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It is simply false that everything has gone cloud. The whole argument falls down on the first premise. Also nearly everyone who owns their own servers still run

by dcre 3y ago

It is simply false that everything has gone cloud. The whole argument falls down on the first premise. Also nearly everyone who owns their own servers still runs VMs on them.

elishah 3y ago
> Also nearly everyone who owns their own servers still runs VMs on them. This strikes me as at least as much of a leap as "everything has gone cloud." Containers are... kind of a thing. And while there certainly are use cases for VMs over containers, they're comparatively niche. This product seems as if it'd be a better fit for every real use case I've ever seen if it were a prebuilt kubernetes cluster rather than a prebuilt VM hypervisor.
- closeparen 3y ago
  That’s a Silicon Valley bubble perspective. Everything from your kid’s school to your car dealer to your automaker is VMWare.
  - lkjdsklf 3y ago
    > Everything from your kid’s school to your car dealer to your automaker is VMWare. While true, they also aren't buying $500k+ rack. They're running vmware on a much smaller scale.
  - alephnerd 3y ago
    This is true, but I wouldn't underestimate the penetration of Cloud and Container First deployments. A number of customers I've worked with in Biotech, Telecom, Retail, Defense, and Financial sectors have either completed their cloud transformation or have ongoing 3-5 year timelines to make such a move. On the mid-market side, I've been seeing organizations increasingly offload the entire IT operation to MSPs instead of managing their own ESXi server. The MSP might often be using VMWare, but a number are also transitioning away from that. I think it's premature to say container and cloud first deployments are the norm, but the change and transition is rapidly occurring.
    - closeparen 3y ago
      I would expect most of those cloud deployments to be VMs not containers.
      - alephnerd 3y ago
        It's 60-40 VMs-Containers in my experience. A lot of this is highly dependent on the kind of app you are migrating as well as the scale needs.
dataangel 3y ago
In 15 years of professional experience I've never worked at a place that uses VMs on the servers they own. They're just going to run Linux off an image so what's the point? You might want to look outside your niche.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- dijit 3y ago
  Is this true? I have honestly never worked in any company >50 people that didn't use VMs on owned hardware in some capacity, though usually not the main product. IT departments typically love VMs (and vmware)- AD machines are most often hosted on VMs on VMWare.
  - dataangel 3y ago
    Two of the companies I've worked for have run gigantic clusters and had >100 employees and didn't really use VMs. One of them used one to build some third party libs, but it was basically an implementation detail of one script. Everything on the servers was still bare metal. You already have user separations, permissions/privileges, etc. It's not clear what a VM adds other than as a hack to allowed installed packages to diverge which doesn't matter if you vendor them.
- TillE 3y ago
  Unless you're running at 100% load most of the time, it's atypical to run a server on bare metal these days. Much more flexible, maintainable, and cost-saving to stick servers in a VM. We sell a product that used to be delivered as a rack mountable server, but now I think nearly all our customers want a VM instead.
  - sgarland 3y ago
    I worked for a SaaS that ran a hybrid infra, partially on metal. Each rack had N blade enclosures, which together made up a logical isolated unit, with each blade running something. New blades would get provisioned automatically, then Terraform and Puppet handled their configuration. I don’t remember utilization exactly, but I think most of the blades were reasonably committed. That said, when I left they were moving from a hybrid model to entire cloud, so apparently the cost:flexibility ratio wasn’t to peoples’ liking.
faitswulff 3y ago
~Bandcamp~ Basecamp is doing just the opposite and leaving the cloud, in fact: https://world.hey.com/dhh/why-we-re-leaving-the-cloud-654b47e0 https://world.hey.com/dhh/why-we-re-leaving-the-cloud-654b47...
- packetslave 3y ago
  Basecamp (DHH) not Bandcamp (Derek Sivers)
  - faitswulff 3y ago
    Thanks!
  - dewey 3y ago
    Isn’t Derek Sivers CD Baby?
    - faitswulff 3y ago
      This thread is just a litany of errors
    - packetslave 3y ago
      well heck. yes, sivers@ founded CD Baby, not Bandcamp.

by dcre 3y ago

It is simply false that everything has gone cloud. The whole argument falls down on the first premise. Also nearly everyone who owns their own servers still runs VMs on them.

elishah 3y ago

> Also nearly everyone who owns their own servers still runs VMs on them. This strikes me as at least as much of a leap as "everything has gone cloud." Containers are... kind of a thing. And while there certainly are use cases for VMs over containers, they're comparatively niche. This product seems as if it'd be a better fit for every real use case I've ever seen if it were a prebuilt kubernetes cluster rather than a prebuilt VM hypervisor.

closeparen 3y ago
That’s a Silicon Valley bubble perspective. Everything from your kid’s school to your car dealer to your automaker is VMWare.
- lkjdsklf 3y ago
  > Everything from your kid’s school to your car dealer to your automaker is VMWare. While true, they also aren't buying $500k+ rack. They're running vmware on a much smaller scale.
- alephnerd 3y ago
  This is true, but I wouldn't underestimate the penetration of Cloud and Container First deployments. A number of customers I've worked with in Biotech, Telecom, Retail, Defense, and Financial sectors have either completed their cloud transformation or have ongoing 3-5 year timelines to make such a move. On the mid-market side, I've been seeing organizations increasingly offload the entire IT operation to MSPs instead of managing their own ESXi server. The MSP might often be using VMWare, but a number are also transitioning away from that. I think it's premature to say container and cloud first deployments are the norm, but the change and transition is rapidly occurring.
  - closeparen 3y ago
    I would expect most of those cloud deployments to be VMs not containers.
    - alephnerd 3y ago
      It's 60-40 VMs-Containers in my experience. A lot of this is highly dependent on the kind of app you are migrating as well as the scale needs.

dataangel 3y ago

In 15 years of professional experience I've never worked at a place that uses VMs on the servers they own. They're just going to run Linux off an image so what's the point? You might want to look outside your niche.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
dijit 3y ago
Is this true? I have honestly never worked in any company >50 people that didn't use VMs on owned hardware in some capacity, though usually not the main product. IT departments typically love VMs (and vmware)- AD machines are most often hosted on VMs on VMWare.
- dataangel 3y ago
  Two of the companies I've worked for have run gigantic clusters and had >100 employees and didn't really use VMs. One of them used one to build some third party libs, but it was basically an implementation detail of one script. Everything on the servers was still bare metal. You already have user separations, permissions/privileges, etc. It's not clear what a VM adds other than as a hack to allowed installed packages to diverge which doesn't matter if you vendor them.
TillE 3y ago
Unless you're running at 100% load most of the time, it's atypical to run a server on bare metal these days. Much more flexible, maintainable, and cost-saving to stick servers in a VM. We sell a product that used to be delivered as a rack mountable server, but now I think nearly all our customers want a VM instead.
- sgarland 3y ago
  I worked for a SaaS that ran a hybrid infra, partially on metal. Each rack had N blade enclosures, which together made up a logical isolated unit, with each blade running something. New blades would get provisioned automatically, then Terraform and Puppet handled their configuration. I don’t remember utilization exactly, but I think most of the blades were reasonably committed. That said, when I left they were moving from a hybrid model to entire cloud, so apparently the cost:flexibility ratio wasn’t to peoples’ liking.

faitswulff 3y ago

~Bandcamp~ Basecamp is doing just the opposite and leaving the cloud, in fact: https://world.hey.com/dhh/why-we-re-leaving-the-cloud-654b47e0 https://world.hey.com/dhh/why-we-re-leaving-the-cloud-654b47...

packetslave 3y ago
Basecamp (DHH) not Bandcamp (Derek Sivers)
- faitswulff 3y ago
  Thanks!
- dewey 3y ago
  Isn’t Derek Sivers CD Baby?
  - faitswulff 3y ago
    This thread is just a litany of errors
  - packetslave 3y ago
    well heck. yes, sivers@ founded CD Baby, not Bandcamp.