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This. And I think people tend not to understand how little actual hardware they are paying for when using AWS et al. A really cheap server leasing deal will co

This. And I think people tend not to understand how little actual hardware they are paying for when using AWS et al. A really cheap server leasing deal will cost you yearly about as much as the purchase price of the server. With opaque AWS services it is probably more like a month of subscription to pay for the hardware that you are indirectly using.

adql 3y ago
And that you can also lease servers directly from vendors like OVH so you don't even need to bother with the "drive to datacenter and install it" part. It's more expensive but still far cheaper than cloud
hobs 3y ago
I just spent the better part of two years advocating, pushing, and fighting for months to add new bandwidth to our datacenter. Thankfully after they understood the problem it only took 8 months of procurement, techs going to the data center 10+ times with endless screw ups, and everyone pointing the finger at each other. While the cloud sucks in many ways the traditional setup has big problems as soon as you hit a midsize company ime.
- re-thc 3y ago
  Or maybe there's a mid point. It's not datacenter or cloud. There are providers offering physical servers for rent for example. Lots of combinations in-between.
- dijit 3y ago
  I counter your anecdote with mine! A cloud vendor (who will be nameless as I signed an NDA specifically that prevents me from disparaging them; but one of the big three) ran out of capacity for me and it was 3 months before they managed to fix it. -- that was with a couple million a month in spend. Cloud is still servers; you just depend on someone elses capacity management skills and you hope that there isn't a rush to populate a location (like when a region goes down and everyone's auto-provisioners move regions to yours)
  - Jochim 3y ago
    Barring exceptional circumstances, I don't have to fight that fight at the cloud provider though. Their business is more likely to be amenable to maintaining and expanding reasonable levels of capacity. I have to deal with a grumpy finance guy that thinks my whole department is overpaid already, especially so if we might use the dreaded `CapEx` word.
  - hobs 3y ago
    3 months vs 2 years, I'll take it :)
    - NohatCoder 3y ago
      I think the main point here is that there is no limit to incompetence. And sure, having your own servers allow for some goofs that won't happen with cloud (the opposite is also true). But your org had the means to fix the issue, and they choose not to. That has fundamentally got nothing to do with technology choice.
Jochim 3y ago
I worked for a global company that maintained it's own "cloud" of VMs that we'd use for development purposes. They were entirely unusable. Opening a relatively small file in notepad could take multiple minutes. OS click and typing response times were measured in seconds. Despite wasting thousands of developer hours each year, they refused to upgrade their data center. Probably because doing so would have been a major budget fight that requires an executive to actually advocate for something instead of making their characteristic animalistic grunts of agreement. For better or worse I haven't seen the same issue with cloud expenditure. It seems to be perceived as a necessary expense, rather than the engineering department getting ideas above their station.
- manicennui 3y ago
  Notepad? Clicking? I think I see the problem.
  - Jochim 3y ago
    Mostly deployed on windows VMs, the only access was to remote in. Typing/executing in Powershell was just as slow

adql 3y ago

And that you can also lease servers directly from vendors like OVH so you don't even need to bother with the "drive to datacenter and install it" part. It's more expensive but still far cheaper than cloud

hobs 3y ago

I just spent the better part of two years advocating, pushing, and fighting for months to add new bandwidth to our datacenter. Thankfully after they understood the problem it only took 8 months of procurement, techs going to the data center 10+ times with endless screw ups, and everyone pointing the finger at each other. While the cloud sucks in many ways the traditional setup has big problems as soon as you hit a midsize company ime.

re-thc 3y ago
Or maybe there's a mid point. It's not datacenter or cloud. There are providers offering physical servers for rent for example. Lots of combinations in-between.
dijit 3y ago
I counter your anecdote with mine! A cloud vendor (who will be nameless as I signed an NDA specifically that prevents me from disparaging them; but one of the big three) ran out of capacity for me and it was 3 months before they managed to fix it. -- that was with a couple million a month in spend. Cloud is still servers; you just depend on someone elses capacity management skills and you hope that there isn't a rush to populate a location (like when a region goes down and everyone's auto-provisioners move regions to yours)
- Jochim 3y ago
  Barring exceptional circumstances, I don't have to fight that fight at the cloud provider though. Their business is more likely to be amenable to maintaining and expanding reasonable levels of capacity. I have to deal with a grumpy finance guy that thinks my whole department is overpaid already, especially so if we might use the dreaded `CapEx` word.
- hobs 3y ago
  3 months vs 2 years, I'll take it :)
  - NohatCoder 3y ago
    I think the main point here is that there is no limit to incompetence. And sure, having your own servers allow for some goofs that won't happen with cloud (the opposite is also true). But your org had the means to fix the issue, and they choose not to. That has fundamentally got nothing to do with technology choice.

Jochim 3y ago

I worked for a global company that maintained it's own "cloud" of VMs that we'd use for development purposes. They were entirely unusable. Opening a relatively small file in notepad could take multiple minutes. OS click and typing response times were measured in seconds. Despite wasting thousands of developer hours each year, they refused to upgrade their data center. Probably because doing so would have been a major budget fight that requires an executive to actually advocate for something instead of making their characteristic animalistic grunts of agreement. For better or worse I haven't seen the same issue with cloud expenditure. It seems to be perceived as a necessary expense, rather than the engineering department getting ideas above their station.

manicennui 3y ago
Notepad? Clicking? I think I see the problem.
- Jochim 3y ago
  Mostly deployed on windows VMs, the only access was to remote in. Typing/executing in Powershell was just as slow