11 ms·

AWS knowledge and engineering doesn't come for free either. People have built whole careers and businesses around it.

boltzmann-brain 4y ago
Indeed, and in fact running own metal is an order of magnitude easier than puzzling around the Brazil nightmare that AWS is. Both people cost money. It's not like if you go with AWS things run themselves.
- monkpit 4y ago
  Brazil?
  - maxfurman 4y ago
    This is a reference to the film Brazil[0], which centers on a labyrinthine bureaucracy [0] https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0088846/ https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0088846/
    - dalmo3 4y ago
      > labyrinthine bureaucracy This is a reference to the country Brazil [0], which centers on... [0] https://www.bbc.com/news/business-18020623 https://www.bbc.com/news/business-18020623
      - boltzmann-brain 4y ago
        > labyrinthine bureaucracy This is a reference to "the rule of the desk" [0], and "an elaborate, confusing structure", which centers on a monster [1], in this case a bureaucrat at a desk [0] https://www.workhuman.com/blog/a-brief-history-of-bureaucracy-with-gary-hamel/ https://www.workhuman.com/blog/a-brief-history-of-bureaucrac... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labyrinth https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labyrinth
    - CreepGin 4y ago
      Wow! I thought it was a typo for "bizarre"... but now I know
    - earleybird 4y ago
      . . . and ducting https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K9gO01pyv24 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K9gO01pyv24
  - malfist 4y ago
    Brazil is Amazon's internal build system. Not sure what GP is talking about here.
    - icedchai 4y ago
      You won't get the reference unless you've seen the movie.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- moduspol 4y ago
  If that were true, then there'd be no value proposition to AWS. It is absolutely easier to use S3 than to create your own fast, highly available, infinitely scaling storage solution on your own metal. It requires more than zero knowledge / expertise to use S3, but far less than it would to implement and run yourself. If you can accept that, then we already agree in principle. It's just matter of where the line is drawn for various services and use cases.
  - saiya-jin 4y ago
    Not necessarily. Probably they already have pool of admins/devops that ran their systems for past 30 years, but have 0 AWS experience. Also, most companies don't need to scale infinitely, not everybody is building next google (in fact, almost nobody outside SV is).
  - Kon-Peki 4y ago
    You can buy on-prem managed storage solutions. Like PureStorage type things, where they call you up if something goes wrong, and are FedEx’ing you replacement parts before you even noticed that it had imperceptibly failed over to the standby power supply or whatever.
  - dijit 4y ago
    There is a value prop for sure. It’s hard to quantify how best you’ll be served but a lot of people are following the mantra of “nobody got fired for going AWS”. It makes sense for some people, others are cargo-culting; yet more are fanning the flames of that cargo cult because their pay check depends on it. Sysadmins are/were paid much less than cloud native devops people, and you need the same number of them unless you keep things very simple, which cloud providers do not incentivise. One need only look at AWS reference architectures.
    - icedchai 4y ago
      One good DevOps person can achieve much more than a single sysadmin. Most old school sysadmins were doing everything manually with relatively little automation. You are certainly correct about the the overly complex AWS reference architectures. I've seen relatively simple applications with just as much infrastructure code (generally "terraform", occasionally CloudFormation JSON) as application code. It's crazy.
- neeleshs 4y ago
  The value prop of AWS/GCP etc go beyond bare metal vs VMs. Running HA databases (even if you are a startup, you need this), centralized logging, secrets manager, KMS, making sure disks are encrypted, something like pub/sub as a messaging backbone for your application, load balancers... the list goes on. Huge difference b/w reading a few pages of documentation on secrets manager, and clicking a button to get the service on vs deploying, and maintaining a vault on bare machines.
  - MajimasEyepatch 4y ago
    Not to mention compliance. If you have to go through third-party audits (and most businesses do after reaching a certain size), then using standard services from a public cloud provider can simplify things significantly. Sometimes that's because you can just offload "security of the cloud" to the cloud provider, and other times it's because there are well-established guidelines for how to achieve, say, PCI compliance on AWS.
  - Draiken 4y ago
    Yet most of these aren't needed for small crews... do I care that my DB is not HA when I have 1 RPS? You said yes, but I disagree. Do I need centralized logging if I have a few servers? It's already centralized for free. It's much easier to setup and forget basic bare metal servers with PG/NGINX and whatnot, than it is to automate using dozens of AWS services. People pretend that AWS doesn't cost engineers to run it, when it's IMO basically the same human cost, if not bigger as complexity grows. You just don't pay that cost upfront, but you sure do pay it later with interest. You get stuff like HA but that's not free. You also now have to manage a new boatload of services, scripts, changing APIs, etc.
    - neeleshs 4y ago
      YMMV, I run a startup that serves critical customer use cases, and from day 1 I had to care that my DB was HA, backed up, and could be restored. Actually had a case early on where we had to test this because I accidentally deleted customer data and had to restore - took all of one click, with no scripts, no prior investment into backup management etc. We also had to go through infosec reviews from day 1, and many of these are a must have. Doesn't matter if it's a small crew or large. Our customers care. 3 years fast forward with hundreds of customers, and we haven't had a need to hire someone full time to "manage" these services. This may/will change down the line, but I couldn't have built my business without one of these cloud vendors. Edit: I also know the pain of building (and managing) this on bare metal (last company did that) - and it was just apache/php/mysql on bare metal. It was a mess

Indeed, and in fact running own metal is an order of magnitude easier than puzzling around the Brazil nightmare that AWS is. Both people cost money. It's not like if you go with AWS things run themselves.

monkpit 4y ago
Brazil?
- maxfurman 4y ago
  This is a reference to the film Brazil[0], which centers on a labyrinthine bureaucracy [0] https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0088846/ https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0088846/
  - dalmo3 4y ago
    > labyrinthine bureaucracy This is a reference to the country Brazil [0], which centers on... [0] https://www.bbc.com/news/business-18020623 https://www.bbc.com/news/business-18020623
    - boltzmann-brain 4y ago
      > labyrinthine bureaucracy This is a reference to "the rule of the desk" [0], and "an elaborate, confusing structure", which centers on a monster [1], in this case a bureaucrat at a desk [0] https://www.workhuman.com/blog/a-brief-history-of-bureaucracy-with-gary-hamel/ https://www.workhuman.com/blog/a-brief-history-of-bureaucrac... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labyrinth https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labyrinth
  - CreepGin 4y ago
    Wow! I thought it was a typo for "bizarre"... but now I know
  - earleybird 4y ago
    . . . and ducting https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K9gO01pyv24 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K9gO01pyv24
- malfist 4y ago
  Brazil is Amazon's internal build system. Not sure what GP is talking about here.
  - icedchai 4y ago
    You won't get the reference unless you've seen the movie.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
moduspol 4y ago
If that were true, then there'd be no value proposition to AWS. It is absolutely easier to use S3 than to create your own fast, highly available, infinitely scaling storage solution on your own metal. It requires more than zero knowledge / expertise to use S3, but far less than it would to implement and run yourself. If you can accept that, then we already agree in principle. It's just matter of where the line is drawn for various services and use cases.
- saiya-jin 4y ago
  Not necessarily. Probably they already have pool of admins/devops that ran their systems for past 30 years, but have 0 AWS experience. Also, most companies don't need to scale infinitely, not everybody is building next google (in fact, almost nobody outside SV is).
- Kon-Peki 4y ago
  You can buy on-prem managed storage solutions. Like PureStorage type things, where they call you up if something goes wrong, and are FedEx’ing you replacement parts before you even noticed that it had imperceptibly failed over to the standby power supply or whatever.
- dijit 4y ago
  There is a value prop for sure. It’s hard to quantify how best you’ll be served but a lot of people are following the mantra of “nobody got fired for going AWS”. It makes sense for some people, others are cargo-culting; yet more are fanning the flames of that cargo cult because their pay check depends on it. Sysadmins are/were paid much less than cloud native devops people, and you need the same number of them unless you keep things very simple, which cloud providers do not incentivise. One need only look at AWS reference architectures.
  - icedchai 4y ago
    One good DevOps person can achieve much more than a single sysadmin. Most old school sysadmins were doing everything manually with relatively little automation. You are certainly correct about the the overly complex AWS reference architectures. I've seen relatively simple applications with just as much infrastructure code (generally "terraform", occasionally CloudFormation JSON) as application code. It's crazy.
neeleshs 4y ago
The value prop of AWS/GCP etc go beyond bare metal vs VMs. Running HA databases (even if you are a startup, you need this), centralized logging, secrets manager, KMS, making sure disks are encrypted, something like pub/sub as a messaging backbone for your application, load balancers... the list goes on. Huge difference b/w reading a few pages of documentation on secrets manager, and clicking a button to get the service on vs deploying, and maintaining a vault on bare machines.
- MajimasEyepatch 4y ago
  Not to mention compliance. If you have to go through third-party audits (and most businesses do after reaching a certain size), then using standard services from a public cloud provider can simplify things significantly. Sometimes that's because you can just offload "security of the cloud" to the cloud provider, and other times it's because there are well-established guidelines for how to achieve, say, PCI compliance on AWS.
- Draiken 4y ago
  Yet most of these aren't needed for small crews... do I care that my DB is not HA when I have 1 RPS? You said yes, but I disagree. Do I need centralized logging if I have a few servers? It's already centralized for free. It's much easier to setup and forget basic bare metal servers with PG/NGINX and whatnot, than it is to automate using dozens of AWS services. People pretend that AWS doesn't cost engineers to run it, when it's IMO basically the same human cost, if not bigger as complexity grows. You just don't pay that cost upfront, but you sure do pay it later with interest. You get stuff like HA but that's not free. You also now have to manage a new boatload of services, scripts, changing APIs, etc.
  - neeleshs 4y ago
    YMMV, I run a startup that serves critical customer use cases, and from day 1 I had to care that my DB was HA, backed up, and could be restored. Actually had a case early on where we had to test this because I accidentally deleted customer data and had to restore - took all of one click, with no scripts, no prior investment into backup management etc. We also had to go through infosec reviews from day 1, and many of these are a must have. Doesn't matter if it's a small crew or large. Our customers care. 3 years fast forward with hundreds of customers, and we haven't had a need to hire someone full time to "manage" these services. This may/will change down the line, but I couldn't have built my business without one of these cloud vendors. Edit: I also know the pain of building (and managing) this on bare metal (last company did that) - and it was just apache/php/mysql on bare metal. It was a mess