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What is old is new again. My employer is so conservative and slow that they are forerunning this Local Cloud Edge Our Basement thing by just not doing anything

What is old is new again. My employer is so conservative and slow that they are forerunning this Local Cloud Edge Our Basement thing by just not doing anything.

Aissen 1y ago
As an infrastructure engineer (amongst other things), hard disagree here. I realize you might be joking, but a bit of context here: a big chunk of the success of Cloud in more traditional organizations is the agility that comes with it: (almost) no need to ask permission to anyone, ownership of your resources, etc. There is no reason that baremetal shouldn't provide the same customer-oriented service, at least for the low-level IaaS, give-me-a-VM-now needs. I'd even argue this type of self-service (and accounting!) should be done by any team providing internal software services.
- infogulch 1y ago
  Like https://oxide.computer/ https://oxide.computer/ ?
- abujazar 1y ago
  The permissions and ownership part has little to do with the infrastructure – in fact I've often found it more difficult to get permissions and access to resources in cloud-heavy orgs.
  - joshuaissac 1y ago
    This could be due to the bureaucratic parts of the company being too slow initially to gain influence over cloud administration, which results in teams and projects that use the cloud being less hindered by bureaucracy. As cloud is more widely adopted, this advantage starts to disappear. However, there are still certain things like automatic scaling where it still holds the advantage (compared to requesting the deployment of additional hardware resources on premises).
- alexchantavy 1y ago
  > no need to ask permission to anyone, ownership of your resources, etc In a large enough org that experience doesn’t happen though - you have to go through and understand how the org’s infra-as-code repo works, where to make your change, and get approval for that.
  - misiek08 1y ago
    You also need to get budget, few months earlier, sometimes even legal approval. Then you have security rules, „preferred” services and the list goes on..
- michaelt 1y ago
  "No need to ask permission" and "You get the same bill every month" kinda work against one another here.
  - Aissen 1y ago
    I should have been more precise… Many sub-orgs have budget freedom to do their job, and not having to go through a central authority to get hardware is often a feature. Hence why Cloud works so well in non-regulatory heavy traditional orgs: budget owner can just accept the risks and let the people do the work. My comment was more of a warning to would-be infrastructure people: they absolutely need to be customer-focused, and build automation from the start.
- rightbyte 1y ago
  Well ye it is more like I frame it as a joke but I do mean it. I don't argue there aren't special cases for using fancy cloud vendors, though. But classical datacentre rentals get you almost always there for less. Personally I like being able to touch and hear the computers I use.
- blibble 1y ago
  don't underestimate the ability of traditional organisations to build that process around cloud you keep the usual BS to get hardware, plus now it's 10x more expensive and requires 5x the engineering!
  - datadrivenangel 1y ago
    This is my experience, though the lead time for 'new hardware' on cloud is only 6-12 weeks of political knife fighting instead of 6-18 months of that plus waiting.
- ambicapter 1y ago
  I'm at a startup and I don't have access to the terraform repo :( and console is locked down ofc.
- rcxdude 1y ago
  I think also this was only a temporary situation caused by the IT departments in these organisations being essentially bypassed. Once it became a big important thing then they have basically started to take control of it and you get the same problems (in fact potentially more so because the expense means there's more pressure cut down resources).
- kccqzy 1y ago
  That's a cultural issue. Initially at my workplace people needed to ask permissions to deploy their code. The team approving the deployment got sick of it and built a self-service deployment tool with security controls built in and now deployment is easy. All it matters is a culture of trusting other fellow employees, a culture of automating, and a culture of valuing internal users.
  - Aissen 1y ago
    Agreed, that's exactly what I was aiming at. I'm not saying that it's the only advantage of Cloud, but that orgs with a dysfunctional resource-access culture were a fertile ground for cloud deployments. Basically: some managers gets fed-up with weeks/months of delays for baremetal or VM access -> takes risks and gets cloud services -> successful projects in less time -> gets promoted -> more cloud in the org.
HPsquared 1y ago
"Do nothing, Win"
radu_floricica 1y ago
> What is old is new again. Over the years I tried occasionally to look into cloud, but it never made sense. A lot of complexity and significantly higher cost, for very low performance and a promise of "scalability". You virtually never need scalability so fast that you don't have time to add another server - and at baremetal costs, you're usually about a year ahead of the curve anyways.
- ep103 1y ago
  The benefit of cloud has always been that it allows the company to trade capex for opex. From an engineering perspective, it trades scalability for complexity, but this is a secondary effect compared to the former tradeoff.
  - et1337 1y ago
    I’ve heard this a lot, but… doesn’t Hetzner do the same?
  - PeterStuer 1y ago
    "trade capex for opex" This has nothing to do with cloud. Businesses have forever turned IT expenses from capex to opex. We called this "operating leases".
  - radiator 1y ago
    Hetzner is also a cloud. You avoid buying hardware, you rent it instead. You can rent either VMs or dedicated servers, but in both cases you own nothing.
- kitd 1y ago
  People are usually the biggest cost in any organisation. If you can run all your systems without the sysadmins & netadmins required to keep it all upright (especially at expensive times like weekends or run up to Black Friday/Xmas), you can save yourself a lot more than the extra it'll cost to get a cloud provider to do it all for you.
  - 1y ago
kccqzy 1y ago
My employer also resisted using cloud compute and sent staff explanations why building our own data centers is a good thing.
Damogran6 1y ago
As a career security guy, I've lost count of the battles I've lost in the race to the cloud...now it's 'we have to up the budget $250k a year to cover costs' and you just shrug. The cost for your first on-prem datacenter server is pretty steep...the cost for the second one? Not so much.
marcosdumay 1y ago
> What is old is new again. It's not really. It just happens that when there is a huge bullshit hype out there, people that fall for it regret and come back to normal after a while. Better things are still better. And this one was clearly only better for a few use-cases that most people shouldn't care about since the beginning.
darkwater 1y ago
> What is old is new again. I think there is a generational part as well. The ones of us that are now deep in our 40s or 50s grew up professionally in a self-hosted world, and some of us are now in decision-making positions, so we don't necessarily have to take the cloud pill anymore :) Half-joking, half-serious.
- olavgg 1y ago
  I'm in my 40s and run my own company. We deliver a data platform, our customers can choose between our self-hosted solution or run it on AWS/Azure for 10x higher cost.

What is old is new again. My employer is so conservative and slow that they are forerunning this Local Cloud Edge Our Basement thing by just not doing anything.

Aissen 1y ago

As an infrastructure engineer (amongst other things), hard disagree here. I realize you might be joking, but a bit of context here: a big chunk of the success of Cloud in more traditional organizations is the agility that comes with it: (almost) no need to ask permission to anyone, ownership of your resources, etc. There is no reason that baremetal shouldn't provide the same customer-oriented service, at least for the low-level IaaS, give-me-a-VM-now needs. I'd even argue this type of self-service (and accounting!) should be done by any team providing internal software services.

infogulch 1y ago
Like https://oxide.computer/ https://oxide.computer/ ?
abujazar 1y ago
The permissions and ownership part has little to do with the infrastructure – in fact I've often found it more difficult to get permissions and access to resources in cloud-heavy orgs.
- joshuaissac 1y ago
  This could be due to the bureaucratic parts of the company being too slow initially to gain influence over cloud administration, which results in teams and projects that use the cloud being less hindered by bureaucracy. As cloud is more widely adopted, this advantage starts to disappear. However, there are still certain things like automatic scaling where it still holds the advantage (compared to requesting the deployment of additional hardware resources on premises).
alexchantavy 1y ago
> no need to ask permission to anyone, ownership of your resources, etc In a large enough org that experience doesn’t happen though - you have to go through and understand how the org’s infra-as-code repo works, where to make your change, and get approval for that.
- misiek08 1y ago
  You also need to get budget, few months earlier, sometimes even legal approval. Then you have security rules, „preferred” services and the list goes on..
michaelt 1y ago
"No need to ask permission" and "You get the same bill every month" kinda work against one another here.
- Aissen 1y ago
  I should have been more precise… Many sub-orgs have budget freedom to do their job, and not having to go through a central authority to get hardware is often a feature. Hence why Cloud works so well in non-regulatory heavy traditional orgs: budget owner can just accept the risks and let the people do the work. My comment was more of a warning to would-be infrastructure people: they absolutely need to be customer-focused, and build automation from the start.
rightbyte 1y ago
Well ye it is more like I frame it as a joke but I do mean it. I don't argue there aren't special cases for using fancy cloud vendors, though. But classical datacentre rentals get you almost always there for less. Personally I like being able to touch and hear the computers I use.
blibble 1y ago
don't underestimate the ability of traditional organisations to build that process around cloud you keep the usual BS to get hardware, plus now it's 10x more expensive and requires 5x the engineering!
- datadrivenangel 1y ago
  This is my experience, though the lead time for 'new hardware' on cloud is only 6-12 weeks of political knife fighting instead of 6-18 months of that plus waiting.
ambicapter 1y ago
I'm at a startup and I don't have access to the terraform repo :( and console is locked down ofc.
rcxdude 1y ago
I think also this was only a temporary situation caused by the IT departments in these organisations being essentially bypassed. Once it became a big important thing then they have basically started to take control of it and you get the same problems (in fact potentially more so because the expense means there's more pressure cut down resources).
kccqzy 1y ago
That's a cultural issue. Initially at my workplace people needed to ask permissions to deploy their code. The team approving the deployment got sick of it and built a self-service deployment tool with security controls built in and now deployment is easy. All it matters is a culture of trusting other fellow employees, a culture of automating, and a culture of valuing internal users.
- Aissen 1y ago
  Agreed, that's exactly what I was aiming at. I'm not saying that it's the only advantage of Cloud, but that orgs with a dysfunctional resource-access culture were a fertile ground for cloud deployments. Basically: some managers gets fed-up with weeks/months of delays for baremetal or VM access -> takes risks and gets cloud services -> successful projects in less time -> gets promoted -> more cloud in the org.

HPsquared 1y ago

"Do nothing, Win"

radu_floricica 1y ago

> What is old is new again. Over the years I tried occasionally to look into cloud, but it never made sense. A lot of complexity and significantly higher cost, for very low performance and a promise of "scalability". You virtually never need scalability so fast that you don't have time to add another server - and at baremetal costs, you're usually about a year ahead of the curve anyways.

ep103 1y ago
The benefit of cloud has always been that it allows the company to trade capex for opex. From an engineering perspective, it trades scalability for complexity, but this is a secondary effect compared to the former tradeoff.
- et1337 1y ago
  I’ve heard this a lot, but… doesn’t Hetzner do the same?
- PeterStuer 1y ago
  "trade capex for opex" This has nothing to do with cloud. Businesses have forever turned IT expenses from capex to opex. We called this "operating leases".
- radiator 1y ago
  Hetzner is also a cloud. You avoid buying hardware, you rent it instead. You can rent either VMs or dedicated servers, but in both cases you own nothing.
kitd 1y ago
People are usually the biggest cost in any organisation. If you can run all your systems without the sysadmins & netadmins required to keep it all upright (especially at expensive times like weekends or run up to Black Friday/Xmas), you can save yourself a lot more than the extra it'll cost to get a cloud provider to do it all for you.
- 1y ago

kccqzy 1y ago

My employer also resisted using cloud compute and sent staff explanations why building our own data centers is a good thing.

Damogran6 1y ago

As a career security guy, I've lost count of the battles I've lost in the race to the cloud...now it's 'we have to up the budget $250k a year to cover costs' and you just shrug. The cost for your first on-prem datacenter server is pretty steep...the cost for the second one? Not so much.

marcosdumay 1y ago

> What is old is new again. It's not really. It just happens that when there is a huge bullshit hype out there, people that fall for it regret and come back to normal after a while. Better things are still better. And this one was clearly only better for a few use-cases that most people shouldn't care about since the beginning.

darkwater 1y ago

> What is old is new again. I think there is a generational part as well. The ones of us that are now deep in our 40s or 50s grew up professionally in a self-hosted world, and some of us are now in decision-making positions, so we don't necessarily have to take the cloud pill anymore :) Half-joking, half-serious.

olavgg 1y ago
I'm in my 40s and run my own company. We deliver a data platform, our customers can choose between our self-hosted solution or run it on AWS/Azure for 10x higher cost.