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> Now you are maintaining generators, UPSs and multiple HVAC systems in addition to your 'few racks of servers'. I don't mean to call you out specifically, but

• dekhn 3y ago
  What do your racks do if they lose site power? What happens when your own HVAC dies and your DC has about 4 hours until it overheats? (I'm a software engineer who previously built and maintained racks of bare metal. Never again).
  • lijok 3y ago
    You let the colo handle it.
  • mike_d 3y ago
    Unless you are a double digit billion dollar company, you don't build your own datacenters. You lease space from a colocation provider like Equinix, CoreSite, or DRT. Even AWS and GCP themselves are partially hosted in buildings operated by these companies. These datacenters are fed by multiple power substations, have onsite battery and generators, and contracts for delivery of fuel in the event of a disaster. But none of these things are any more your problem than if a power plant explodes knocking out an AWS region.
    • dekhn 3y ago
      I was replying with my interpretation of what you said above. Did I misunderstand you when you said you don't need generators, UPS, and multiple HVAC systems? If I read it correctlyu you're saying that developers have no clue what being on bare metal means, and that you don't need generators, UPS, or multiple HVAC. But then you said the colo facilities have those (along with other disaster plans). > > Now you are maintaining generators, UPSs and multiple HVAC systems in addition to your 'few racks of servers'. > I don't mean to call you out specifically, but I believe your comment is a perfect example of how the majority of developers have no clue what being on bare metal actually involves. You literally need to do none of these things. By the way, I worked for a double digit billion dollar company that built its own datacenters as well as placing resources in colos. They started out purely in colos, and put several colos out of business over HVAC and power costs (back when rack space was billed by area, not cooling). Even after that, they stayed in colos, and when I worked there, we constantly had to deal with the unreliability of colos- not just that they were smaller, with less cooling, and inadequate power, but also because they often didn't actually fulfill their contractual requirements. ATL was a great example. If colos work for you, that's great. I just don't thinnk they are prepared to handle disasters nearly as well as the megascale cloud providers.
      • mike_d 3y ago
        > Did I misunderstand you when you said you don't need generators, UPS, and multiple HVAC systems? No, you seem to misunderstand how leased space works. If you rent a floor of an office building, the toilets flush without you having to own a water plant or redundant water pipes. > when I worked there, we constantly had to deal with the unreliability of colos- not just that they were smaller, It sounds like whomever was in charge of picking datacenters was shit at their job. The colocation market isn't what it used to be and it isn't just a dude with some warehouse space and swamp coolers. Colos are publicly traded companies or REITs and have good SLAs. > I just don't thinnk they are prepared to handle disasters nearly as well as the megascale cloud providers. I worked for a megascale cloud provider. I'm intimately familiar with the nuts and bolts of a few others. Some of it is the big owned and operated campuses you see in the glossy brochure photos, but a substantial part is also in the same colos you can lease yourself. They don't bring in any additional cooling or power over and above what the datacenter provides.