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As much as I like the cloud, there is a (somewhat sentimental) part of me that likes the idea of running your own hardware. Not so much the potential money save

As much as I like the cloud, there is a (somewhat sentimental) part of me that likes the idea of running your own hardware. Not so much the potential money saved, although that's nice, but the feeling that you own your own infrastructure rather than rent somebody else's. It's a sovereignty thing.

xyzzy123 4y ago
Puzzle for HN though, surely as interest rates go UP, the business case for investing in your own hardware is WORSE? So you would expect the current trend to be to IN to cloud, right? Unless you're sitting on talent to turn data centers into gold (which, you're probably not, maybe DHH is, I do feel there's some risk DHH is overestimating his co-workers long term hardware support enthusiasm, I guess we will find out over the next few years?). If you're at the point where exiting cloud makes sense for you - that's cool and not unthinkable, depends what you're doing, and at what scale. Bandwidth is a big one...
- sacnoradhq 4y ago
  EBGP-level traffic across existing metro dark fiber is a relatively cheap, fixed cost and unmetered. Electricity and rack space are what cost $$$ in semi/managed colos. Clouds are a marketing MacGuffin for people who don't understand what things cost or entail.
  - xyzzy123 4y ago
    Yes, I meant that bandwidth is very expensive in cloud.
bradknowles 4y ago
Sure, you can build your own Dropbox. All you need is cheap drives, right? Seriously, there is a place for the cloud, and keeping your operations there. And there is also a place for running everything yourself. You just have to be brutally honest with yourself and everyone else about what ALL the costs are, both monetary and otherwise, before you make that decision. In the end, I think many people who go the self-hosted route actually have a much higher TCO than if they used the cloud. Yes, their monetary costs might go up substantially, but there are also non-monetary costs that I think would go down substantially. And I think the latter usually tend to outweigh the former. Of course, one thing that you have to do when operating in the cloud is to make sure you keep a close eye on all those costs. The price of freedom is perennial vigilance. And there's a 24x7x365 cost to be paid for perennial vigilance.

xyzzy123 4y ago

Puzzle for HN though, surely as interest rates go UP, the business case for investing in your own hardware is WORSE? So you would expect the current trend to be to IN to cloud, right? Unless you're sitting on talent to turn data centers into gold (which, you're probably not, maybe DHH is, I do feel there's some risk DHH is overestimating his co-workers long term hardware support enthusiasm, I guess we will find out over the next few years?). If you're at the point where exiting cloud makes sense for you - that's cool and not unthinkable, depends what you're doing, and at what scale. Bandwidth is a big one...

sacnoradhq 4y ago
EBGP-level traffic across existing metro dark fiber is a relatively cheap, fixed cost and unmetered. Electricity and rack space are what cost $$$ in semi/managed colos. Clouds are a marketing MacGuffin for people who don't understand what things cost or entail.
- xyzzy123 4y ago
  Yes, I meant that bandwidth is very expensive in cloud.

bradknowles 4y ago

Sure, you can build your own Dropbox. All you need is cheap drives, right? Seriously, there is a place for the cloud, and keeping your operations there. And there is also a place for running everything yourself. You just have to be brutally honest with yourself and everyone else about what ALL the costs are, both monetary and otherwise, before you make that decision. In the end, I think many people who go the self-hosted route actually have a much higher TCO than if they used the cloud. Yes, their monetary costs might go up substantially, but there are also non-monetary costs that I think would go down substantially. And I think the latter usually tend to outweigh the former. Of course, one thing that you have to do when operating in the cloud is to make sure you keep a close eye on all those costs. The price of freedom is perennial vigilance. And there's a 24x7x365 cost to be paid for perennial vigilance.