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Is there yet an open-source alternative to GCP? Can you buy bare metal and just have your own cloud?

ornornor 6y ago
I don’t think so. But knowing my company’s capabilities and proficiency, it was obvious it was never going to work. Would have been much more logical to buy from one of the many local providers who run their own data centers. It doesn’t really matter because in the end the solution is so bad that we try and use GCP anyway whenever we get the chance.
syshum 6y ago
OpenStack is probably the closest but it will not have everything GCP or AWS has
- Frost1x 6y ago
  It's probably enough for most organizations, though.
throwaway894345 6y ago
Presumably Kubernetes is the answer here, but you need to run a lot of things yourself that come for free with GKE. Also “just buy bare metal” ignores the massive effort involved in operating a data center.
mcdevilkiller 6y ago
Yep, you have OpenStack, which is the standard, and running some huge deployments, like these: https://www.openstack.org/use-cases/ https://www.openstack.org/use-cases/
WrtCdEvrydy 6y ago
Depends on what is desired... theoretically using Proxmox and VMs containing CapRover hosting docker containers should get you everything you want... but the ability instantly scale upwards is difficult to do yourself.
- londons_explore 6y ago
  > the ability instantly scale upwards is difficult to do yourself. If your business involves any amount of low priority bulk compute, this gets much much easier. You simply let the low priority stuff fall behind while your order to Dell for new servers is being delivered... Also, if you have compute that could be on-prem or could be in the cloud, you can set up a kubernetes cluster spanning both and let non-privacy-sensitive overflow to GCP as needed. All of the above rarely comes out cost-effective though, because while the raw compute is cheaper to DIY-it, when you factor in the staff time to build, maintain, and deal with the shortcomings of your bodged-together on-site solution, it's going to come out much more expensive.
  - WrtCdEvrydy 6y ago
    To be honest, it depends on your SLA for uptime. We've built out something homebrew like this using cheap compute desktops but you're still going to pay a lot upfront.

I don’t think so. But knowing my company’s capabilities and proficiency, it was obvious it was never going to work. Would have been much more logical to buy from one of the many local providers who run their own data centers. It doesn’t really matter because in the end the solution is so bad that we try and use GCP anyway whenever we get the chance.

syshum 6y ago

OpenStack is probably the closest but it will not have everything GCP or AWS has

Frost1x 6y ago
It's probably enough for most organizations, though.

throwaway894345 6y ago

Presumably Kubernetes is the answer here, but you need to run a lot of things yourself that come for free with GKE. Also “just buy bare metal” ignores the massive effort involved in operating a data center.

mcdevilkiller 6y ago

Yep, you have OpenStack, which is the standard, and running some huge deployments, like these: https://www.openstack.org/use-cases/ https://www.openstack.org/use-cases/

WrtCdEvrydy 6y ago

Depends on what is desired... theoretically using Proxmox and VMs containing CapRover hosting docker containers should get you everything you want... but the ability instantly scale upwards is difficult to do yourself.

londons_explore 6y ago
> the ability instantly scale upwards is difficult to do yourself. If your business involves any amount of low priority bulk compute, this gets much much easier. You simply let the low priority stuff fall behind while your order to Dell for new servers is being delivered... Also, if you have compute that could be on-prem or could be in the cloud, you can set up a kubernetes cluster spanning both and let non-privacy-sensitive overflow to GCP as needed. All of the above rarely comes out cost-effective though, because while the raw compute is cheaper to DIY-it, when you factor in the staff time to build, maintain, and deal with the shortcomings of your bodged-together on-site solution, it's going to come out much more expensive.
- WrtCdEvrydy 6y ago
  To be honest, it depends on your SLA for uptime. We've built out something homebrew like this using cheap compute desktops but you're still going to pay a lot upfront.