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And, for the point, this markup is less than on a server. When evaluating AWS and other clouds versus direct ownership and the salary to devOp the servers - one

And, for the point, this markup is less than on a server. When evaluating AWS and other clouds versus direct ownership and the salary to devOp the servers - one month of AWS purchases the entire server stack, hardware firewall, more than enough storage, and has more than enough left over for salaries for a half dozen devOp techs. The cloud is a ripoff.

oblio 6y ago
It depends on who you are/where you work. Have you ever had to interact with enterprise IT, especially purchases? Also, do you know how much things cost when using enterprise IT? I'm talking about many huge companies with a lot of money (something on the scale of hundreds or thousands of companies).
- gravypod 6y ago
  For startups you cant beat used hardware from ebay and some IT experience in one of the cofounders. This is especially true for development machines (CI runners, compile caching, GPU servers, etc).
  - oblio 6y ago
    Yeah, if you're a startup you'd better have someone tech oriented and you'll be able to do a lot of things for cheap. If you're a tech startup, then I don't even know how you'll be able to do anything without someone technical :-)
    - ccmcarey 6y ago
      It's also extremely comparatively cheap to get powerful dedi servers from places like Hetzner. Price/performance absolutely dwarfs the cloud services.
    - gravypod 6y ago
      > If you're a tech startup, then I don't even know how you'll be able to do anything without someone technical :-) I've spoken to some YC founders. You can definitely raise funds without a (real) technical founder.
  - stevewodil 6y ago
    (Serious question) What do you do with that hardware? Do you go to a colocation and stand the servers up there? Run them from home? What are your options for something like this? Edit: I realized afterwards you may not be talking about public-facing servers
    - gravypod 6y ago
      I've done a few different things with these types of machines. I also know a few people who run some big companies off infra like this. The key for a small team is finding a colo provider with really good remote hands. Essentially you can setup your rack/cage, leave good instructions and room for expansion. Then you buy a server from dell with financing, ship it to your DC, someone installs an OS and racks it (or you PXE boot from your rack ;) ), then you can provision anything you want. It's essentially like cloud providers but scaling is slower.
    - bsenftner 6y ago
      Colo the servers. I had 17 servers + the hardware firewall and a massive data store in a single cabinet for $600 a month. The colo I selected was a former Enron data center, so it had a massive Internet pipe.
      - stevewodil 6y ago
        How did you deal with data redundancy / backups?
        bsenftner 6y ago
        I had 3 duplicate environments - dev, staging and production. Backups were an automated process between data stores, and integrated into the environments normal operation. The entire setup was automated to the degree it only required casual glances at resource limits about once a week, with minor devOps maintenance occasionally. We're all smart engineers, producing wonderful tech - automating a server stack is intern work.
        gravypod 6y ago
  - bsenftner 6y ago
    Buy new hardware and just do the IT yourself - it is seriously not hard. That's the other side of cloud propaganda: running an maintaining servers is easy peasy..
- stevewodil 6y ago
  Also, paying for cloud compute is an operating expense vs the capital expense of buying hardware yourself. I'm not going to pretend to know all of the tax implications, but it can actually make a significant difference to the company because the operating expense can be fully written off. The cost is therefore offset slightly vs depreciating the value of physical hardware over a number of years.
  - bsenftner 6y ago
    I did this math, I've got an MBA. Physical hardware wins in nearly all cases.
dtech 6y ago
If you're that confident, why not start a cloud yourself and rake in the money?
jjav 6y ago
Sad to see this downvoted as it is absolute truth (except "left over for salaries for a half dozen devOp techs" is a bit exaggerated but the rest is spot-on). AWS/cloud is extremely expensive. Seen many companies bankrupted by it when they could've run their own infrastructure for pennies on the dollar. For some workloads (very variable ones, in particular) it's totally worth it. Most of the time though, the cost premium is a killer. If you're running a business where customers are not price-sensitive and your margins are very high, AWS makes sense. That's not most of us, I think.
- bsenftner 6y ago
  Actually, the "left over for salaries for a half dozen devOp techs" is correct. My total hardware purchase was $55K, and that is versus an equal computational setup at AWS was $96K per month. That means there is over $40K per the first month that could be distributed to devOps staff.

oblio 6y ago

It depends on who you are/where you work. Have you ever had to interact with enterprise IT, especially purchases? Also, do you know how much things cost when using enterprise IT? I'm talking about many huge companies with a lot of money (something on the scale of hundreds or thousands of companies).

gravypod 6y ago
For startups you cant beat used hardware from ebay and some IT experience in one of the cofounders. This is especially true for development machines (CI runners, compile caching, GPU servers, etc).
- oblio 6y ago
  Yeah, if you're a startup you'd better have someone tech oriented and you'll be able to do a lot of things for cheap. If you're a tech startup, then I don't even know how you'll be able to do anything without someone technical :-)
  - ccmcarey 6y ago
    It's also extremely comparatively cheap to get powerful dedi servers from places like Hetzner. Price/performance absolutely dwarfs the cloud services.
  - gravypod 6y ago
    > If you're a tech startup, then I don't even know how you'll be able to do anything without someone technical :-) I've spoken to some YC founders. You can definitely raise funds without a (real) technical founder.
- stevewodil 6y ago
  (Serious question) What do you do with that hardware? Do you go to a colocation and stand the servers up there? Run them from home? What are your options for something like this? Edit: I realized afterwards you may not be talking about public-facing servers
  - gravypod 6y ago
    I've done a few different things with these types of machines. I also know a few people who run some big companies off infra like this. The key for a small team is finding a colo provider with really good remote hands. Essentially you can setup your rack/cage, leave good instructions and room for expansion. Then you buy a server from dell with financing, ship it to your DC, someone installs an OS and racks it (or you PXE boot from your rack ;) ), then you can provision anything you want. It's essentially like cloud providers but scaling is slower.
  - bsenftner 6y ago
    Colo the servers. I had 17 servers + the hardware firewall and a massive data store in a single cabinet for $600 a month. The colo I selected was a former Enron data center, so it had a massive Internet pipe.
    - stevewodil 6y ago
      How did you deal with data redundancy / backups?
      - bsenftner 6y ago
        I had 3 duplicate environments - dev, staging and production. Backups were an automated process between data stores, and integrated into the environments normal operation. The entire setup was automated to the degree it only required casual glances at resource limits about once a week, with minor devOps maintenance occasionally. We're all smart engineers, producing wonderful tech - automating a server stack is intern work.
      - gravypod 6y ago
- bsenftner 6y ago
  Buy new hardware and just do the IT yourself - it is seriously not hard. That's the other side of cloud propaganda: running an maintaining servers is easy peasy..
stevewodil 6y ago
Also, paying for cloud compute is an operating expense vs the capital expense of buying hardware yourself. I'm not going to pretend to know all of the tax implications, but it can actually make a significant difference to the company because the operating expense can be fully written off. The cost is therefore offset slightly vs depreciating the value of physical hardware over a number of years.
- bsenftner 6y ago
  I did this math, I've got an MBA. Physical hardware wins in nearly all cases.

dtech 6y ago

If you're that confident, why not start a cloud yourself and rake in the money?

jjav 6y ago

Sad to see this downvoted as it is absolute truth (except "left over for salaries for a half dozen devOp techs" is a bit exaggerated but the rest is spot-on). AWS/cloud is extremely expensive. Seen many companies bankrupted by it when they could've run their own infrastructure for pennies on the dollar. For some workloads (very variable ones, in particular) it's totally worth it. Most of the time though, the cost premium is a killer. If you're running a business where customers are not price-sensitive and your margins are very high, AWS makes sense. That's not most of us, I think.

bsenftner 6y ago
Actually, the "left over for salaries for a half dozen devOp techs" is correct. My total hardware purchase was $55K, and that is versus an equal computational setup at AWS was $96K per month. That means there is over $40K per the first month that could be distributed to devOps staff.