3 ms·
> Software startup can use consumer grade workstations and self host at their office (or at home) (...) And if you do not need the scale, but reliability, it is
by sofixa 4y ago
> Software startup can use consumer grade workstations and self host at their office (or at home) (...) And if you do not need the scale, but reliability, it is easier to rent two servers at coloc.
Yeah, just don't forget the backups and monitoring, the networking setup (load balancing between your two servers or workstations at the very least), patching, moving to new servers/workstations when you outgrow the current ones (while also taking the risk of overprovisioning) etc.
Or just throw it all in a PaaS, ideally a container-based one (like Google Cloud Run or AWS Lambda or Scaleway Serverless Containers) where you won't have any lock-in and migrating away to something that makes more sense at your new scale would be easy. The only concern that would remain in that case is data backups to a different provider/place - scaling up/down is automatic, monitoring (at least the basics) are already covered, and there's no patching outside of your application's libraries.
- sitkack 4y agoBackups and monitoring are you responsibility anyway! You are making a distinction where there is none.
- t344344 4y agoIt is a startup, not a space program. Backup can be done with simple ssh+rsync script. Patching is a weekly weekend cron script+reboot. Some heartbeat monitoring... If it goes down for a few hours, not a biggie. For "throw it all in a PaaS" you need dedicated person, monitoring, billing etc... It is more expensive, not simpler. Cloud provider may also terminate your accounts, change settings etc...
- GauntletWizard 4y agoIf I had a nickel for every time that restores from "simple SSH+rysnc script" backups failed, I would not need my job as an infra engineer. You can do that, but being sure they work is hard My clients spend a lot more on AWS bills than they would on self-hosted infra; $1000ish compared to $200/mo from self-hosted or a pair of $1000 servers colo'd for about $100/mo. They get a lot more - Reliability and support channels. That's what they're paying for. Absolutely, I recommend that they when they scale, they move their most expensive parts in terms of AWS costs (bandwidth-intensive things like gameservers and media bouncers) from AWS to self-hosted, because those are the things that are too expensive on AWS and have reliability properties where "Throw a bunch at the wall, fail them fast" is a good guarantee. For your production backups, don't rely on simple scripts. Don't rely on complex scripts. Rely on commonly tested solutions of other people's amortized experience.
- sudosysgen 4y agoSSH+Rsync is the wrong way to go about it, you will fail to restore backups. You need something that allows you to make snapshots. Fortunately that's easy and cheap if you use something like Proxmox.
- belorn 4y agoIt would be interesting to map out what kind of industries and startups require a load balancing and multiple production servers for the first few years of setting up. A single 32/64/128/256 core server is pretty decent for most work loads, and anycast services are decent in terms of static content delivery. Was there a specific kind of startup that you had in mind for this?