4 ms·

What I don't get is if the problem was the risk of unexpected bills from a cloud provider, then why not just use simple virtual servers that you can rent for a

by Sammi 5y ago

What I don't get is if the problem was the risk of unexpected bills from a cloud provider, then why not just use simple virtual servers that you can rent for a fixed price from almost any hosting provider? Gives you all that extra benefit you speak of of the extra compute headroom that you can use for spinning up any demo server application you want, and saves you all the costs, risks, and headache of managing your own hardware. Why the debate of cloud vs on prem? The logical sweet spot in the middle seems to be vps to me.

horsawlarway 5y ago
I mean, I see VPS as the worst of both worlds. You're still managing a server, but now you're paying through the nose to do it. The costs just simply don't work out nicely to anyone who can afford to buy at even small scales. A 4 cpu, 8gb ram machine will pretty commonly run you $50 a month, with less than 200gb storage. You're paying 600/year for a machine that I can build (with better specs) for ~400. Not to mention that the machine you buy yourself will have a lifespan of 3 to 8 years. So sure - once you factor in bandwidth, storage location, power - you're probably not going to save money in the first year. But by year 2 you are, and by year 4 you've saved a considerable sum.
- aetherspawn 5y ago
  My thoughts are same as above, and also -- if the app that you're hosting only runs on Windows -- then Windows VPS are really ridiculously expensive. Some providers charge around $30/mo for a key. You save a lot of money being able to buy/manage your own Windows keys. ATM we're running Windows under KVM and the performance is great anyway. But if you have to run a lot of Windows boxes, it seems like the cost effective way is to buy a Windows Server DC license ... then all the guest VM licenses are free, and with the right server hardware you can probably cram like 20 VMs on a single box.

by Sammi 5y ago

horsawlarway 5y ago

I mean, I see VPS as the worst of both worlds. You're still managing a server, but now you're paying through the nose to do it. The costs just simply don't work out nicely to anyone who can afford to buy at even small scales. A 4 cpu, 8gb ram machine will pretty commonly run you $50 a month, with less than 200gb storage. You're paying 600/year for a machine that I can build (with better specs) for ~400. Not to mention that the machine you buy yourself will have a lifespan of 3 to 8 years. So sure - once you factor in bandwidth, storage location, power - you're probably not going to save money in the first year. But by year 2 you are, and by year 4 you've saved a considerable sum.

aetherspawn 5y ago
My thoughts are same as above, and also -- if the app that you're hosting only runs on Windows -- then Windows VPS are really ridiculously expensive. Some providers charge around $30/mo for a key. You save a lot of money being able to buy/manage your own Windows keys. ATM we're running Windows under KVM and the performance is great anyway. But if you have to run a lot of Windows boxes, it seems like the cost effective way is to buy a Windows Server DC license ... then all the guest VM licenses are free, and with the right server hardware you can probably cram like 20 VMs on a single box.