3 ms·

If you can run everything you need on two or three servers, what you describe can work. But it’s still hobby status, basically. The equation changes when the sc

by antonvs 4mo ago

If you can run everything you need on two or three servers, what you describe can work. But it’s still hobby status, basically. The equation changes when the scale gets significantly bigger. Managing a non-trivial hardware fleet requires people, and people cost money. The reason “managed services” of all kinds, including cloud services, are so widespread in business is because someone else is managing things so that you don’t have to. This is as serious as it gets in business. Managing your own hardware makes very little sense for many, if not most companies.

tetha 4mo ago
Own hardware has a weird scaling curve. It does not make sense for a lot of time and scaling. You need 3+ people maintaining it, you have upfront costs in the hundreds of thousands of euros on the very lower end. If you don't utilize that money spent, sucks to be you. You have planning times in the area of months, not hours, unless you keep capacity you don't use around (rackspace, cabling, power/cooling capacity). On the other hand, if you have that hardware management running, it's very amazing. Before the AI nuke, We were looking at moving various systems fully bare metal, because it would simplify management on both sides a lot, and a common statement I heard is "We don't deal with systems that small. If we do bare metal container hosting, we don't measure in dozens of gigabytes of memory. Your business case validates that investment. Here is btw three test systems about double your requirement, just old". Before the AI nonsense (HBM Memory Demand -> RAM & SSD prices), this would result in very competitive hosting costs after some scale, when amortized across 5 years and then tossed into the testing environment until it stops functioning. And these testing environments allow for a lot of experimentation and failover testing. Though now it's all very different and not clear.
codedokode 4mo ago
One server is enough for many small businesses. And for large business (like X or Instagram) it is economically more profitable to own their servers. For example, in my country top companies like VK or Yandex own their datacenters and sell cloud services instead of paying for someone's else cloud. Also if you have several servers you do not need to hire a full-time sysadmin. > Managing a non-trivial hardware fleet requires people, and people cost money. People in AWS also cost money and guess who is going to cover this cost?
- cyberax 4mo ago
  Suppose that you are a midsize company or a b2b service, so you want to make sure that your service has minimum downtime. This means that you need sysadmins in close proximity to your hardware to do hardware swapping/troubleshooting. Or you need to engineer your system to not have a SPOF (which is not easy). So you're looking at employing at least 2 engineers near your datacenter.
  - calvinmorrison 4mo ago
    Really? We basically never go onsight. Ticket in with the colo and they can help.
    - cyberax 4mo ago
      That really works well while you have a rack or so. Afterwards, you really need people who know all the details of networking and storage. Especially if you're designing something without a SPOF. What's changing is the scope of things that you can run on that one rack. 15 years ago, I was running clusters of 30 computers to do things that I now can do with 1.
      - calvinmorrison 4mo ago
        Nope... last time i was on site was when we migrated data centers. a dozen racks.
- marysol5 4mo ago
  >own their datacenters and sell cloud services instead of paying for someone's else cloud. Or because it's cost-effective to slice up your infrastructure and sell off the bits you're not using right now.
- nijave 4mo ago
  No it's not. The poster is advocating replacing technology to share a single system with dedicated, non-shared systems. Even the most basic business app has an app server and a database server. If they have 6 business apps, they'd have at least 7 dedicated servers (assuming we're allowing a database server to have multiple app databases sharing it)
zuzululu 4mo ago
i dont get this dedicated servers = hobby mentality you can do a ton with just a couple of dedicated servers with the redundancy you need
- dboreham 4mo ago
  Three really, but otherwise yes.
- deleted 4mo ago
  [deleted]
TZubiri 4mo ago
There seems to be some confusion, although one other user interpreted the same thing, I still believe it's a misinterpretation. I said dedicated servers, I never said anything about owning or managing the hardware. You can rent a dedicated server. The decision to virtualize and the decision to own the hardware are separate decisions.
- antonvs 4mo ago
  It doesn't really make any difference. Managing "dedicated servers" essentially requires the same level of effort as managing hardware.
  - TZubiri 4mo ago
    Nope, I've rented a dedicated server through OVH and I never had to touch a single cable or change a single disk. I also dealt with owned servers and I had to deal with power outages and gas based generators, internet outages caused by too high trucks taking out a data line, and UPS beeping because their battery life was nearing zero. So there's a non trivial difference there.

by antonvs 4mo ago

tetha 4mo ago

Own hardware has a weird scaling curve. It does not make sense for a lot of time and scaling. You need 3+ people maintaining it, you have upfront costs in the hundreds of thousands of euros on the very lower end. If you don't utilize that money spent, sucks to be you. You have planning times in the area of months, not hours, unless you keep capacity you don't use around (rackspace, cabling, power/cooling capacity). On the other hand, if you have that hardware management running, it's very amazing. Before the AI nuke, We were looking at moving various systems fully bare metal, because it would simplify management on both sides a lot, and a common statement I heard is "We don't deal with systems that small. If we do bare metal container hosting, we don't measure in dozens of gigabytes of memory. Your business case validates that investment. Here is btw three test systems about double your requirement, just old". Before the AI nonsense (HBM Memory Demand -> RAM & SSD prices), this would result in very competitive hosting costs after some scale, when amortized across 5 years and then tossed into the testing environment until it stops functioning. And these testing environments allow for a lot of experimentation and failover testing. Though now it's all very different and not clear.

codedokode 4mo ago

One server is enough for many small businesses. And for large business (like X or Instagram) it is economically more profitable to own their servers. For example, in my country top companies like VK or Yandex own their datacenters and sell cloud services instead of paying for someone's else cloud. Also if you have several servers you do not need to hire a full-time sysadmin. > Managing a non-trivial hardware fleet requires people, and people cost money. People in AWS also cost money and guess who is going to cover this cost?

cyberax 4mo ago
Suppose that you are a midsize company or a b2b service, so you want to make sure that your service has minimum downtime. This means that you need sysadmins in close proximity to your hardware to do hardware swapping/troubleshooting. Or you need to engineer your system to not have a SPOF (which is not easy). So you're looking at employing at least 2 engineers near your datacenter.
- calvinmorrison 4mo ago
  Really? We basically never go onsight. Ticket in with the colo and they can help.
  - cyberax 4mo ago
    That really works well while you have a rack or so. Afterwards, you really need people who know all the details of networking and storage. Especially if you're designing something without a SPOF. What's changing is the scope of things that you can run on that one rack. 15 years ago, I was running clusters of 30 computers to do things that I now can do with 1.
    - calvinmorrison 4mo ago
      Nope... last time i was on site was when we migrated data centers. a dozen racks.
marysol5 4mo ago
>own their datacenters and sell cloud services instead of paying for someone's else cloud. Or because it's cost-effective to slice up your infrastructure and sell off the bits you're not using right now.
nijave 4mo ago
No it's not. The poster is advocating replacing technology to share a single system with dedicated, non-shared systems. Even the most basic business app has an app server and a database server. If they have 6 business apps, they'd have at least 7 dedicated servers (assuming we're allowing a database server to have multiple app databases sharing it)

zuzululu 4mo ago

i dont get this dedicated servers = hobby mentality you can do a ton with just a couple of dedicated servers with the redundancy you need

dboreham 4mo ago
Three really, but otherwise yes.
deleted 4mo ago
[deleted]

TZubiri 4mo ago

There seems to be some confusion, although one other user interpreted the same thing, I still believe it's a misinterpretation. I said dedicated servers, I never said anything about owning or managing the hardware. You can rent a dedicated server. The decision to virtualize and the decision to own the hardware are separate decisions.

antonvs 4mo ago
It doesn't really make any difference. Managing "dedicated servers" essentially requires the same level of effort as managing hardware.
- TZubiri 4mo ago
  Nope, I've rented a dedicated server through OVH and I never had to touch a single cable or change a single disk. I also dealt with owned servers and I had to deal with power outages and gas based generators, internet outages caused by too high trucks taking out a data line, and UPS beeping because their battery life was nearing zero. So there's a non trivial difference there.