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What bugs me most is the false dichotomy I get when I talk about this with friends; their choice is presented as either use AWS or "hire a full-time sysadmin, b

What bugs me most is the false dichotomy I get when I talk about this with friends; their choice is presented as either use AWS or "hire a full-time sysadmin, buy multiple server-grade boxes and manage all this in a rented data center". I've been told Amazon is saving people "easily" $100k/year by not having to hire staff and buy expensive hardware. This absolutely hits the nail on the head. The dumb part is that the next option down, renting dedicated hardware, seems to be effectively identical with regard to server administration overhead. The only difference is that the time to provision is longer (4 hours with our host), and billing monthly instead of hourly. In either case, you need to know how you are setting up new machines, monitoring them and deploying your application to them. The part that really kills me is this though. Using AWS is supposed to be good for start-ups because it allows you to get started quickly and think about building your product rather than focusing on technology that someone else could handle. The problem is, how you are going to scale your technology on AWS is a problem you need to think about very early. Even the lowest end dedicated hardware is so fast that you can have millions of daily active users before you even need to move beyond a single box. It's amazing how many things you don't need to think about when you only have a single box.

shrooms 13y ago
>The problem is, how you are going to scale your technology on AWS is a problem you need to think about very early. Yep, and in my experience getting developers to wrap their head around decoupling systems and make sure the system is always decoupled is difficult.
jmathai 13y ago
I've done both. In my previous startup (circa 2005) we started at The Planet (are they still around?) and within 18 months we were colocating physical servers at a nearby Level 3. I'm sure it's gotten better but when we colocated I had to project what type of traffic and storage (photos) we'd need. That led us to lease a few servers from HP. We were able to reuse hardware we owned already for reporting type tasks. But I got 1TB storage servers when we were using about 1/5 of that. In my current startup (photos, again) we were on AWS from the beginning. I think we could save money now if we wanted. But when we first started out all we needed were 2 micro instances and S3. I'd say we've increased capacity by 8x since then. But here's the kicker. Since we started on AWS we were able to keep our costs fairly low at the beginning and as we grew we never had to make any long term projections. We simply added capacity (literally) on a weekly basis. Once you start to buy into the AWS ecosystem you begin to reap some serious benefits. You simply cannot think of AWS as just EC2 instances. Of course, the trade-off by going all in is some level of lock-in (though this can easily be minimized). Having done both I am happy to pay AWS more for the ecosystem. -- We're using EC2, ELB, SNS, ElasticTranscoder, RDS, S3, Route53, CloudSearch, CloudFront & Glacier.
- Negitivefrags 13y ago
  But here's the kicker. Since we started on AWS we were able to keep our costs fairly low at the beginning and as we grew we never had to make any long term projections. We simply added capacity (literally) on a weekly basis. The exact same thing can be said for renting dedicated servers. You can add new ones at any time and it's fairly quick. This is exactly how we scaled up as well. Adding new servers day to day as required. Yes, it takes 4 hours rather than 4 minutes but unless you are dynamically scaling up and down throughout the day in direct response to load, you are not using the versatility that you are paying for with AWS. Few people are. Once you start to buy into the AWS ecosystem you begin to reap some serious benefits. You simply cannot think of AWS as just EC2 instances. Of course, the trade-off by going all in is some level of lock-in (though this can easily be minimized). And there is nothing stopping you using these other cloud services without EC2. If you look around at other vendors, you might even be surprised at the prices you can get. For example, we worked out at one point that in our case CloudFront would cost over over $50,000 per month for what we were paying about $4000 per month with a different CDN.
  - jmathai 13y ago
    It's entirely feasible that things are much better than they were a decade ago. I sure hope they are :). Perhaps it's slightly more expensive to start with AWS, cheaper as you scale (WRT man hours) and gets (prohibitively) more expensive once you hit a certain scale. I don't doubt there are plenty of reasons to be off AWS. Lots of evidence exists to support that. And vice versa.
- jsmthrowaway 13y ago
  ThePlanet was purchased by Softlayer, who was then purchased by IBM last summer. So they're now IBM.
erichocean 13y ago
It's amazing how many things you don't need to think about when you only have a single box. This. On the mobile app/social network thingy I'm working on now, I reduced it down to a single process. I've got one thing to watch, and on a single box, I expect—like you said—to scale to millions of users.

shrooms 13y ago

>The problem is, how you are going to scale your technology on AWS is a problem you need to think about very early. Yep, and in my experience getting developers to wrap their head around decoupling systems and make sure the system is always decoupled is difficult.

jmathai 13y ago

I've done both. In my previous startup (circa 2005) we started at The Planet (are they still around?) and within 18 months we were colocating physical servers at a nearby Level 3. I'm sure it's gotten better but when we colocated I had to project what type of traffic and storage (photos) we'd need. That led us to lease a few servers from HP. We were able to reuse hardware we owned already for reporting type tasks. But I got 1TB storage servers when we were using about 1/5 of that. In my current startup (photos, again) we were on AWS from the beginning. I think we could save money now if we wanted. But when we first started out all we needed were 2 micro instances and S3. I'd say we've increased capacity by 8x since then. But here's the kicker. Since we started on AWS we were able to keep our costs fairly low at the beginning and as we grew we never had to make any long term projections. We simply added capacity (literally) on a weekly basis. Once you start to buy into the AWS ecosystem you begin to reap some serious benefits. You simply cannot think of AWS as just EC2 instances. Of course, the trade-off by going all in is some level of lock-in (though this can easily be minimized). Having done both I am happy to pay AWS more for the ecosystem. -- We're using EC2, ELB, SNS, ElasticTranscoder, RDS, S3, Route53, CloudSearch, CloudFront & Glacier.

Negitivefrags 13y ago
But here's the kicker. Since we started on AWS we were able to keep our costs fairly low at the beginning and as we grew we never had to make any long term projections. We simply added capacity (literally) on a weekly basis. The exact same thing can be said for renting dedicated servers. You can add new ones at any time and it's fairly quick. This is exactly how we scaled up as well. Adding new servers day to day as required. Yes, it takes 4 hours rather than 4 minutes but unless you are dynamically scaling up and down throughout the day in direct response to load, you are not using the versatility that you are paying for with AWS. Few people are. Once you start to buy into the AWS ecosystem you begin to reap some serious benefits. You simply cannot think of AWS as just EC2 instances. Of course, the trade-off by going all in is some level of lock-in (though this can easily be minimized). And there is nothing stopping you using these other cloud services without EC2. If you look around at other vendors, you might even be surprised at the prices you can get. For example, we worked out at one point that in our case CloudFront would cost over over $50,000 per month for what we were paying about $4000 per month with a different CDN.
- jmathai 13y ago
  It's entirely feasible that things are much better than they were a decade ago. I sure hope they are :). Perhaps it's slightly more expensive to start with AWS, cheaper as you scale (WRT man hours) and gets (prohibitively) more expensive once you hit a certain scale. I don't doubt there are plenty of reasons to be off AWS. Lots of evidence exists to support that. And vice versa.
jsmthrowaway 13y ago
ThePlanet was purchased by Softlayer, who was then purchased by IBM last summer. So they're now IBM.

erichocean 13y ago

It's amazing how many things you don't need to think about when you only have a single box. This. On the mobile app/social network thingy I'm working on now, I reduced it down to a single process. I've got one thing to watch, and on a single box, I expect—like you said—to scale to millions of users.