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but if you self host, how do you anticipate power outages and natural disasters? you shift it from a problem of software reliability to a problem of physical i

but if you self host, how do you anticipate power outages and natural disasters? you shift it from a problem of software reliability to a problem of physical infrastructure. at some point in the chain somebody has to do that, but i'd prefer the person doing that was somebody with DEEP experience in it that could give you some nice confident assurances.

0xbadcafebee 2y ago
Basically you rent space and machines in datacenters that are geographically distributed and designed to resist natural disasters
- Gigachad 2y ago
  That's exactly what Github does already. I wouldn't bet on my own org being better at hosting github than github.
  - mrweasel 2y ago
    Perhaps not better at hosting Github, but some sort of code repository. We've been running on-prem Bitbucket for years and our uptime is easily better than Githubs. The feature set is small, and the CI/CD pipelines are a separate issue, but I still think we come out on top. Depending on your size your requirements may be much lower and easier to manage. Github has to be all things to all people and that comes with complexity and that can make things more fragile.
  - 0xbadcafebee 2y ago
    Agreed. I have worked for several companies who tried to self-host their VCS etc, and their uptime was way worse, the overall cost was higher, and there were less features. Having a backup is always a good idea though, and an emergency plan for how to onboard to a competitor.
jcims 2y ago
Most of the companies exposed to this are already going to be running a number of geographically diverse datacenters and have been exposed to regulations around basic DR/BCP for decades. >at some point in the chain somebody has to do that, but i'd prefer the person doing that was somebody with DEEP experience in it that could give you some nice confident assurances. Yes. This is part of the reason why services like git are being moved outside the datacenter. Most of the product offerings on the market don't scale well, have terrible reliability and are still very expensive to run.
Over2Chars 2y ago
You're just using your own data center instead of Jeff's bit barn. I mean seriously people, a "cloud" is just someone elses' data center. Am I missing something?
- parpfish 2y ago
  Yes, but if it’s somebody else’s data center it’s on them to figure out how to earthquake proof or whatever. The cloud isnt just renting a computer, it’s renting a computer with a guarantee of uptime that somebody else can be financially liable for
  - Over2Chars 2y ago
    If Jeff is using DataCenter XYZ, and then letting me use his API to manage my VMs on his "cloud", and I decide to rent a cage at the exact same DataCenter XYZ on my own servers, I'm now "self-hosting". Same Datacenter. Same reliability infrastructure wise - power, earthquakes, tsunami, typhoons, black plague, monkey pox, etc.
    - ikiris 2y ago
      You seem to equate the some straw man version of the cloud to simple rack hosting in a single location. They are nothing alike. A cloud service is almost always geographically diverse and highly available in a way that is beyond most people to build out.
      - Over2Chars 2y ago
        Am I? Cloud providers usually quote price estimates for their least redundant single region services to give the impression of cost competitiveness. But their virtual offerings are much less reliable than a standalone system by a lot (they guarantee to refund you the 25cents for your instance if it goes down, not the value of the service interruption or its cost. lol! Read that TOS) What's the solution to their inherent unreliability? Redundancy at more cost. Well, hey, you can rent two colocation facilities if you really need redundancy across geographic regions. And maybe you can just use your colo as a source for a CDN that is geographically diverse (for latency, not hurricanes). Geographic diversity and HA is beyond most people? If you're the kind of business that needs that, you can hire the exact same people that Amazon Pip'd and fired because they didn't hit some arbitrary ticket metrics, to scale your business. e.g. https://www.forbes.com/sites/lucianapaulise/2022/10/27/amazons-high-attrition-could-cost-8-billion-annually/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/lucianapaulise/2022/10/27/amazo...

0xbadcafebee 2y ago

Basically you rent space and machines in datacenters that are geographically distributed and designed to resist natural disasters

Gigachad 2y ago
That's exactly what Github does already. I wouldn't bet on my own org being better at hosting github than github.
- mrweasel 2y ago
  Perhaps not better at hosting Github, but some sort of code repository. We've been running on-prem Bitbucket for years and our uptime is easily better than Githubs. The feature set is small, and the CI/CD pipelines are a separate issue, but I still think we come out on top. Depending on your size your requirements may be much lower and easier to manage. Github has to be all things to all people and that comes with complexity and that can make things more fragile.
- 0xbadcafebee 2y ago
  Agreed. I have worked for several companies who tried to self-host their VCS etc, and their uptime was way worse, the overall cost was higher, and there were less features. Having a backup is always a good idea though, and an emergency plan for how to onboard to a competitor.

jcims 2y ago

Most of the companies exposed to this are already going to be running a number of geographically diverse datacenters and have been exposed to regulations around basic DR/BCP for decades. >at some point in the chain somebody has to do that, but i'd prefer the person doing that was somebody with DEEP experience in it that could give you some nice confident assurances. Yes. This is part of the reason why services like git are being moved outside the datacenter. Most of the product offerings on the market don't scale well, have terrible reliability and are still very expensive to run.

Over2Chars 2y ago

You're just using your own data center instead of Jeff's bit barn. I mean seriously people, a "cloud" is just someone elses' data center. Am I missing something?

parpfish 2y ago
Yes, but if it’s somebody else’s data center it’s on them to figure out how to earthquake proof or whatever. The cloud isnt just renting a computer, it’s renting a computer with a guarantee of uptime that somebody else can be financially liable for
- Over2Chars 2y ago
  If Jeff is using DataCenter XYZ, and then letting me use his API to manage my VMs on his "cloud", and I decide to rent a cage at the exact same DataCenter XYZ on my own servers, I'm now "self-hosting". Same Datacenter. Same reliability infrastructure wise - power, earthquakes, tsunami, typhoons, black plague, monkey pox, etc.
  - ikiris 2y ago
    You seem to equate the some straw man version of the cloud to simple rack hosting in a single location. They are nothing alike. A cloud service is almost always geographically diverse and highly available in a way that is beyond most people to build out.
    - Over2Chars 2y ago
      Am I? Cloud providers usually quote price estimates for their least redundant single region services to give the impression of cost competitiveness. But their virtual offerings are much less reliable than a standalone system by a lot (they guarantee to refund you the 25cents for your instance if it goes down, not the value of the service interruption or its cost. lol! Read that TOS) What's the solution to their inherent unreliability? Redundancy at more cost. Well, hey, you can rent two colocation facilities if you really need redundancy across geographic regions. And maybe you can just use your colo as a source for a CDN that is geographically diverse (for latency, not hurricanes). Geographic diversity and HA is beyond most people? If you're the kind of business that needs that, you can hire the exact same people that Amazon Pip'd and fired because they didn't hit some arbitrary ticket metrics, to scale your business. e.g. https://www.forbes.com/sites/lucianapaulise/2022/10/27/amazons-high-attrition-could-cost-8-billion-annually/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/lucianapaulise/2022/10/27/amazo...