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> I’ve tried explaining it to IT managers to no avail. I've had this experience myself. I usually find that I was overlooking important inputs to, constraints

by _jal 4y ago

> I’ve tried explaining it to IT managers to no avail. I've had this experience myself. I usually find that I was overlooking important inputs to, constraints on or goals behind the decision. > Buy 100 now at full price and 50 servers that are twice as powerful two years later As someone who buys a lot of hardware for my employer, I can tell you that performance is only one of several interrelated considerations that goes in to purchasing decisions, and is far from the most important. For that matter, exactly the same thing can be said about the price.

nuclearnice3 4y ago
If not performance and not price, what considerations are close to the most important for your employer?
- kaptain 4y ago
  Reliability, compatibility, political considerations (eg we partner with this brand)
  - jiggawatts 4y ago
    Reliability hasn't changed significantly for server-grade kit for decades. All Intel-compatible servers have been essentially perfectly compatible with each other for decades. All major brands will keep selling server kit. It's not like you have to throw away your IBM brand Intel-based servers and replace them with ARM chips from some no-name vendor! My point is that in next year and the year after, and the year after that IBM will sell you faster and faster servers. Also... bigger and bigger. At roughly the same price point. With largely (if not entirely) compatible management systems, drivers, etc... Speaking of drivers: VMware and similar hypervisors have almost completely eliminated driver compatibility as a concern. Clusters can contain wildly different gear without issues. There's a lack of understanding in the industry by older managers that gained their experience in the "before times" when even the firmware had to be consistent for a cluster of servers. For example, the local budget airline Jetstar would buy used servers from Ebay. Why? Why not! Why would you need "support" if a server dies? It is stateless (diskless!) and just 1% of your capacity! Just throw it out. Why would you care about driver updates if all of your VMs are using emulated hypervisor drivers only? Why would you care if a server is "used" if chips don't "wear out"? Etc...
    - _jal 4y ago
      Sounds like your Compute-By-Ebay solution should be able to undercut all those other idiots who buy new. Where can we sign up?
      - usrn 4y ago
        It's not arbitrage because of the labor spent looking through ebay listings and dealing with surprises (broken hardware, incorrect listings etc.) Also the machines have to go somewhere and that costs a lot because if someone can do it cheaper they'll just sell VPSs for cheaper than you can host them. Doing it cheaper means more compute per rack/watt which means newer hardware.
- _jal 4y ago
  Managing, securing and auditing them. The cost of those activities easily exceeds the purchase price over a 3 year lifetime. There are also sometimes nontechnical business considerations that matter enough that you make tradeoffs around them.
jiggawatts 4y ago
> ... inputs to, constraints on or goals behind the decision. Of course! Unfortunately and somewhat sadly, later on I discovered that these constraints and goals boiled down to one of a few categories: 1) Got to spend the budget this FY, otherwise we get our budget cut. 2) A big enough sale at once means the sales person is more likely to give me a kick-back. 3) The overhead of the procurement process is so obscenely enormous that it swamps any potential cost saving. A single procurement cycle instead of two is literally cheaper overall than, say, a $500K saving on the hardware. 4) The procurement process is not that expensive, but I am that lazy. It's not my money, so why bother optimising it? It is my time and effort to do the procurement twice however... 5) I can't count, and that 10% discount looked really sweet. There is some techo telling me to buy most of this stuff later, but what does he know? I studied finance! I'm an MBA! I'm a business person now!
- ncmncm 4y ago
  In most businesses that kickback is decisive. But most commonly in HR and facilities.

by _jal 4y ago

nuclearnice3 4y ago

If not performance and not price, what considerations are close to the most important for your employer?

kaptain 4y ago
Reliability, compatibility, political considerations (eg we partner with this brand)
- jiggawatts 4y ago
  Reliability hasn't changed significantly for server-grade kit for decades. All Intel-compatible servers have been essentially perfectly compatible with each other for decades. All major brands will keep selling server kit. It's not like you have to throw away your IBM brand Intel-based servers and replace them with ARM chips from some no-name vendor! My point is that in next year and the year after, and the year after that IBM will sell you faster and faster servers. Also... bigger and bigger. At roughly the same price point. With largely (if not entirely) compatible management systems, drivers, etc... Speaking of drivers: VMware and similar hypervisors have almost completely eliminated driver compatibility as a concern. Clusters can contain wildly different gear without issues. There's a lack of understanding in the industry by older managers that gained their experience in the "before times" when even the firmware had to be consistent for a cluster of servers. For example, the local budget airline Jetstar would buy used servers from Ebay. Why? Why not! Why would you need "support" if a server dies? It is stateless (diskless!) and just 1% of your capacity! Just throw it out. Why would you care about driver updates if all of your VMs are using emulated hypervisor drivers only? Why would you care if a server is "used" if chips don't "wear out"? Etc...
  - _jal 4y ago
    Sounds like your Compute-By-Ebay solution should be able to undercut all those other idiots who buy new. Where can we sign up?
    - usrn 4y ago
      It's not arbitrage because of the labor spent looking through ebay listings and dealing with surprises (broken hardware, incorrect listings etc.) Also the machines have to go somewhere and that costs a lot because if someone can do it cheaper they'll just sell VPSs for cheaper than you can host them. Doing it cheaper means more compute per rack/watt which means newer hardware.
_jal 4y ago
Managing, securing and auditing them. The cost of those activities easily exceeds the purchase price over a 3 year lifetime. There are also sometimes nontechnical business considerations that matter enough that you make tradeoffs around them.

jiggawatts 4y ago

> ... inputs to, constraints on or goals behind the decision. Of course! Unfortunately and somewhat sadly, later on I discovered that these constraints and goals boiled down to one of a few categories: 1) Got to spend the budget this FY, otherwise we get our budget cut. 2) A big enough sale at once means the sales person is more likely to give me a kick-back. 3) The overhead of the procurement process is so obscenely enormous that it swamps any potential cost saving. A single procurement cycle instead of two is literally cheaper overall than, say, a $500K saving on the hardware. 4) The procurement process is not that expensive, but I am that lazy. It's not my money, so why bother optimising it? It is my time and effort to do the procurement twice however... 5) I can't count, and that 10% discount looked really sweet. There is some techo telling me to buy most of this stuff later, but what does he know? I studied finance! I'm an MBA! I'm a business person now!

ncmncm 4y ago
In most businesses that kickback is decisive. But most commonly in HR and facilities.