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Public cloud is not for everyone. If you have a large number of machines that have to run all the time and are being taxed, then public cloud services do not m

Public cloud is not for everyone. If you have a large number of machines that have to run all the time and are being taxed, then public cloud services do not make sense. If you are doing complex machine learning, large scale web crawling/scrapping, or generating large quantities of data (images/video/etc.) then services like AWS might not be a fit. They are incredibly awesome though for certain types of workload, but for others it is a very expensive option that isn't economical. Personally I think the best is some mix of both public and private, so you have the scalability when you really spike but have cheaper more capable machines handling baseline and things like analysis or storage workloads.

rhizome 13y ago
It's for people not making enough money (or not having the clue) to hire systems talent. If you read the Moz report, they appear to have gotten a new CEO and are now building out a datacenter presence. They spent 7MM+/yr on AWS in 2013, there is no way that won't be viciously slashed by renting racks.
- ballard 13y ago
  That could hire 18 staff w/ solid chops in Silicon Valley and still have plenty for gear, software and vendors.
- trentmb 13y ago
  > It's for people not making enough money (or not having the clue) to hire systems talent. Yeah, this isn't really surprising. As soon as the convenience/expertise 'tax' exceeds hiring your own, it makes sense to make the jump. Are people surprised that big enough organizations have their own accountants or lawyers?
- vidarh 13y ago
  > It's for people not making enough money (or not having the clue) to hire systems talent. That may be true compared to doing your own racks, but not compared to renting managed servers at a monthly basis. Every time I price out AWS vs alternatives, I end up with the same: If you need a server for more than about 8 hours a day, renting a managed server at a monthly basis tends to come out substantially cheaper. And that doesn't increase sysadmin workload; in fact many hosting providers now offers APIs for provisioning monthly billed services too, just generally with lead times in hours instead of minutes/seconds, so it takes really bursty traffic before taking the hassle of auto-scaling with cloud instances becomes worthwhile.

rhizome 13y ago

It's for people not making enough money (or not having the clue) to hire systems talent. If you read the Moz report, they appear to have gotten a new CEO and are now building out a datacenter presence. They spent 7MM+/yr on AWS in 2013, there is no way that won't be viciously slashed by renting racks.

ballard 13y ago
That could hire 18 staff w/ solid chops in Silicon Valley and still have plenty for gear, software and vendors.
trentmb 13y ago
> It's for people not making enough money (or not having the clue) to hire systems talent. Yeah, this isn't really surprising. As soon as the convenience/expertise 'tax' exceeds hiring your own, it makes sense to make the jump. Are people surprised that big enough organizations have their own accountants or lawyers?
vidarh 13y ago
> It's for people not making enough money (or not having the clue) to hire systems talent. That may be true compared to doing your own racks, but not compared to renting managed servers at a monthly basis. Every time I price out AWS vs alternatives, I end up with the same: If you need a server for more than about 8 hours a day, renting a managed server at a monthly basis tends to come out substantially cheaper. And that doesn't increase sysadmin workload; in fact many hosting providers now offers APIs for provisioning monthly billed services too, just generally with lead times in hours instead of minutes/seconds, so it takes really bursty traffic before taking the hassle of auto-scaling with cloud instances becomes worthwhile.