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After a certain size, AWS et al simply don't make sense, unless you have infinitely deep pockets. For storage that you pull from, AWS et al charge bandwidth co

by hpcjoe 5y ago

After a certain size, AWS et al simply don't make sense, unless you have infinitely deep pockets. For storage that you pull from, AWS et al charge bandwidth costs. These costs are non-trivial for non-trivial IO. I worked up financial operational models for one of my previous employers, when were were looking at costs of remaining on S3 and using it, versus rolling it into our own DCs. The download costs, the DC space, staff, etc. was far less per year (and the download cost is a 1 time cost) than the cold storage costs. Up to about 1PB with infrequent use, AWS et al might be better. When you look at 10-100PB and beyond (we were at 500PB usable or so last I remembered) the costs are strongly biased towards in-house (or in-DC) vs cloud. That is, unless you have infinitely deep pockets.

hpcjoe 5y ago
I should add to this comment, as it may give the impression that I'm anti cloud. I'm not. Quite pro-cloud for a number of things. The important point to understand in all of this is, is that there are cross-over points in the economics for which one becomes better than the other. Part of the economics is the speed of standing up new bits (opportunity cost of not having those new bits instantly available). This flexibility and velocity is where cloud generally wins on design, for small projects (well below 10PB). This said, if your use case appears to be rapidly blasting through these cross-over points, the economics usually dictates a hybrid strategy (best case) or a migration strategy (worst case). And while your use case may be rapidly approaching these limits (you need to determine where they are if you are growing/shrinking), there are things you can do to risk and cost reduce transitions ahead of this. Hybrid as a strategy can work well, as long as your hot tier is outside of the cloud. Hybrid makes sense also if you have to include the possibility of deplatforming from cloud providers (which, sadly, appears to be a real, and significant, risk to some business models and people). None of this analysis is trivial. You may not even need to do it, if you are below 1PB, and your cloud bills are reasonable. This is the approach that works best for many folks, though as you grow, it is as if you are a frog in ever increasing temperature water (with regard to costs). Figuring out the pain point where you need to make changes to get spending on a different (better) trajectory for your business is important then.
papageek 5y ago
And again at at even larger size it makes sense again with >80% discounts on compute and $0 egress.
- hpcjoe 5y ago
  We had taken the discounts into account (we had qualified for them). The $0 egress was not a thing when we did our analysis. And we were moving 10's of PB/month. BW costs were running into sizable fractions of millions of dollars per month.

by hpcjoe 5y ago

hpcjoe 5y ago

I should add to this comment, as it may give the impression that I'm anti cloud. I'm not. Quite pro-cloud for a number of things. The important point to understand in all of this is, is that there are cross-over points in the economics for which one becomes better than the other. Part of the economics is the speed of standing up new bits (opportunity cost of not having those new bits instantly available). This flexibility and velocity is where cloud generally wins on design, for small projects (well below 10PB). This said, if your use case appears to be rapidly blasting through these cross-over points, the economics usually dictates a hybrid strategy (best case) or a migration strategy (worst case). And while your use case may be rapidly approaching these limits (you need to determine where they are if you are growing/shrinking), there are things you can do to risk and cost reduce transitions ahead of this. Hybrid as a strategy can work well, as long as your hot tier is outside of the cloud. Hybrid makes sense also if you have to include the possibility of deplatforming from cloud providers (which, sadly, appears to be a real, and significant, risk to some business models and people). None of this analysis is trivial. You may not even need to do it, if you are below 1PB, and your cloud bills are reasonable. This is the approach that works best for many folks, though as you grow, it is as if you are a frog in ever increasing temperature water (with regard to costs). Figuring out the pain point where you need to make changes to get spending on a different (better) trajectory for your business is important then.

papageek 5y ago

And again at at even larger size it makes sense again with >80% discounts on compute and $0 egress.

hpcjoe 5y ago
We had taken the discounts into account (we had qualified for them). The $0 egress was not a thing when we did our analysis. And we were moving 10's of PB/month. BW costs were running into sizable fractions of millions of dollars per month.