5 ms·

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 requir

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.
    - Zircom 3y ago
      >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. That's because that is what on prem means. What you're describing is colocating.
      - pclmulqdq 3y ago
        When clouds define "on-prem" in opposition to their services (for sales purposes), colo facilities are lumped into that bucket. They're not exactly wrong, except a rack at a colo is an extension of your premises with a landlord who understands your needs.
    - jupp0r 3y ago
      It's a spectrum: On top is AWS lambda or something where you are completely removed from the actual hardware that's running your code. At the bottom is a free acre of land where you start construction and talk to utilities to get electricity and water there. You build your own data center, hire people to run and extend it, etc. There is tons of space in between where compromises are made by either paying a provider to do something for you or doing it yourself. Is somebody from the datacenter where you rented a rack or two going in and pressing a reset button after you called them a form of cloud automation? How about you renting a root VM at Hetzner? Is that VM on prem? People who paint these tradeoffs in a black and white matter and don't acknowledge that there are different choices for different companies and scenarios are not doing the discussion a service. On the other hand, somebody who built their business on AppEngine or CloudFlare workes could look at that other company who is renting a pet pool of EC2 instances and ask if they are even in the cloud or if they are just simulating on-prem.
      - pclmulqdq 3y ago
        There's also a good point here (at least at the top of the stack) about reliability: the top of the spectrum goes down relatively frequently due to its dependencies, but even plain old boring EC2 has much better reliability than services like Lambda.
  - cangeroo 3y ago
    Because their arguments are disingenuous. It reads like propaganda sponsored by the clouds. Scaremongering. Clouds are incredibly lucrative. But don't worry. You can make the prices more reasonable by making a 3-year commitment to run old outdated hardware.
- bcaxis 3y ago
  > 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 Vertical integration is a widely known and understood business strategy - running your own infrastructure will help you reclaim the cloud margins back for yourself. You can do it as a one man band or a huge multinational. I use hotels and other rental offerings, including the cloud. But I when it is advantageous to do so, I buy and own. Even though it comes with maintenance burdens.
- kortilla 3y ago
  You don’t deal with hvac complexity. People are so blinded by the cloud they don’t even realize CoLos are a thing. “What alternative is there to living in a hotel if you aren’t a carpenter!?!?!”
jupp0r 3y ago
There are tons of examples where low latency is good for business, even small businesses. I'm sure you've seen the studies from Amazon that every 100ms of page load latency is costing them 1% of revenue, etc. Also everything communication is very latency sensitive. Of course there are plenty of scenarios where latency does not matter at all.
- groestl 3y ago
  So you can trade off 300ms of additional roundtrip time (on anything non-CDNable) at a cost of 3% revenue and reduce your infrastructure complexity a lot
- throwaway22032 3y ago
  Not every business is based on impulse buys. Amazon is a pretty biased sample there.
  - jupp0r 3y ago
    Is this agreeing with "Of course there are plenty of scenarios where latency does not matter at all." or are you trying to make a point?
  - threeseed 3y ago
    That latency is correlated with revenue is not exclusive to Amazon. And many people who aren’t impulse buying will not stick around on slow sites.
    - pdimitar 3y ago
      Disagreed, once we're not talking a worldwide shop for non-critical buys like Amazon the picture changes dramatically. Many people on local markets have no choice and will stick around no matter how slow the service is. Evidence: my wife buying our groceries for delivery at home. We have 4-5 choices in our city. All their websites are slow as hell, and I mean adding an item to a cart takes good 5-10 seconds. Search takes 20+ seconds. She curses at them every time yet there's nothing we can do. The alternative is both of us to travel by foot 20 minutes to the local mall and wait on queues. 2-3 times a week. She figured the slow websites are the lesser evil.
threeseed 3y ago
> Vast majority of applications have no users outside home country Any evidence to back this up. Because on the surface seems like a ridiculous statement.
- alphager 3y ago
  Most software is internal software used by a handful of people in a certain department of a company. Even in large multinational conglomerates the applications used by every single country subsidiary can be counted using your fingers.
- noodlesUK 3y ago
  I would say that a large portion of b2b or internal software tends to come into this category. If you are building something for a single business that only operates in one jurisdiction, and you don't do i18n, why bother with global distribution? A lot of b2b stuff covers process that have legal stuff baked in, like tax handling or other assumptions.
- willdr 3y ago
  Why does this seem ridiculous? There are more national companies than international companies, by a large factor.
  - DinaCoder99 3y ago
    Are the majority of applications even developed by "companies"? I'm honestly not sure at all, or even how to go about measuring that. By the numbers, most games on steam are developed by individuals or small teams, even if the bulk of sales are driven by games produced by larger companies. I'd imagine the same is true of app stores, too.
- kortilla 3y ago
  Do you know how many businesses software is used for? Look at every local business you go to and enumerate the things they use software to accomplish. When they pay their local utility bills, is that international? How about paying their rent? How about filing their state taxes? How about ordering from local suppliers? Very little of the world is international business. That tiny slice that is just dominates the zeitgeist because it’s international. For some examples of things well known that absolutely don’t need global data centers: - airbus and Boeing - Coca-Cola - Marriott and Hilton - the entire US federal government (apart from some maybe military applications) - McDonald’s The list goes on forever because it’s literally nearly every business. Unless you’re in real time markets or operating store fronts globally where latency hurts sales, putting up regions all over the world is a complete and utter waste of money. Making global regions as easy as a click of a button was one of the greatest marketing ploys of cloud providers to date. “Of course Good Will needs a Singapore data center!? How will we meet our P99 goals otherwise?”

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.
  - Zircom 3y ago
    >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. That's because that is what on prem means. What you're describing is colocating.
    - pclmulqdq 3y ago
      When clouds define "on-prem" in opposition to their services (for sales purposes), colo facilities are lumped into that bucket. They're not exactly wrong, except a rack at a colo is an extension of your premises with a landlord who understands your needs.
  - jupp0r 3y ago
    It's a spectrum: On top is AWS lambda or something where you are completely removed from the actual hardware that's running your code. At the bottom is a free acre of land where you start construction and talk to utilities to get electricity and water there. You build your own data center, hire people to run and extend it, etc. There is tons of space in between where compromises are made by either paying a provider to do something for you or doing it yourself. Is somebody from the datacenter where you rented a rack or two going in and pressing a reset button after you called them a form of cloud automation? How about you renting a root VM at Hetzner? Is that VM on prem? People who paint these tradeoffs in a black and white matter and don't acknowledge that there are different choices for different companies and scenarios are not doing the discussion a service. On the other hand, somebody who built their business on AppEngine or CloudFlare workes could look at that other company who is renting a pet pool of EC2 instances and ask if they are even in the cloud or if they are just simulating on-prem.
    - pclmulqdq 3y ago
      There's also a good point here (at least at the top of the stack) about reliability: the top of the spectrum goes down relatively frequently due to its dependencies, but even plain old boring EC2 has much better reliability than services like Lambda.
- cangeroo 3y ago
  Because their arguments are disingenuous. It reads like propaganda sponsored by the clouds. Scaremongering. Clouds are incredibly lucrative. But don't worry. You can make the prices more reasonable by making a 3-year commitment to run old outdated hardware.
bcaxis 3y ago
> 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 Vertical integration is a widely known and understood business strategy - running your own infrastructure will help you reclaim the cloud margins back for yourself. You can do it as a one man band or a huge multinational. I use hotels and other rental offerings, including the cloud. But I when it is advantageous to do so, I buy and own. Even though it comes with maintenance burdens.
kortilla 3y ago
You don’t deal with hvac complexity. People are so blinded by the cloud they don’t even realize CoLos are a thing. “What alternative is there to living in a hotel if you aren’t a carpenter!?!?!”

jupp0r 3y ago

There are tons of examples where low latency is good for business, even small businesses. I'm sure you've seen the studies from Amazon that every 100ms of page load latency is costing them 1% of revenue, etc. Also everything communication is very latency sensitive. Of course there are plenty of scenarios where latency does not matter at all.

groestl 3y ago
So you can trade off 300ms of additional roundtrip time (on anything non-CDNable) at a cost of 3% revenue and reduce your infrastructure complexity a lot
throwaway22032 3y ago
Not every business is based on impulse buys. Amazon is a pretty biased sample there.
- jupp0r 3y ago
  Is this agreeing with "Of course there are plenty of scenarios where latency does not matter at all." or are you trying to make a point?
- threeseed 3y ago
  That latency is correlated with revenue is not exclusive to Amazon. And many people who aren’t impulse buying will not stick around on slow sites.
  - pdimitar 3y ago
    Disagreed, once we're not talking a worldwide shop for non-critical buys like Amazon the picture changes dramatically. Many people on local markets have no choice and will stick around no matter how slow the service is. Evidence: my wife buying our groceries for delivery at home. We have 4-5 choices in our city. All their websites are slow as hell, and I mean adding an item to a cart takes good 5-10 seconds. Search takes 20+ seconds. She curses at them every time yet there's nothing we can do. The alternative is both of us to travel by foot 20 minutes to the local mall and wait on queues. 2-3 times a week. She figured the slow websites are the lesser evil.

threeseed 3y ago

> Vast majority of applications have no users outside home country Any evidence to back this up. Because on the surface seems like a ridiculous statement.

alphager 3y ago
Most software is internal software used by a handful of people in a certain department of a company. Even in large multinational conglomerates the applications used by every single country subsidiary can be counted using your fingers.
noodlesUK 3y ago
I would say that a large portion of b2b or internal software tends to come into this category. If you are building something for a single business that only operates in one jurisdiction, and you don't do i18n, why bother with global distribution? A lot of b2b stuff covers process that have legal stuff baked in, like tax handling or other assumptions.
willdr 3y ago
Why does this seem ridiculous? There are more national companies than international companies, by a large factor.
- DinaCoder99 3y ago
  Are the majority of applications even developed by "companies"? I'm honestly not sure at all, or even how to go about measuring that. By the numbers, most games on steam are developed by individuals or small teams, even if the bulk of sales are driven by games produced by larger companies. I'd imagine the same is true of app stores, too.
kortilla 3y ago
Do you know how many businesses software is used for? Look at every local business you go to and enumerate the things they use software to accomplish. When they pay their local utility bills, is that international? How about paying their rent? How about filing their state taxes? How about ordering from local suppliers? Very little of the world is international business. That tiny slice that is just dominates the zeitgeist because it’s international. For some examples of things well known that absolutely don’t need global data centers: - airbus and Boeing - Coca-Cola - Marriott and Hilton - the entire US federal government (apart from some maybe military applications) - McDonald’s The list goes on forever because it’s literally nearly every business. Unless you’re in real time markets or operating store fronts globally where latency hurts sales, putting up regions all over the world is a complete and utter waste of money. Making global regions as easy as a click of a button was one of the greatest marketing ploys of cloud providers to date. “Of course Good Will needs a Singapore data center!? How will we meet our P99 goals otherwise?”