me, but I've been doing this for 20 years) can save you several hundred dollars a month. AWS AuroraDB, for instance, (which I also know how to configure, by the way) has much higher latency than a hand-rolled instance and will cause bottlenecks throughout your code in a DB-driven application. If I hadn't experienced the difference firsthand, or had failed to profile my app's performance adequately, I might assume I need to solve the problem by spinning up more ec2 instances to distribute the load. I've had the misfortune of working with a company that had exactly that problem and knowing how to spin up a new DB server saved the company thousands of dollars a month and took considerably less than four hours. Transferring a 3TB database to a new server without downtime did take considerably longer, however, but I was being paid hourly anyway, and it was still a worthwhile investment for the company which saved considerably more than my fee. Any tradesperson should know their tools. A programmer is no different and if you don't know how to use your tools because your "value your own time higher" then thank you: you're the guy who ends up getting me called in to fix things at a much higher hourly fee.

rektide 6y ago
the main issue I have with the DIY mentality is that, for me, it's endless, and even more so, it's an unpaved path, ad-hoc, with few integrated well defined paths. we've got lots of open source software, but the ops of being online is hard fought experience. * `apt-get install postgres-server` would have worked fine for my needs on my VPS. oh but i need roles, so let's start an ansible playbook. maybe let's tweak some settings. fine, still all short, easy to do. * ahhh i should probably have backups. how am i going to manage that storage, where is that going to live? * then i introduce a new feature & my database is running slow. explain query helps, but i also could use some metrics for these boxes, so probably need to start thinking about prometheus & node-exporter, &c. i am radically in favor of a) personally facing these challenges and b) open-sourcing the operational knowledge & tools for setting up AND OPERATING systems. yet at the same time i also think spending $171/mo for a year is an exceedingly wonderful option to have on the table. running my own servers is, to me, a lifelong project, something i want to deeply invest in. there's plenty of ways to go about it that aren't so arduous (k8s+postgres-operator+rook+tbd monitoring+tbd directory-services), but that willingness to keep engaging, supporting, maintaining, scaling things can be a very serious concern that extends well past the time it takes to set a database up: it's an ongoing "giving a shit" burden even when (seemingly) working fine. being willing and able to hack through is great, and i am all for the coallition of the willing who elect to march through, hopefully not getting bogged down along the way. but wow if you are trying to start a business, it sure is nice being able to pay someone to spin up, back up, monitor, scale some services for you. i hope some day "we" are better at such things, systematically, i hope open source ops helps give us better paths to doing these kind of things easily, safely, observably, resilliently. we're not there yet. but wow, this challenge to me- how we move open source from an older "software" model to an online service model, that empowers people to set up online systems as easily as opening an editor, that's the challenge at the heart of open source today. it's one that needs a lot more effort, a lot more work, such that we have good ways to stand up & keep up a database server.
strokirk 6y ago
Where and how did you aquire this knowledge?

by maxk42 6y ago

rektide 6y ago

the main issue I have with the DIY mentality is that, for me, it's endless, and even more so, it's an unpaved path, ad-hoc, with few integrated well defined paths. we've got lots of open source software, but the ops of being online is hard fought experience. * `apt-get install postgres-server` would have worked fine for my needs on my VPS. oh but i need roles, so let's start an ansible playbook. maybe let's tweak some settings. fine, still all short, easy to do. * ahhh i should probably have backups. how am i going to manage that storage, where is that going to live? * then i introduce a new feature & my database is running slow. explain query helps, but i also could use some metrics for these boxes, so probably need to start thinking about prometheus & node-exporter, &c. i am radically in favor of a) personally facing these challenges and b) open-sourcing the operational knowledge & tools for setting up AND OPERATING systems. yet at the same time i also think spending $171/mo for a year is an exceedingly wonderful option to have on the table. running my own servers is, to me, a lifelong project, something i want to deeply invest in. there's plenty of ways to go about it that aren't so arduous (k8s+postgres-operator+rook+tbd monitoring+tbd directory-services), but that willingness to keep engaging, supporting, maintaining, scaling things can be a very serious concern that extends well past the time it takes to set a database up: it's an ongoing "giving a shit" burden even when (seemingly) working fine. being willing and able to hack through is great, and i am all for the coallition of the willing who elect to march through, hopefully not getting bogged down along the way. but wow if you are trying to start a business, it sure is nice being able to pay someone to spin up, back up, monitor, scale some services for you. i hope some day "we" are better at such things, systematically, i hope open source ops helps give us better paths to doing these kind of things easily, safely, observably, resilliently. we're not there yet. but wow, this challenge to me- how we move open source from an older "software" model to an online service model, that empowers people to set up online systems as easily as opening an editor, that's the challenge at the heart of open source today. it's one that needs a lot more effort, a lot more work, such that we have good ways to stand up & keep up a database server.

strokirk 6y ago

Where and how did you aquire this knowledge?