3 ms·

From OVH to AWS. 30% TCO reduction. This was before the fire.

alberth 5y ago
I’m really curious how this math adds up given how inexpensive OVH is. Other people in this exact thread are saying they experienced an 80% cost reduction by moving from AWS to OVH. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30943058 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30943058
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- StreamBright 5y ago
  One phrase: right sizing. The original infra on OVH used an instance type that was suboptimal for the workload. Because re-provisioning was not an option due to the size of the cluster, especially without moving hard drives we had only one option. Move the data to S3, find the right instance type and switch over. The ability to right size your infra is grossly underrated. Decoupling data from compute too. We are talking about hundreds of nodes.
  - alberth 5y ago
    Would you mind sharing what size instance types you were on at OVH and are on now at AWS. I ask because I've found that even radically larger sized OVH hardware is still way less expensive than AWS.
    - StreamBright 5y ago
      At the time (many years ago) the largest instance type of OVH was used because that had the required disc capacity that the customer needed. On AWS S3 has a vastly different cost structure and the fact that you can use whatever instance type for your workload enabled us to save up this much. We could use some low spec m5.* instance type that was running with 80% CPU utilization for the workload and also we could use fewer instances. To re-iterate: - the most cost saving comes from the fact that we could de-couple storage from compute - the second part of the cost saving came from the fact that we could use fewer instances with lower spec
  - dx034 5y ago
    So you saved money because you optimized the structure, not because of the provider? I guess you would've saved more rebuilding it on OVH?
    - StreamBright 5y ago
      Reread what I wrote. It could not have been rebuilt because for the rebuild you need to duplicate the data stored that was 1PB+.

I’m really curious how this math adds up given how inexpensive OVH is. Other people in this exact thread are saying they experienced an 80% cost reduction by moving from AWS to OVH. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30943058 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30943058

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
StreamBright 5y ago
One phrase: right sizing. The original infra on OVH used an instance type that was suboptimal for the workload. Because re-provisioning was not an option due to the size of the cluster, especially without moving hard drives we had only one option. Move the data to S3, find the right instance type and switch over. The ability to right size your infra is grossly underrated. Decoupling data from compute too. We are talking about hundreds of nodes.
- alberth 5y ago
  Would you mind sharing what size instance types you were on at OVH and are on now at AWS. I ask because I've found that even radically larger sized OVH hardware is still way less expensive than AWS.
  - StreamBright 5y ago
    At the time (many years ago) the largest instance type of OVH was used because that had the required disc capacity that the customer needed. On AWS S3 has a vastly different cost structure and the fact that you can use whatever instance type for your workload enabled us to save up this much. We could use some low spec m5.* instance type that was running with 80% CPU utilization for the workload and also we could use fewer instances. To re-iterate: - the most cost saving comes from the fact that we could de-couple storage from compute - the second part of the cost saving came from the fact that we could use fewer instances with lower spec
- dx034 5y ago
  So you saved money because you optimized the structure, not because of the provider? I guess you would've saved more rebuilding it on OVH?
  - StreamBright 5y ago
    Reread what I wrote. It could not have been rebuilt because for the rebuild you need to duplicate the data stored that was 1PB+.