8 ms·

So.. we’re back to self-hosting your own services? And IT does another cycle.

by sen 3y ago

withinboredom 3y ago
Some of us never left... I can't justify paying that much money just to execute some code on another person's server.
- f6v 3y ago
  And some will never leave cloud.
  - sumtechguy 3y ago
    That is where you run the cost calculations and decide if it is worth it or not. At the very first it can make zero sense to run in cloud. Then slightly in it becomes very worth it. Then later on that cost overhang becomes so big you are better off building your own. Where those boundaries are depends on your business.
    - willsmith72 3y ago
      I think the opposite, at the start it's a no-brainer. Setting up cloud infra for a simple website or web api is so so simple, and between free tiers and startup credits, costs $0.
      - sumtechguy 3y ago
        fair point...
      - withinboredom 3y ago
        I think it depends. For example, if I needed machines running 24/7 running some stuff, then I would eat through those cloud credits so fast. For example, managed k8s is actually pretty cheap in the cloud, but you can't turn off their logging solution, and even on the lowest setting, storage for those logs will cost you an arm and a leg. However, if you can use something like serverless or even just regular vms, you can be super cheap at the start. It all just depends on what you're doing.
- cortesoft 3y ago
  It can be cheaper to run things in the cloud if your workload is very spiky or short lived.
soneil 3y ago
We never really left. I work with an enterprisey on-prem product, which we of-course tried to replace with a cloud offer. And in all fairness, it's generally gone well - but because we manage the platform, it sits in the cloud we chose. And that's never going to be the right choice for everyone. So we have some customers who are concerned about national boundaries. We have some customers who offer their own clouds, and aren't hugely enthusiastic about using the competition's. And then the whole mess with the govt having isolated regions within otherwise-public cloud offers. Between these, it quickly became apparent that replacing our traditional offer with *aaS would leave a lot of money on the table. It's a minority of customers, but it turns out to be a very valuable minority. Within that context at least, "private clouds" start to feel like they have legs - bringing most of the benefits of the cloud, to places that 'public' can't reach.
- topspin 3y ago
  > It's a minority of customers, but it turns out to be a very valuable minority. I've been saying this for years. The Ubuntu vision here is appealing: storage and live migration as first class things, because many high value services are never going to be "cloud native," easily scheduled, stateless, ephemeral container apps: the stuff k8s et al. was designed for. So they have the right model. Now it's down to execution.
dividedbyzero 3y ago
> And IT does another cycle. People keep saying that as if it was a bad thing
- pjmlp 3y ago
  Usually it is great for those of us that sell consulting services, for the others not really.
- lproven 3y ago
  It wouldn't be a bad thing if people learned from the previous iteration. But they don't. In fact, what they generally do is layer an implementation of the stuff they forgot last time on top of the preceding iteration which lacked it. So now, we have clusters of Linux boxes, built with a ton of new tooling on top of Linux because Linux is a UNIX and traditional UNIX doesn't have networking or clustering in the design. (Go on, then, 2 PCs on a LAN, both running a bare Linux kernel and a shell for init. Call them box1 and box2. Tell me how you mount the filesystem of box2 in a folder on box1.) Plan 9 is UNIX 2.0 and can do this out of the box, but we didn't adopt Plan 9 so now we have to emulate it in a million lines of Rust or something. Now we have WASM which is kinda sorta compiling to the bare bytecode of the Javascript runtime, for universal app binaries. Only you need a vast infrastructure to run it. Inferno is UNIX 3.0 and can do this out of the box: it has the Dis VM right in the kernel, and all its components are compiled to Dis bytecode so binaries run on all supported processors. But we didn't adopt Inferno so now we have to emulate it in a million lines of C++ because Mozilla cancelled Rust.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - worthless-trash 3y ago
    Features are backed by code. The code has to exist somewhere, in previous systems it ran as ring0. Is this where you want your privesc ?
    - lproven 3y ago
hospitalJail 3y ago
Always depends on the usecase. Medical, we do everything in-house to make life easier. Low value servers, in-house. High uptime + scalable? You are not doing that in-house.
rozenmd 3y ago
It's not so much a cycle as a helix IMO, things are better now.
AugustoCAS 3y ago
I have the strong impression that most people confound cloud to be public only. Private clouds are fine and deliver a lot of the flexibility at a big % discount of a public cloud. The big gain from clouds is the flexible infrastructure, especially in the microservices world we are now. In the past, one needed to procure, provision, etc a new server to run a service (times X per environment). With a cloud, regardless if it's public or private, provisioning a VM (or container) to run a new service is a few clicks away.
- mywacaday 3y ago
  Currently watching a large enterprise migrate to cloud and hosted private cloud(I know) but all most teams are doing is a 1:1 mapping of VMs. I can see the cost going through the roof vs on prem. Give it another three years and and we'll be rolling back a significant % to on prem.
  - _jal 3y ago
    I'm currently working on planning for a large enterprise migration. We're definitely not doing a 1:1 mapping of VMs, but costs are still going to go through the roof. There might be a quiet betting pool on just how much more.
baz00 3y ago
Yep. My future is cloud offboarding and cost mitigation consultancy. Been through the fad cycle three times now and worked out where to make money :)
throw0101a 3y ago
> So.. we’re back to self-hosting your own services? It never stopped: plenty of places have on-site VMware and Hyper-V, both of which provide (IIRC) APIs to automated VM creation. If you're more open source, there's OpenStack (which VMware has a API-compat layer for).
0xbadcafebee 3y ago
Yes, but spending money on garbage tech products fuels the economy now. It's not like we make anything else.

So.. we’re back to self-hosting your own services? And IT does another cycle.

by sen 3y ago

So.. we’re back to self-hosting your own services? And IT does another cycle.

withinboredom 3y ago

Some of us never left... I can't justify paying that much money just to execute some code on another person's server.

f6v 3y ago
And some will never leave cloud.
- sumtechguy 3y ago
  That is where you run the cost calculations and decide if it is worth it or not. At the very first it can make zero sense to run in cloud. Then slightly in it becomes very worth it. Then later on that cost overhang becomes so big you are better off building your own. Where those boundaries are depends on your business.
  - willsmith72 3y ago
    I think the opposite, at the start it's a no-brainer. Setting up cloud infra for a simple website or web api is so so simple, and between free tiers and startup credits, costs $0.
    - sumtechguy 3y ago
      fair point...
    - withinboredom 3y ago
      I think it depends. For example, if I needed machines running 24/7 running some stuff, then I would eat through those cloud credits so fast. For example, managed k8s is actually pretty cheap in the cloud, but you can't turn off their logging solution, and even on the lowest setting, storage for those logs will cost you an arm and a leg. However, if you can use something like serverless or even just regular vms, you can be super cheap at the start. It all just depends on what you're doing.
cortesoft 3y ago
It can be cheaper to run things in the cloud if your workload is very spiky or short lived.

soneil 3y ago

We never really left. I work with an enterprisey on-prem product, which we of-course tried to replace with a cloud offer. And in all fairness, it's generally gone well - but because we manage the platform, it sits in the cloud we chose. And that's never going to be the right choice for everyone. So we have some customers who are concerned about national boundaries. We have some customers who offer their own clouds, and aren't hugely enthusiastic about using the competition's. And then the whole mess with the govt having isolated regions within otherwise-public cloud offers. Between these, it quickly became apparent that replacing our traditional offer with *aaS would leave a lot of money on the table. It's a minority of customers, but it turns out to be a very valuable minority. Within that context at least, "private clouds" start to feel like they have legs - bringing most of the benefits of the cloud, to places that 'public' can't reach.

topspin 3y ago
> It's a minority of customers, but it turns out to be a very valuable minority. I've been saying this for years. The Ubuntu vision here is appealing: storage and live migration as first class things, because many high value services are never going to be "cloud native," easily scheduled, stateless, ephemeral container apps: the stuff k8s et al. was designed for. So they have the right model. Now it's down to execution.

dividedbyzero 3y ago

> And IT does another cycle. People keep saying that as if it was a bad thing

pjmlp 3y ago
Usually it is great for those of us that sell consulting services, for the others not really.
lproven 3y ago
It wouldn't be a bad thing if people learned from the previous iteration. But they don't. In fact, what they generally do is layer an implementation of the stuff they forgot last time on top of the preceding iteration which lacked it. So now, we have clusters of Linux boxes, built with a ton of new tooling on top of Linux because Linux is a UNIX and traditional UNIX doesn't have networking or clustering in the design. (Go on, then, 2 PCs on a LAN, both running a bare Linux kernel and a shell for init. Call them box1 and box2. Tell me how you mount the filesystem of box2 in a folder on box1.) Plan 9 is UNIX 2.0 and can do this out of the box, but we didn't adopt Plan 9 so now we have to emulate it in a million lines of Rust or something. Now we have WASM which is kinda sorta compiling to the bare bytecode of the Javascript runtime, for universal app binaries. Only you need a vast infrastructure to run it. Inferno is UNIX 3.0 and can do this out of the box: it has the Dis VM right in the kernel, and all its components are compiled to Dis bytecode so binaries run on all supported processors. But we didn't adopt Inferno so now we have to emulate it in a million lines of C++ because Mozilla cancelled Rust.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- worthless-trash 3y ago
  Features are backed by code. The code has to exist somewhere, in previous systems it ran as ring0. Is this where you want your privesc ?
  - lproven 3y ago

hospitalJail 3y ago

Always depends on the usecase. Medical, we do everything in-house to make life easier. Low value servers, in-house. High uptime + scalable? You are not doing that in-house.

rozenmd 3y ago

It's not so much a cycle as a helix IMO, things are better now.

AugustoCAS 3y ago

I have the strong impression that most people confound cloud to be public only. Private clouds are fine and deliver a lot of the flexibility at a big % discount of a public cloud. The big gain from clouds is the flexible infrastructure, especially in the microservices world we are now. In the past, one needed to procure, provision, etc a new server to run a service (times X per environment). With a cloud, regardless if it's public or private, provisioning a VM (or container) to run a new service is a few clicks away.

mywacaday 3y ago
Currently watching a large enterprise migrate to cloud and hosted private cloud(I know) but all most teams are doing is a 1:1 mapping of VMs. I can see the cost going through the roof vs on prem. Give it another three years and and we'll be rolling back a significant % to on prem.
- _jal 3y ago
  I'm currently working on planning for a large enterprise migration. We're definitely not doing a 1:1 mapping of VMs, but costs are still going to go through the roof. There might be a quiet betting pool on just how much more.

baz00 3y ago

Yep. My future is cloud offboarding and cost mitigation consultancy. Been through the fad cycle three times now and worked out where to make money :)

throw0101a 3y ago

> So.. we’re back to self-hosting your own services? It never stopped: plenty of places have on-site VMware and Hyper-V, both of which provide (IIRC) APIs to automated VM creation. If you're more open source, there's OpenStack (which VMware has a API-compat layer for).

0xbadcafebee 3y ago

Yes, but spending money on garbage tech products fuels the economy now. It's not like we make anything else.