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Everytime I see someone talking about "unlimited" something my spider sense ticks off. Except for Google, Amazon and some other big guys, most of companies will

by tucaz 14y ago

Everytime I see someone talking about "unlimited" something my spider sense ticks off. Except for Google, Amazon and some other big guys, most of companies will worry about lots of things before what you mentioned become a problem. Also, AWS, Azure and AppHarbor have takem the license problem out of the way.

nkohari 14y ago
AWS doesn't really take the license problem away -- it just rolls the cost into the price of the instance, which is significantly higher for Windows.
- tucaz 14y ago
  And will only become a problem when you reach a huge scale. If by that time it is still a problem then maybe your problem is not having a good enough business model.
  - nkohari 14y ago
    We're seed-funded and have somewhere around 70 instances in AWS, almost all Linux. In our business, our margin depends largely on our operational costs, and using Windows would be a significant hit to our bottom line.
    - tucaz 14y ago
      So if you had to double your servers (say to 140) would you be at loss? I hope that this is just the initial phase of the company (although not too initial since you need 70 instances) and that you will get to a better margin along the way. Otherwise ANY bump you hit road ahead will break you. Competing on a market that relies entirely on price is a death sentence, unless of course this is your plan.
josteink 14y ago
> Everytime I see someone talking about "unlimited" something my spider sense ticks off. Sure. For some values of unlimited it's purely an academic question. But if you can scale automatically to handle double load (which is a more real concern) chances are you can scale further without any other changes. And yes, AWS, Azure and AppHarbour all have some of the licensing issues handled for you, but that can also be clearly seen when faced with the costs. Again, I' not saying that nobody should ever use a Windows server for anything. I use it myself. I just say that I can see several reasons why people would chose to avoid it.

by tucaz 14y ago

nkohari 14y ago

AWS doesn't really take the license problem away -- it just rolls the cost into the price of the instance, which is significantly higher for Windows.

tucaz 14y ago
And will only become a problem when you reach a huge scale. If by that time it is still a problem then maybe your problem is not having a good enough business model.
- nkohari 14y ago
  We're seed-funded and have somewhere around 70 instances in AWS, almost all Linux. In our business, our margin depends largely on our operational costs, and using Windows would be a significant hit to our bottom line.
  - tucaz 14y ago
    So if you had to double your servers (say to 140) would you be at loss? I hope that this is just the initial phase of the company (although not too initial since you need 70 instances) and that you will get to a better margin along the way. Otherwise ANY bump you hit road ahead will break you. Competing on a market that relies entirely on price is a death sentence, unless of course this is your plan.

josteink 14y ago

> Everytime I see someone talking about "unlimited" something my spider sense ticks off. Sure. For some values of unlimited it's purely an academic question. But if you can scale automatically to handle double load (which is a more real concern) chances are you can scale further without any other changes. And yes, AWS, Azure and AppHarbour all have some of the licensing issues handled for you, but that can also be clearly seen when faced with the costs. Again, I' not saying that nobody should ever use a Windows server for anything. I use it myself. I just say that I can see several reasons why people would chose to avoid it.