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it's not. Most people forgetting maintenance costs. They are raising much higher in non Cloud environments. Instead of tracking just your load and buying server

by merb 11y ago

it's not. Most people forgetting maintenance costs. They are raising much higher in non Cloud environments. Instead of tracking just your load and buying servers you need to track EVERYTHING. Hardware failure, replace it, etc. Also networking, it's really really really hard to run a Big network. AWS VPC is easy, AWS VPC is predictable. A normal network is not predictable. People forget about a lot of things, especially that it isn't that easy to buy hardware and put it into a datacenter. Also renting the datacenter or buying it? What about the clima? Do you need special coolers etc? What about raising electricity cost? Or higher network costs to your t2, t1 provider? On AWS a box costs x Cent per Hour and most likely these prices will fall. You only need to pay that. We run on AWS and especially due to the networking we pay less than we would pay in a normal datacenter. Mostly cause of the fact that they want money for everything. Even in the small scale, just buying 3-4 AWS instances upfront is really really cheap.

toomuchtodo 11y ago
I do Devops/Infrastructure for a living, I've shown the math to both my day gig and numerous consulting clients that AWS is 30-40% more expensive, even when taking into account reserved instance pricing. External networking expecially is super expensive compared to traditional transit pricing. They're absolutely wonderful for bursty or async workloads, but if you know your load, you're better off on your own gear. EDIT: Source added. https://blog.serverdensity.com/saving-500k-per-month-buying-your-own-hardware-cloud-vs-colocation/ https://blog.serverdensity.com/saving-500k-per-month-buying-... "Saving $500k per month buying your own hardware – cloud vs colocation" The article mentions SoftLayer, but its just as relevant for AWS.
- merb 11y ago
  I didn't meant external networking. Connect two datacenters, see what costs come up. Connect machines inside your datacenter, etc.. Your maintenance cost will raise. AWS is cheap. Whatever you did, you operated on a really slow scale where money didn't mattered. Or you completely forgot a lot in your calculation. Oh and here is a Link from Zynga: http://readwrite.com/2015/05/12/zynga-data-center-amazon-aws-public-cloud http://readwrite.com/2015/05/12/zynga-data-center-amazon-aws... My next examples would be Gilt, etc. You can't run elastic in your own datacenter. From your article: > https://blog.serverdensity.com/saving-500k-per-month-buying-your-own-hardware-cloud-vs-colocation/ https://blog.serverdensity.com/saving-500k-per-month-buying-... > Dell R415 with x2 processors each with 8 cores, 32GB RAM, a 500GB SATA system drive and a 400GB SSD This one made me laugh...
  - toomuchtodo 11y ago
    > AWS is cheap. Whatever you did, you operated on a really slow scale where money didn't mattered. Or you completely forgot a lot in your calculation. I've managed thousands of instances in AWS, and I've managed thousands of servers in colos, both owned (DOE facility, web hosting startup, consulting firm) or with the space leased (Equinix, Savvis, Cogent, IBM). You could most definitely run elastic workloads in your own datacenter now using Docker containers, and one of the many orchestration frameworks that exist for it. As I mentioned above, if you don't have a predictable workload, AWS is great. Exceptional even. But if you know your workload and can hire 2-3 people to manage it (which you should be doing at scale), its cheaper to get your own gear and colo it.
    - merb 11y ago
      managing != operating them. You could manage a thousand servers, but ONE PERSON just can't operate thousands of servers. also how did you managed file access in a scaling manner? did you've setup hdfs? and when yes how did you provided your developers that space? did you created some kind of infrastructure for that (libraries, etc)? There are so many things, which just doesn't work out. As already said, you've just managed it. But other people did the work, that this could work out and they needed a lot of time to get things done. Take a look at google, they always try to bring costs down, through things like borg, kubernetes, etc. but they throw thousands of people at those problems, also at the networking thing, they have a huge team of PROGRAMMERS that try everything that the management of their network will be easier. also if you don't need things all the time, why should you buy it?
      - toomuchtodo 11y ago
        (The below was ~5 years ago; it would be even easier today) > You could manage a thousand servers, but ONE PERSON just can't operate thousands of servers. Yes, I literally managed AND operated ~5500 linux servers in a facility. Remote power management, serial console access, PXE booting. I would replace any failed hardware when convenient, usually after my morning coffee or in the evening if I wasn't in a rush to get home. > also how did you managed file access in a scaling manner? Shared NFS with work distributed to servers on-demand or scheduled, based on workload. > and when yes how did you provided your developers that space? Limited SSH access to their environment; diskspace was provisioned in minutes. Scheduled jobs could be executed using an open source scheduling framework. > did you created some kind of infrastructure for that (libraries, etc)? No, the majority of the tooling was a few thousand lines of bash scripting > There are so many things, which just doesn't work out. As already said, you've just managed it. But other people did the work, that this could work out and they needed a lot of time to get things done. Take a look at google, they always try to bring costs down, through things like borg, kubernetes, etc. but they throw thousands of people at those problems, also at the networking thing, they have a huge team of PROGRAMMERS that try everything that the management of their network will be easier. also if you don't need things all the time, why should you buy it? Not knowing how to do something does not make it impossible or hard, simply an unknown how to do it.
- deleted 11y ago
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by merb 11y ago

toomuchtodo 11y ago

I do Devops/Infrastructure for a living, I've shown the math to both my day gig and numerous consulting clients that AWS is 30-40% more expensive, even when taking into account reserved instance pricing. External networking expecially is super expensive compared to traditional transit pricing. They're absolutely wonderful for bursty or async workloads, but if you know your load, you're better off on your own gear. EDIT: Source added. https://blog.serverdensity.com/saving-500k-per-month-buying-your-own-hardware-cloud-vs-colocation/ https://blog.serverdensity.com/saving-500k-per-month-buying-... "Saving $500k per month buying your own hardware – cloud vs colocation" The article mentions SoftLayer, but its just as relevant for AWS.

merb 11y ago
I didn't meant external networking. Connect two datacenters, see what costs come up. Connect machines inside your datacenter, etc.. Your maintenance cost will raise. AWS is cheap. Whatever you did, you operated on a really slow scale where money didn't mattered. Or you completely forgot a lot in your calculation. Oh and here is a Link from Zynga: http://readwrite.com/2015/05/12/zynga-data-center-amazon-aws-public-cloud http://readwrite.com/2015/05/12/zynga-data-center-amazon-aws... My next examples would be Gilt, etc. You can't run elastic in your own datacenter. From your article: > https://blog.serverdensity.com/saving-500k-per-month-buying-your-own-hardware-cloud-vs-colocation/ https://blog.serverdensity.com/saving-500k-per-month-buying-... > Dell R415 with x2 processors each with 8 cores, 32GB RAM, a 500GB SATA system drive and a 400GB SSD This one made me laugh...
- toomuchtodo 11y ago
  > AWS is cheap. Whatever you did, you operated on a really slow scale where money didn't mattered. Or you completely forgot a lot in your calculation. I've managed thousands of instances in AWS, and I've managed thousands of servers in colos, both owned (DOE facility, web hosting startup, consulting firm) or with the space leased (Equinix, Savvis, Cogent, IBM). You could most definitely run elastic workloads in your own datacenter now using Docker containers, and one of the many orchestration frameworks that exist for it. As I mentioned above, if you don't have a predictable workload, AWS is great. Exceptional even. But if you know your workload and can hire 2-3 people to manage it (which you should be doing at scale), its cheaper to get your own gear and colo it.
  - merb 11y ago
    managing != operating them. You could manage a thousand servers, but ONE PERSON just can't operate thousands of servers. also how did you managed file access in a scaling manner? did you've setup hdfs? and when yes how did you provided your developers that space? did you created some kind of infrastructure for that (libraries, etc)? There are so many things, which just doesn't work out. As already said, you've just managed it. But other people did the work, that this could work out and they needed a lot of time to get things done. Take a look at google, they always try to bring costs down, through things like borg, kubernetes, etc. but they throw thousands of people at those problems, also at the networking thing, they have a huge team of PROGRAMMERS that try everything that the management of their network will be easier. also if you don't need things all the time, why should you buy it?
    - toomuchtodo 11y ago
      (The below was ~5 years ago; it would be even easier today) > You could manage a thousand servers, but ONE PERSON just can't operate thousands of servers. Yes, I literally managed AND operated ~5500 linux servers in a facility. Remote power management, serial console access, PXE booting. I would replace any failed hardware when convenient, usually after my morning coffee or in the evening if I wasn't in a rush to get home. > also how did you managed file access in a scaling manner? Shared NFS with work distributed to servers on-demand or scheduled, based on workload. > and when yes how did you provided your developers that space? Limited SSH access to their environment; diskspace was provisioned in minutes. Scheduled jobs could be executed using an open source scheduling framework. > did you created some kind of infrastructure for that (libraries, etc)? No, the majority of the tooling was a few thousand lines of bash scripting > There are so many things, which just doesn't work out. As already said, you've just managed it. But other people did the work, that this could work out and they needed a lot of time to get things done. Take a look at google, they always try to bring costs down, through things like borg, kubernetes, etc. but they throw thousands of people at those problems, also at the networking thing, they have a huge team of PROGRAMMERS that try everything that the management of their network will be easier. also if you don't need things all the time, why should you buy it? Not knowing how to do something does not make it impossible or hard, simply an unknown how to do it.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]