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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 cl

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.
- wmf 17y ago
  Unlike the desktop market, all the large-scale server VARs have a 'sliding scale' where the larger you are, the more you pay. I suspect this is somewhat true, but if you don't abuse your salesperson too much you can probably negotiate those prices down. Also, at really large scale (1,000 servers?) you can buy the super-cheap "off the menu" servers like iDataplex and Dell DCS.
  - lsc 17y ago
    from what I've seen, you get DCS at the 'few hundred servers a year' range, and they are still way more expensive than the parts + my theoretical $500 assembly charge. (granted, they are still a better idea than building it yourself without ESD protection.) I don't negotiate, I'm just going on what the boss told me the things cost. And cost per server matters a lot, I mean, my entire business model is predicated on the idea that I can get registered ecc ddr2 ram for $20/gigabyte, and that I can cram a whole lot of it in a server. when I try to recommend similar things to a client who pays more for ram, my model just doesn't work.

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.

wmf 17y ago
Unlike the desktop market, all the large-scale server VARs have a 'sliding scale' where the larger you are, the more you pay. I suspect this is somewhat true, but if you don't abuse your salesperson too much you can probably negotiate those prices down. Also, at really large scale (1,000 servers?) you can buy the super-cheap "off the menu" servers like iDataplex and Dell DCS.
- lsc 17y ago
  from what I've seen, you get DCS at the 'few hundred servers a year' range, and they are still way more expensive than the parts + my theoretical $500 assembly charge. (granted, they are still a better idea than building it yourself without ESD protection.) I don't negotiate, I'm just going on what the boss told me the things cost. And cost per server matters a lot, I mean, my entire business model is predicated on the idea that I can get registered ecc ddr2 ram for $20/gigabyte, and that I can cram a whole lot of it in a server. when I try to recommend similar things to a client who pays more for ram, my model just doesn't work.