4 ms·

Yes, perfectly doable, but the expertise and time needed to do it (without fatal mistakes) and keep it running 365 days a year is non-negligible. Doing this by

Yes, perfectly doable, but the expertise and time needed to do it (without fatal mistakes) and keep it running 365 days a year is non-negligible. Doing this by unpaid volunteers is more than challenging.

jacquesm 3y ago
Not for the people behind NixOS. If it is challenging then that would cause me to re-calibrate my opinion of the project as a whole.
simonjgreen 3y ago
This is, in my opinion, a falacy perpetuated by the marketing departments of "big cloud". Don't forget that pre-2006 there was no S3, and we managed just fine. They are not challenging skills to learn, the zeitgeist has just convinced itself they are not worth learning
- vasco 3y ago
  It's condescending to think that someone can't reasonably choose to pay for a service they are capable of doing. Cooking isn't hard either but I still go to restaurants, and don't go around laughing at patrons telling them that they never bothered to learn how to cook if they are there.
  - heisenbit 3y ago
    Eating in the restaurant once in a while is fine. Lage range of choices delivered quickly. But is it sustainable? Price higher, usually less healthy and not tailored to special needs. In any case one does it professional IT done right is costly but cheaper than e.g. IT without offsite backup in case of a disaster.
  - simonjgreen 3y ago
    Do you eat every meal at a restaurant though? That would not be sustainable. To roll with your analogy it would be like the hospitality sector persuading the majority to ditch home meals entirely
    - vasco 3y ago
      The problem was your assumption which is condescending. I gave you an analogy to make it clearer. Taking the analogy in the second paragraph apart doesn't change the point in the first - it was simply to help illustrate it, but it stands on its own.
      - simonjgreen 3y ago
        It's not condescending at all. You are saying they could reasonably pay for it, but they quite obviously cannot (hence the existence of this whole post). What I'm principally challenging is the assumption that this required effort is substantial. I'm making the point that it is not, certainly (in my view) compared to the effort to run an entire operating system project and all of the ancillaries that come with that. This is an area they have chosen to pay for that (again, in my view) they don't need to. They have gone to great lengths to architect a system that allows deep pinning of very specific versions, it's not a stretch to think about the architecture required to deliver that. Instead they have stopped that line of thinking at [insert S3 here] rather than carry on solving. A direct consequence of that now is a $9k/m hole they need to fill in their budget. I'm being critical, sure, but not condescending. Overall, it frustrates me seeing opinions that operating infrastructure is difficult and therefore must automatically be avoided. In this particular example avoiding operating said infrastructure potentially is putting the project in the red and at risk, but nowhere on the NixOS call for help does it suggest they have considered operating this themselves. And there in is the crux of my point. The zeitgeist has turned against operating infrastructure, and yet is frequently caught out by the cost of this decision.
        vasco 3y ago
        > They are not challenging skills to learn, the zeitgeist has just convinced itself they are not worth learning Next time you see someone paying for something you think it's easy to learn, that the "zeitgeist told them not to learn", go up to them and say what I quoted and you'll see real fast if it's condescending or not.
        3y ago
- usr1106 3y ago
  Who managed just fine? IT-based services very a minor fraction of what they are today. And IT departments in some random company were much bigger.
  - vanviegen 3y ago
    > And IT departments in some random company were much bigger. Not sure about that. There appear to be just as many people in IT, it's just that they're not that technical anymore, mostly producing policy documents and pushing tickets around. The actual work is outsourced to the cloud, SaaS products and outside consultants (for duct taping the mishmash of SaaS products together). But that may be just my lacking understanding of my strange little part of the globe.
makkesk8 3y ago
We do this at work, albeit much larger scale than this and I'm the only one who spends any time on upgrades, replacing failed disks and so on. Honestly, apart from upgrades every 3-ish months I don't spend any time at all on this, it's all chugging along without intervention. Things don't fail as much as they used to, at least not from using something mature as minio and of course hardware can fail as they do specifically spinning rust, which is non trivial to replace if you have hot-swap capable servers in the first place. I don't possess any decade worth expertise in either minio or running this kind of setup so personally I believe you are exaggerating that this is even worth calling challenge at all. But that's just my take :)
- mynameisvlad 3y ago
  So I’m sure you’d be more than happy to volunteer your services to NixOS and be responsible for the setup, including when there are issues (which will inevitably happen regardless of tools and technologies used), right? It’s so easy, after all.
  - johnklos 3y ago
    I'd volunteer to do it, if they paid for hardware, colo and transportation for initial install. After things settle down, it takes no more than half an hour or so every month. Pretending to know how much work something is when it's not your area of expertise is a bit silly. Actually, yes, it is easy, after all :)
nine_k 3y ago
The money that are paid as the exorbitant AWS egress fees could be used to pay a competent SRE to handle that. I don't think that running the package mirror would require a full-time dedicated paid position. Initial setup, maybe some heavy restructuring operations as storage requirements grow, maybe some firefighting, but not the daily operation.

jacquesm 3y ago

Not for the people behind NixOS. If it is challenging then that would cause me to re-calibrate my opinion of the project as a whole.

simonjgreen 3y ago

This is, in my opinion, a falacy perpetuated by the marketing departments of "big cloud". Don't forget that pre-2006 there was no S3, and we managed just fine. They are not challenging skills to learn, the zeitgeist has just convinced itself they are not worth learning

vasco 3y ago
It's condescending to think that someone can't reasonably choose to pay for a service they are capable of doing. Cooking isn't hard either but I still go to restaurants, and don't go around laughing at patrons telling them that they never bothered to learn how to cook if they are there.
- heisenbit 3y ago
  Eating in the restaurant once in a while is fine. Lage range of choices delivered quickly. But is it sustainable? Price higher, usually less healthy and not tailored to special needs. In any case one does it professional IT done right is costly but cheaper than e.g. IT without offsite backup in case of a disaster.
- simonjgreen 3y ago
  Do you eat every meal at a restaurant though? That would not be sustainable. To roll with your analogy it would be like the hospitality sector persuading the majority to ditch home meals entirely
  - vasco 3y ago
    The problem was your assumption which is condescending. I gave you an analogy to make it clearer. Taking the analogy in the second paragraph apart doesn't change the point in the first - it was simply to help illustrate it, but it stands on its own.
    - simonjgreen 3y ago
      It's not condescending at all. You are saying they could reasonably pay for it, but they quite obviously cannot (hence the existence of this whole post). What I'm principally challenging is the assumption that this required effort is substantial. I'm making the point that it is not, certainly (in my view) compared to the effort to run an entire operating system project and all of the ancillaries that come with that. This is an area they have chosen to pay for that (again, in my view) they don't need to. They have gone to great lengths to architect a system that allows deep pinning of very specific versions, it's not a stretch to think about the architecture required to deliver that. Instead they have stopped that line of thinking at [insert S3 here] rather than carry on solving. A direct consequence of that now is a $9k/m hole they need to fill in their budget. I'm being critical, sure, but not condescending. Overall, it frustrates me seeing opinions that operating infrastructure is difficult and therefore must automatically be avoided. In this particular example avoiding operating said infrastructure potentially is putting the project in the red and at risk, but nowhere on the NixOS call for help does it suggest they have considered operating this themselves. And there in is the crux of my point. The zeitgeist has turned against operating infrastructure, and yet is frequently caught out by the cost of this decision.
      - vasco 3y ago
        > They are not challenging skills to learn, the zeitgeist has just convinced itself they are not worth learning Next time you see someone paying for something you think it's easy to learn, that the "zeitgeist told them not to learn", go up to them and say what I quoted and you'll see real fast if it's condescending or not.
        3y ago
usr1106 3y ago
Who managed just fine? IT-based services very a minor fraction of what they are today. And IT departments in some random company were much bigger.
- vanviegen 3y ago
  > And IT departments in some random company were much bigger. Not sure about that. There appear to be just as many people in IT, it's just that they're not that technical anymore, mostly producing policy documents and pushing tickets around. The actual work is outsourced to the cloud, SaaS products and outside consultants (for duct taping the mishmash of SaaS products together). But that may be just my lacking understanding of my strange little part of the globe.

makkesk8 3y ago

We do this at work, albeit much larger scale than this and I'm the only one who spends any time on upgrades, replacing failed disks and so on. Honestly, apart from upgrades every 3-ish months I don't spend any time at all on this, it's all chugging along without intervention. Things don't fail as much as they used to, at least not from using something mature as minio and of course hardware can fail as they do specifically spinning rust, which is non trivial to replace if you have hot-swap capable servers in the first place. I don't possess any decade worth expertise in either minio or running this kind of setup so personally I believe you are exaggerating that this is even worth calling challenge at all. But that's just my take :)

mynameisvlad 3y ago
So I’m sure you’d be more than happy to volunteer your services to NixOS and be responsible for the setup, including when there are issues (which will inevitably happen regardless of tools and technologies used), right? It’s so easy, after all.
- johnklos 3y ago
  I'd volunteer to do it, if they paid for hardware, colo and transportation for initial install. After things settle down, it takes no more than half an hour or so every month. Pretending to know how much work something is when it's not your area of expertise is a bit silly. Actually, yes, it is easy, after all :)

nine_k 3y ago

The money that are paid as the exorbitant AWS egress fees could be used to pay a competent SRE to handle that. I don't think that running the package mirror would require a full-time dedicated paid position. Initial setup, maybe some heavy restructuring operations as storage requirements grow, maybe some firefighting, but not the daily operation.