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I know corps and teams where they need approvals for each cloud resource they instantiate. That is a culture problem. On other hand, when we were using simple

I know corps and teams where they need approvals for each cloud resource they instantiate. That is a culture problem. On other hand, when we were using simple VPSes at various companies, at some companies, I could just send email saying I provisioned a new server and at the others, they wanted a ticket with justification for it. But we always had enough test servers to try out and experiment. Cloud is great in many ways but freedom has more to do with an organization.

busterarm 6y ago
Fair. I've seen shops like that and I feel bad for them, but that's an organizational limitation, not one imposed by the cloud provider. If you want to buy server hardware, there is always the spec, testing and sales process no matter what. Hardware buying eats so much time...but at least the fancy dinners are kinda nice. And there's a proper way to do the accounting for it as a depreciating asset vs buying cloud (and most public orgs actually prefer the former).
jjav 6y ago
> I know corps and teams where they need approvals for each cloud resource they instantiate. That is a culture problem. I'm on the software side so I want my compute resources in the next 30 seconds like anyone, but.. at a larger company there needs to be controls in place or things can go bad quick. At one company I'm aware of, finance really started banging on doors when the cloud bill went over $1M/month and nobody really knew very clearly what any of it was being spent on or what products or customers each expense was associated with.
thu2111 6y ago
It's not a culture problem, it's a reaction to what happens if there aren't any controls on spending other people's money: people just waste resources like there's no tomorrow. I've seen this at my current employer. Like so many, got hooked via first-hit-is-free Azure credits. It doesn't even run end user facing services, just does software development, yet somehow after a few years of being a startup the cloud bill was millions of dollars a year. Why: because engineers would create a fresh VM from scratch rather than just logging in and using their accounts on pre-existing VMs. They'd forget to delete resources. They'd use expensive services like managed Kubernetes because why not. There was also a more subtle cost harder to account for: Azure machines are dog slow so significant engineering time was wasted trying to work around that problem. There has to be some friction to push people into using pre-existing hardware instead of acquiring more. If there isn't you end up with an absurd IT footprint well beyond anything justifiable in engineering terms.

busterarm 6y ago

Fair. I've seen shops like that and I feel bad for them, but that's an organizational limitation, not one imposed by the cloud provider. If you want to buy server hardware, there is always the spec, testing and sales process no matter what. Hardware buying eats so much time...but at least the fancy dinners are kinda nice. And there's a proper way to do the accounting for it as a depreciating asset vs buying cloud (and most public orgs actually prefer the former).

jjav 6y ago

> I know corps and teams where they need approvals for each cloud resource they instantiate. That is a culture problem. I'm on the software side so I want my compute resources in the next 30 seconds like anyone, but.. at a larger company there needs to be controls in place or things can go bad quick. At one company I'm aware of, finance really started banging on doors when the cloud bill went over $1M/month and nobody really knew very clearly what any of it was being spent on or what products or customers each expense was associated with.

thu2111 6y ago

It's not a culture problem, it's a reaction to what happens if there aren't any controls on spending other people's money: people just waste resources like there's no tomorrow. I've seen this at my current employer. Like so many, got hooked via first-hit-is-free Azure credits. It doesn't even run end user facing services, just does software development, yet somehow after a few years of being a startup the cloud bill was millions of dollars a year. Why: because engineers would create a fresh VM from scratch rather than just logging in and using their accounts on pre-existing VMs. They'd forget to delete resources. They'd use expensive services like managed Kubernetes because why not. There was also a more subtle cost harder to account for: Azure machines are dog slow so significant engineering time was wasted trying to work around that problem. There has to be some friction to push people into using pre-existing hardware instead of acquiring more. If there isn't you end up with an absurd IT footprint well beyond anything justifiable in engineering terms.