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When I did contracting in this space, my AWS based customers invariably needed far more of my time for similar sized setups than the non-cloud customers. The as

by vidarh 3y ago

When I did contracting in this space, my AWS based customers invariably needed far more of my time for similar sized setups than the non-cloud customers. The assumption that the non-cloud users will need to pay for any extra people is the opposite of my experience actually running both types of setup. I used to offer to cut their costs by moving them off AWS, but didn't push it very hard because I made far more money from the ones that insisted on using AWS. Some of them had good reasons. Many were just cargo-culting. You don't need to build datacenters, or rack servers yourself, or even own servers, or even ever having seen your servers in order to have racks of dedicated bare metal colo racks of servers. Plenty of service-providers will rent you those services by the hour, and plenty of server providers will rent or lease-to-own hardware for you, so you get monthly bills. I started working in this space in 1995, and while we've often had servers actually on prem, I've also managed racks worth of servers I've never seen in person, in data centres I've never seen, with the help of "remote hands" provided by colo provider employees I've never met.

scarface_74 3y ago
So did they have multiple redundant data centers worldwide?
- vidarh 3y ago
  They who? I've had dozens of customers, and multiple employers, and co-founded several companies. Most of them had servers in multiple redundant data centres worldwide. None owned any data centres because it rarely pays - owning data centres is a real estate play, not a tech play, which is why you also increasingly see real-estate management companies pick up data centre operators. Unless you're spending in the billions, it's rarely worth it when the markup is a tiny fraction of what you're paying for space and power. Some w/rented servers. Some leased. Some owned. Some with staff on retainer just for us. Some just w/support contracts and remote hands. In some cases we rented office space for ops people in the colo facility, because again: They're real estate plays and the big ones have office suites available.

by vidarh 3y ago

scarface_74 3y ago

So did they have multiple redundant data centers worldwide?

vidarh 3y ago
They who? I've had dozens of customers, and multiple employers, and co-founded several companies. Most of them had servers in multiple redundant data centres worldwide. None owned any data centres because it rarely pays - owning data centres is a real estate play, not a tech play, which is why you also increasingly see real-estate management companies pick up data centre operators. Unless you're spending in the billions, it's rarely worth it when the markup is a tiny fraction of what you're paying for space and power. Some w/rented servers. Some leased. Some owned. Some with staff on retainer just for us. Some just w/support contracts and remote hands. In some cases we rented office space for ops people in the colo facility, because again: They're real estate plays and the big ones have office suites available.