7 ms·

Cloud providers automate things like lease renewals, dealing with customs and part time labor contract compliance disputes for that datacenter in that Asian cou

by jupp0r 3y ago

Cloud providers automate things like lease renewals, dealing with customs and part time labor contract compliance disputes for that datacenter in that Asian country that you don't know the language of. I'm constantly fascinated how people handwaivingly underestimate the cost and headaches of actually running on prem global infrastructure.

robertlagrant 3y ago
> I'm constantly fascinated To call a halt to your constant fascination: they don't all have that problem. They still get the complexity of cloudy things regardless when they use one.
- jupp0r 3y ago
  They also get some of the complexity of cloudy things when they run their own datacenter. In the end you find stuff like OpenStack which becomes its own nightmare universe.
  - eropple 3y ago
    YMMV, but more and more I see people moving to k8s to get away from OpenStack, to varying but generally positive success.
ricardobeat 3y ago
There are at least five shades in between on-prem and a managed k8s cloud.
- d0mine 3y ago
  Could you mention three?
  - pmalynin 3y ago
    colo racks, rented dedicated servers, ec2 / managed vm offerings?
hipadev23 3y ago
And colo providers solved those hurdles for decades. Let’s not act like the only options are cloud, or build your own datacenter.
- bradfox2 3y ago
  My startup hosts our own training servers in a colo-ed space 10 min from our office. Took less than 40 hours to get moved in, with most of the time tinkering with fortigate network appliance settings. Cloudflare zero trust for free is a huge timesaver
kortilla 3y ago
I’m constantly fascinated by people who think they need on prem global infrastructure when the vast majority of applications both have very loose latency requirements (multiple seconds) or no users outside of the home country. Two datacenters on opposite sides of the US from different providers will get you more uptime than a cloud provider and is super simple.
- jupp0r 3y ago
  While some of the complexity goes away when it's on prem in to parts of the US, having to order actual hardware, putting it into racks, hiring, training, retaining the people there to debug actual hardware issues when they arise, dealing with HVAC concerns, etc is a lot of complexity that's probably completely outside of your core business expertise but that you'll have to spend mental cycles on when actually operating your own data center. It's totally worth it for some companies to do that, but you need to have some serious size to be concerned with spending your efforts on lowering your AWS bill by introducing details like that into your own organization when you could alternatively spend those dollars to make your core business run better. Usually your efforts are better spent on the latter unless you are Netflix or Amazon or Google.
  - protomikron 3y ago
    Why is it always public cloud (aws, gcp, azure) vs. "bring your own hardware and deploy it in racks". There are multiple providers that offer VPS and ingress/egress for a fraction of the cost of public clouds and they mostly have good uptime.
    - pclmulqdq 3y ago
      I recently rented a rack with a telecom and put some of my own hardware in it (it's custom weird stuff with hardware accelerators and all the FIPS 140 level 4 requirements), but even the telecom provider was offering a managed VPS product when I got on the phone with them. The uptime in these DCs is very good (certainly better than AWS's us-east-1), and you get a very good price with tons of bandwidth. Most datacenter and colo providers can do this now. I think people believe that "on prem" means actually racking the servers in your closet, but you can get datacenter space with fantastic power, cooling, and security almost anywhere these days.
elktown 3y ago
Not sure how how you could jump all the way to running your own Asian datacenter from my post. A bit amusing though :). I even wrote that it's worth running the LB/DB in the Cloud?
- jupp0r 3y ago
  Oh it was more of an addition to your point about "reducing complexity of managing the most frustrating things like the load-balancer and the database, albeit at a price of course". There is a whole mountain of complexity that most software engineers never think about when they dream about going back to the good old on prem days.
  - elktown 3y ago
    Alright, just feels like taking a bit too far into the exceptions. Even back then only large companies would consider that. Renting servers, renting a server rack (co-location), or even just a in-office server rack for what would be a startup today.

by jupp0r 3y ago

robertlagrant 3y ago

> I'm constantly fascinated To call a halt to your constant fascination: they don't all have that problem. They still get the complexity of cloudy things regardless when they use one.

jupp0r 3y ago
They also get some of the complexity of cloudy things when they run their own datacenter. In the end you find stuff like OpenStack which becomes its own nightmare universe.
- eropple 3y ago
  YMMV, but more and more I see people moving to k8s to get away from OpenStack, to varying but generally positive success.

ricardobeat 3y ago

There are at least five shades in between on-prem and a managed k8s cloud.

d0mine 3y ago
Could you mention three?
- pmalynin 3y ago
  colo racks, rented dedicated servers, ec2 / managed vm offerings?

hipadev23 3y ago

And colo providers solved those hurdles for decades. Let’s not act like the only options are cloud, or build your own datacenter.

bradfox2 3y ago
My startup hosts our own training servers in a colo-ed space 10 min from our office. Took less than 40 hours to get moved in, with most of the time tinkering with fortigate network appliance settings. Cloudflare zero trust for free is a huge timesaver

kortilla 3y ago

I’m constantly fascinated by people who think they need on prem global infrastructure when the vast majority of applications both have very loose latency requirements (multiple seconds) or no users outside of the home country. Two datacenters on opposite sides of the US from different providers will get you more uptime than a cloud provider and is super simple.

jupp0r 3y ago
While some of the complexity goes away when it's on prem in to parts of the US, having to order actual hardware, putting it into racks, hiring, training, retaining the people there to debug actual hardware issues when they arise, dealing with HVAC concerns, etc is a lot of complexity that's probably completely outside of your core business expertise but that you'll have to spend mental cycles on when actually operating your own data center. It's totally worth it for some companies to do that, but you need to have some serious size to be concerned with spending your efforts on lowering your AWS bill by introducing details like that into your own organization when you could alternatively spend those dollars to make your core business run better. Usually your efforts are better spent on the latter unless you are Netflix or Amazon or Google.
- protomikron 3y ago
  Why is it always public cloud (aws, gcp, azure) vs. "bring your own hardware and deploy it in racks". There are multiple providers that offer VPS and ingress/egress for a fraction of the cost of public clouds and they mostly have good uptime.
  - pclmulqdq 3y ago
    I recently rented a rack with a telecom and put some of my own hardware in it (it's custom weird stuff with hardware accelerators and all the FIPS 140 level 4 requirements), but even the telecom provider was offering a managed VPS product when I got on the phone with them. The uptime in these DCs is very good (certainly better than AWS's us-east-1), and you get a very good price with tons of bandwidth. Most datacenter and colo providers can do this now. I think people believe that "on prem" means actually racking the servers in your closet, but you can get datacenter space with fantastic power, cooling, and security almost anywhere these days.

elktown 3y ago

Not sure how how you could jump all the way to running your own Asian datacenter from my post. A bit amusing though :). I even wrote that it's worth running the LB/DB in the Cloud?

jupp0r 3y ago
Oh it was more of an addition to your point about "reducing complexity of managing the most frustrating things like the load-balancer and the database, albeit at a price of course". There is a whole mountain of complexity that most software engineers never think about when they dream about going back to the good old on prem days.
- elktown 3y ago
  Alright, just feels like taking a bit too far into the exceptions. Even back then only large companies would consider that. Renting servers, renting a server rack (co-location), or even just a in-office server rack for what would be a startup today.