4 ms·

With the rise of WFH, I wonder if there could be a model (with some kind of trusted computing angle to prevent physical tampering) where you host your servers a

With the rise of WFH, I wonder if there could be a model (with some kind of trusted computing angle to prevent physical tampering) where you host your servers at employee locations/homes in a very distributed manner. Probably wouldn't fly with things like SOC2, but it's probably cheaper to pay/reimburse employees than pay for rack and network, especially with a small footprint.

countvonbalzac 3y ago
I wonder if that's less efficient though because now every employee has to manage a server, rather than having a small dedicated team that can manage hundreds or thousands of servers.
- candiddevmike 3y ago
  Just have a fleet of NUC like things (that have ECC RAM ones) that you ship around if they break. You could have them boot from network/CDN and never worry about imaging, too. With 1Gb+ residential internet speeds, you could probably build a fairly robust and scalable platform like this.
  - solarpunk 3y ago
    If companies are seriously considering this, they should instead figure out how to distribute applications across their workstations to begin with, no need to distribute extra hardware if you can ensure security, connectivity, and uptime of a single laptop at each employees house.
  - ianburrell 3y ago
    Rack servers are significantly more powerful than NUC. This means going to need more little servers. And more employees or employees that host lots of servers and turn into point of failure. There are also powerful servers, like database, that can’t be split. How many people do you think have symmetric gigabit? The company is going to have to pay for employees to upgrade. And do some separation to keep from saturating link from either work or home.
JambalayaJim 3y ago
This is ludicrous and I’d revolt. A desk is already too much space to give up to my workplace.
anon373839 3y ago
The heat, noise, and space consumption would be unbearable, I think.
- bravetraveler 3y ago
  My garage (in Texas of all places) does fine Not to say we're free of challenges... but hey. We can make this happen. I have a couple racks in the space where car doors are expected, yet can still park. Think of the business continuity wins! Each employee has a Starting Google!
ianburrell 3y ago
Reliability is one reason, residential internet and power is less reliable than commercial. You will have to provide UPS to everybody. Plus, if employees are located together then there is risk that regional power outage could take the system. Then there is latency. Most apps talk to a data store, which is now separated from clients. The load balancers are going to be separated from the backend. Also, database servers tend to be beefy servers so either need to shared it or someone hosts a rack. Another is that need write software to really be distributed. There is difference between distributed when things break and distributed all the time over the internet.
jeffjobs4000 3y ago
If there is access to the hardware, then the data and software are not secure. So you couldn't run any business applications or anything were you would need to have an assumption of data privacy.

countvonbalzac 3y ago

I wonder if that's less efficient though because now every employee has to manage a server, rather than having a small dedicated team that can manage hundreds or thousands of servers.

candiddevmike 3y ago
Just have a fleet of NUC like things (that have ECC RAM ones) that you ship around if they break. You could have them boot from network/CDN and never worry about imaging, too. With 1Gb+ residential internet speeds, you could probably build a fairly robust and scalable platform like this.
- solarpunk 3y ago
  If companies are seriously considering this, they should instead figure out how to distribute applications across their workstations to begin with, no need to distribute extra hardware if you can ensure security, connectivity, and uptime of a single laptop at each employees house.
- ianburrell 3y ago
  Rack servers are significantly more powerful than NUC. This means going to need more little servers. And more employees or employees that host lots of servers and turn into point of failure. There are also powerful servers, like database, that can’t be split. How many people do you think have symmetric gigabit? The company is going to have to pay for employees to upgrade. And do some separation to keep from saturating link from either work or home.

JambalayaJim 3y ago

This is ludicrous and I’d revolt. A desk is already too much space to give up to my workplace.

anon373839 3y ago

The heat, noise, and space consumption would be unbearable, I think.

bravetraveler 3y ago
My garage (in Texas of all places) does fine Not to say we're free of challenges... but hey. We can make this happen. I have a couple racks in the space where car doors are expected, yet can still park. Think of the business continuity wins! Each employee has a Starting Google!

ianburrell 3y ago

Reliability is one reason, residential internet and power is less reliable than commercial. You will have to provide UPS to everybody. Plus, if employees are located together then there is risk that regional power outage could take the system. Then there is latency. Most apps talk to a data store, which is now separated from clients. The load balancers are going to be separated from the backend. Also, database servers tend to be beefy servers so either need to shared it or someone hosts a rack. Another is that need write software to really be distributed. There is difference between distributed when things break and distributed all the time over the internet.

jeffjobs4000 3y ago

If there is access to the hardware, then the data and software are not secure. So you couldn't run any business applications or anything were you would need to have an assumption of data privacy.