7 ms·

Why we moved away from “the cloud” to a “real” server

72 points by dmytton 17y ago

junklight 17y ago
User in One size doesn't fit all shocka! it's really important to work the figures as seen in the article. We use EC2 but for certain scenarios we worked out that hardware would be cheaper. The bandwidth costs in particular can sneaky. All that said I would be prepared to pay quite a premium for using Ec2, especially in conjunction with Rightscale, just for the shear convince and the ease with which we can re-configure and adapt.
byoung2 17y ago
The only way we could increase our available storage was to increase the instance size. I use Rackspace Cloud and have found other alternatives. If they just need more storage, Rackspace Cloud Files (similar to Amazon S3) would work (though it is not mountable to server instances). If they needed an infinitely scalable MySQL database for that historical data, they could use Rackspace Cloud Sites (similar to MediaTemple). What's nice about Rackspace is that you can have Cloud Server instances, Cloud Sites (managed cloud hosting), Cloud Files, and dedicated Rackspace servers all in one place.
- timdorr 17y ago
  Well that sounds highly non-redundant. Putting your eggs in one basket is never really a good idea. Especially when Rackspace has had some major outages this year.
  - byoung2 17y ago
    I didn't say that I only used Rackspace. In fact, I have a cluster of cloud servers on Rackspace, GoGrid, and Amazon because each has its advantages.
schammy 17y ago
It's even cheaper if you build your servers yourself and colocate them at a datacenter. Of course, not every company has a sysadmin, but if you do, you will save a bundle. This also means supporting them yourself, though, which at times can suck a fat one. At Clicky, we have almost 30 servers, all of which we built ourselves. Up front cost is about $1500 per server, and monthly cost is $75 each. If we were leasing servers of similar capacity (RAID, 8GB+ RAM each) they would cost us a minimum of $400 per server per month, which would total close to $12,000 per month. By doing stuff ourselves we instead pay around $3500 per month (~$2000 hosting, and approx. 1 new server installed per month). That's serious money in the bank. I'm not counting sysadmin salary in that figure though, because I am the sysadmin. Still, if you have the capability, it's worth it.
- mtw 17y ago
  also the good thing about getting your own servers is having hardware options (like getting SSD drives instead of the regular ones, having a video card (if you do media transcoding), etc.)
  - jawngee 17y ago
    You don't need a video card for media transcoding.
    - Periodic 17y ago
      But it can make it much faster. Video cards optimized for a lot of those video-related operations.
    - deleted 17y ago
      [deleted]
    - listic 17y ago
      But video transcoding can be faster by a factor of several, if done on a GPU. That's a big deal for those who do video transcoding all the time. The irony is that GPU is a more powerful processor than CPU, just not as versatile and easy to use (only a small subset of programming tools can use it yet) but it changes.
abalashov 17y ago
Cloud servers are for bootstrapping only.
- aaronblohowiak 17y ago
  Batch processing jobs or other "spikey" workloads.
  - Periodic 17y ago
    The main savings people seem to get from cloud computing is by not paying for servers when you aren't using them. There are some economies of scale that the cloud vendors can take advantage of, but in general it seems like the administration costs of those are greater than the savings for constant work loads.
    - lsc 17y ago
      speaking as someone who has personally built several hundred servers over the years, and who has managed several tends of thousands of servers for others, I would argue that there is a sort of 'reverse economy of scale' operating in the hardware market. Now, I'm on the technical side of things except at my own company, where I am everything, so my views on what the 'enterprise' pays are second hand, that is, what the boss tells me when I tell him that 'x amount of ram would solve your problem, and would be cheaper than the Y days of sysadmin time we are spending on it'. But these are my impressions: Unlike the desktop market, all the large-scale server VARs have a 'sliding scale' where the larger you are, the more you pay. And even if you pay 'small business' rates to dell for your servers (which are much lower than 'enterprise' rates, from what I see) you still end up paying 3x-4x what I pay buying the parts and building the server itself. Even if I charge you $500 for building the server (which is gouging, but if you wanted support, that's probably what I'd ask.) I could sell you a 32GiB ram, 8 core 2.2Ghz shanghai for $2000 before disk. For another grand I could build you the same server with 64GiB ram. Compare that to anything from dell. edit: I don't actually sell anything that isn't a 'service' so I don't have a retail license. when I build people servers, I have them buy the parts, then I charge them a fee for labor and support.
pyre 17y ago
> Further, since we process customer card transactions through our servers (we collect details on our site but do not store them ourselves), we have to be PCI compliant, something that Amazon EC2 is not. Once I got to this point all I could wonder is why they bothered to crunch all of those numbers if Amazon EC2 was already fundamentally incompatible with what their business needed. Seems like a waste of time.
- dmytton 17y ago
  You'll notice that the PCI incompatibility was only recently confirmed - 17th Aug 2009. Also, the card processing could easily be hosted elsewhere with the rest of the app on EC2. It just works out better not to do that at the moment.
cubedice 17y ago
What an imbecilic name for a company
springcoil1 17y ago
Its very interesting, when you're working for a startup. To read information like this. Its got me thinking about the 'cloud' and whether my company needs it for its product. This was invaluable.

72 points by dmytton 17y ago

User in One size doesn't fit all shocka! it's really important to work the figures as seen in the article. We use EC2 but for certain scenarios we worked out that hardware would be cheaper. The bandwidth costs in particular can sneaky. All that said I would be prepared to pay quite a premium for using Ec2, especially in conjunction with Rightscale, just for the shear convince and the ease with which we can re-configure and adapt.

byoung2 17y ago

The only way we could increase our available storage was to increase the instance size. I use Rackspace Cloud and have found other alternatives. If they just need more storage, Rackspace Cloud Files (similar to Amazon S3) would work (though it is not mountable to server instances). If they needed an infinitely scalable MySQL database for that historical data, they could use Rackspace Cloud Sites (similar to MediaTemple). What's nice about Rackspace is that you can have Cloud Server instances, Cloud Sites (managed cloud hosting), Cloud Files, and dedicated Rackspace servers all in one place.

timdorr 17y ago
Well that sounds highly non-redundant. Putting your eggs in one basket is never really a good idea. Especially when Rackspace has had some major outages this year.
- byoung2 17y ago
  I didn't say that I only used Rackspace. In fact, I have a cluster of cloud servers on Rackspace, GoGrid, and Amazon because each has its advantages.

schammy 17y ago

It's even cheaper if you build your servers yourself and colocate them at a datacenter. Of course, not every company has a sysadmin, but if you do, you will save a bundle. This also means supporting them yourself, though, which at times can suck a fat one. At Clicky, we have almost 30 servers, all of which we built ourselves. Up front cost is about $1500 per server, and monthly cost is $75 each. If we were leasing servers of similar capacity (RAID, 8GB+ RAM each) they would cost us a minimum of $400 per server per month, which would total close to $12,000 per month. By doing stuff ourselves we instead pay around $3500 per month (~$2000 hosting, and approx. 1 new server installed per month). That's serious money in the bank. I'm not counting sysadmin salary in that figure though, because I am the sysadmin. Still, if you have the capability, it's worth it.

mtw 17y ago
also the good thing about getting your own servers is having hardware options (like getting SSD drives instead of the regular ones, having a video card (if you do media transcoding), etc.)
- jawngee 17y ago
  You don't need a video card for media transcoding.
  - Periodic 17y ago
    But it can make it much faster. Video cards optimized for a lot of those video-related operations.
  - deleted 17y ago
    [deleted]
  - listic 17y ago
    But video transcoding can be faster by a factor of several, if done on a GPU. That's a big deal for those who do video transcoding all the time. The irony is that GPU is a more powerful processor than CPU, just not as versatile and easy to use (only a small subset of programming tools can use it yet) but it changes.

abalashov 17y ago

Cloud servers are for bootstrapping only.

aaronblohowiak 17y ago
Batch processing jobs or other "spikey" workloads.
- Periodic 17y ago
  The main savings people seem to get from cloud computing is by not paying for servers when you aren't using them. There are some economies of scale that the cloud vendors can take advantage of, but in general it seems like the administration costs of those are greater than the savings for constant work loads.
  - lsc 17y ago
    speaking as someone who has personally built several hundred servers over the years, and who has managed several tends of thousands of servers for others, I would argue that there is a sort of 'reverse economy of scale' operating in the hardware market. Now, I'm on the technical side of things except at my own company, where I am everything, so my views on what the 'enterprise' pays are second hand, that is, what the boss tells me when I tell him that 'x amount of ram would solve your problem, and would be cheaper than the Y days of sysadmin time we are spending on it'. But these are my impressions: Unlike the desktop market, all the large-scale server VARs have a 'sliding scale' where the larger you are, the more you pay. And even if you pay 'small business' rates to dell for your servers (which are much lower than 'enterprise' rates, from what I see) you still end up paying 3x-4x what I pay buying the parts and building the server itself. Even if I charge you $500 for building the server (which is gouging, but if you wanted support, that's probably what I'd ask.) I could sell you a 32GiB ram, 8 core 2.2Ghz shanghai for $2000 before disk. For another grand I could build you the same server with 64GiB ram. Compare that to anything from dell. edit: I don't actually sell anything that isn't a 'service' so I don't have a retail license. when I build people servers, I have them buy the parts, then I charge them a fee for labor and support.

pyre 17y ago

> Further, since we process customer card transactions through our servers (we collect details on our site but do not store them ourselves), we have to be PCI compliant, something that Amazon EC2 is not. Once I got to this point all I could wonder is why they bothered to crunch all of those numbers if Amazon EC2 was already fundamentally incompatible with what their business needed. Seems like a waste of time.

dmytton 17y ago
You'll notice that the PCI incompatibility was only recently confirmed - 17th Aug 2009. Also, the card processing could easily be hosted elsewhere with the rest of the app on EC2. It just works out better not to do that at the moment.

cubedice 17y ago

What an imbecilic name for a company

springcoil1 17y ago

Its very interesting, when you're working for a startup. To read information like this. Its got me thinking about the 'cloud' and whether my company needs it for its product. This was invaluable.