4 ms·

It's like running Oracle RDBMS. You probably don't need it. But if you do need it, you cannot hope to build it yourself. You need to know what you need.

foobiekr 4y ago
Almost everyone who really does need it (and is not just ridiculously inefficient) eventually moves off of AWS, including most large startups. Revenue makes it possible to hire and build whatever you want.
- 0xB31B1B 4y ago
  extremely incorrect. The benefits of cloud grow as the company grows. I've been in a few mega companies that from colo infra to cloud infra, it was a huge cost savings and helped enormously with product development speed.
  - shiftpgdn 4y ago
    I've never seen anyone save money by moving to AWS unless things were already a complete clusterfuck catastrophe.
    - MattGaiser 4y ago
      In my first job, it meant we got a dev back moving to Digital Ocean as they were no longer dealing with servers and infrastructure.
      - shiftpgdn 4y ago
        Digital Ocean is a radically less complex offering than AWS.
    - jaywalk 4y ago
      My medium-sized company saved a considerable amount of money by moving to Azure from a managed dedicated server company. I wouldn't call the previous situation "a complete clusterfuck catastrophe" by any means, although I would say we were paying too much. Our Azure bill is just starting to approach what we were paying five years ago to the previous company, with far more things going on now plus all of the flexibility that The Cloud™ has to offer.
- MattGaiser 4y ago
  Netflix uses AWS heavily and they are probably one of the heaviest users in the world of compute. https://aws.amazon.com/solutions/case-studies/netflix/ https://aws.amazon.com/solutions/case-studies/netflix/
- AggroVanGogh 4y ago
  This might be the most ludicrous thing I've ever read on HN. Do you have any actual examples to back up the statement?
  - sokoloff 4y ago
    Not GP, but Dropbox moved off AWS as they grew: https://www.datacenterknowledge.com/manage/dropbox-s-reverse-migration-cloud-own-data-centers-five-years https://www.datacenterknowledge.com/manage/dropbox-s-reverse...
    - Karrot_Kream 4y ago
      Dropbox makes sense. They're an egress-heavy business. Other than media companies (Netflix, Disney Plus, et al.) there aren't that many egress-heavy businesses, so AWS continues to make sense.
    - AggroVanGogh 4y ago
      Dropbox is not a relevant example to the original comment IMO - they clearly need cheap storage above all else; it should be no surprise that someone can self-host something so single-minded as a storage application without all the cloud provider baubles.
    - tempnow987 4y ago
      Is this true? I thought dropbox moved their 30PB+ data lake ONTO aws to get off of Hadoop or something because trying to do this on-prem, even with tons of tech talent and money, was not working. They complained about onprem requiring 3 YEAR forecasts for capacity planning given their scale. Here is what they said in 2020 for benefits of AWS: --------------------- Hosts 40 PB of analytics data and supports 1 PB of data growth a month Optimizes costs by moving cold data to Amazon S3 Glacier Deep Archive Uses Amazon EC2 Spot Instances for 15–50% of compute capacity Doubles compute footprint using Amazon EC2 Spot Instances Enables the testing of new technologies without damaging data or affecting users Improved performance by six times for some job types Deletes hundreds of files in a few seconds compared to 30–40 minutes Runs more than 100,000 analytics jobs and tens of thousands of one-time jobs daily --- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6x-XGJQwk2M https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6x-XGJQwk2M Maybe this has changed since 2020
- imwillofficial 4y ago
  Worst take ever
- Karrot_Kream 4y ago
  That's definitely not what we did at $TRENDCORP. We still use AWS all the time. The cost of netops dwarfs whatever discounts we'd get on colo costs. We're not an egress heavy business so we aren't eating bandwidth costs either. Do you have examples demonstrating your point?
- lostcolony 4y ago
  ...some examples please? I literally can't even think of one, but can absolutely think of numerous companies that have moved to AWS (and other public clouds) and remained there.
- newaccount2021 4y ago
charcircuit 4y ago
Does anyone actually need it when software like MySQL and PostgreSQL exist? Mature RDBMS already exists that you don't have to build yourself. Does Oracle have something special?
- blowski 4y ago
  * Extremely granular permissions * integration with the rest of the Oracle suite. * compatibility with the Oracle database you’ve tightly coupled yourselves to over the last 30 years * Various incentives for purchasing influencers
  - jaywalk 4y ago
    Or, said another way: nobody is choosing Oracle when starting from scratch.
  - throwawayboise 4y ago
    Someone you can call 24/7 and get engineers working on your problem 24/7 until it's fixed.
- mvanbaak 4y ago
  They are probably talking about building the cluster yourself, not the RDBMS itself. aws (and most other cloud providers) have this cluster management handled for you.
icedchai 4y ago
Most companies I know that were using Oracle didn't actually need it, they just didn't trust open source yet. One actually paid me to move their stuff from Postgres to Oracle "because we need enterprise support." This was in the early to mid 2000's.

foobiekr 4y ago

Almost everyone who really does need it (and is not just ridiculously inefficient) eventually moves off of AWS, including most large startups. Revenue makes it possible to hire and build whatever you want.

0xB31B1B 4y ago
extremely incorrect. The benefits of cloud grow as the company grows. I've been in a few mega companies that from colo infra to cloud infra, it was a huge cost savings and helped enormously with product development speed.
- shiftpgdn 4y ago
  I've never seen anyone save money by moving to AWS unless things were already a complete clusterfuck catastrophe.
  - MattGaiser 4y ago
    In my first job, it meant we got a dev back moving to Digital Ocean as they were no longer dealing with servers and infrastructure.
    - shiftpgdn 4y ago
      Digital Ocean is a radically less complex offering than AWS.
  - jaywalk 4y ago
    My medium-sized company saved a considerable amount of money by moving to Azure from a managed dedicated server company. I wouldn't call the previous situation "a complete clusterfuck catastrophe" by any means, although I would say we were paying too much. Our Azure bill is just starting to approach what we were paying five years ago to the previous company, with far more things going on now plus all of the flexibility that The Cloud™ has to offer.
MattGaiser 4y ago
Netflix uses AWS heavily and they are probably one of the heaviest users in the world of compute. https://aws.amazon.com/solutions/case-studies/netflix/ https://aws.amazon.com/solutions/case-studies/netflix/
AggroVanGogh 4y ago
This might be the most ludicrous thing I've ever read on HN. Do you have any actual examples to back up the statement?
- sokoloff 4y ago
  Not GP, but Dropbox moved off AWS as they grew: https://www.datacenterknowledge.com/manage/dropbox-s-reverse-migration-cloud-own-data-centers-five-years https://www.datacenterknowledge.com/manage/dropbox-s-reverse...
  - Karrot_Kream 4y ago
    Dropbox makes sense. They're an egress-heavy business. Other than media companies (Netflix, Disney Plus, et al.) there aren't that many egress-heavy businesses, so AWS continues to make sense.
  - AggroVanGogh 4y ago
    Dropbox is not a relevant example to the original comment IMO - they clearly need cheap storage above all else; it should be no surprise that someone can self-host something so single-minded as a storage application without all the cloud provider baubles.
  - tempnow987 4y ago
    Is this true? I thought dropbox moved their 30PB+ data lake ONTO aws to get off of Hadoop or something because trying to do this on-prem, even with tons of tech talent and money, was not working. They complained about onprem requiring 3 YEAR forecasts for capacity planning given their scale. Here is what they said in 2020 for benefits of AWS: --------------------- Hosts 40 PB of analytics data and supports 1 PB of data growth a month Optimizes costs by moving cold data to Amazon S3 Glacier Deep Archive Uses Amazon EC2 Spot Instances for 15–50% of compute capacity Doubles compute footprint using Amazon EC2 Spot Instances Enables the testing of new technologies without damaging data or affecting users Improved performance by six times for some job types Deletes hundreds of files in a few seconds compared to 30–40 minutes Runs more than 100,000 analytics jobs and tens of thousands of one-time jobs daily --- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6x-XGJQwk2M https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6x-XGJQwk2M Maybe this has changed since 2020
imwillofficial 4y ago
Worst take ever
Karrot_Kream 4y ago
That's definitely not what we did at $TRENDCORP. We still use AWS all the time. The cost of netops dwarfs whatever discounts we'd get on colo costs. We're not an egress heavy business so we aren't eating bandwidth costs either. Do you have examples demonstrating your point?
lostcolony 4y ago
...some examples please? I literally can't even think of one, but can absolutely think of numerous companies that have moved to AWS (and other public clouds) and remained there.
newaccount2021 4y ago

charcircuit 4y ago

Does anyone actually need it when software like MySQL and PostgreSQL exist? Mature RDBMS already exists that you don't have to build yourself. Does Oracle have something special?

blowski 4y ago
* Extremely granular permissions * integration with the rest of the Oracle suite. * compatibility with the Oracle database you’ve tightly coupled yourselves to over the last 30 years * Various incentives for purchasing influencers
- jaywalk 4y ago
  Or, said another way: nobody is choosing Oracle when starting from scratch.
- throwawayboise 4y ago
  Someone you can call 24/7 and get engineers working on your problem 24/7 until it's fixed.
mvanbaak 4y ago
They are probably talking about building the cluster yourself, not the RDBMS itself. aws (and most other cloud providers) have this cluster management handled for you.

icedchai 4y ago

Most companies I know that were using Oracle didn't actually need it, they just didn't trust open source yet. One actually paid me to move their stuff from Postgres to Oracle "because we need enterprise support." This was in the early to mid 2000's.