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Is it? Cloud providers bring you not just localized infrastructure, but distributed infrastructure, with clear mechanisms for scaling as needed, plus support,

Is it? Cloud providers bring you not just localized infrastructure, but distributed infrastructure, with clear mechanisms for scaling as needed, plus support, etc. With AWS, you have a predictable cost, predictable up-time, and ability to scale at peak, and your costs are spread over time, rather than all up front. With your own servers you have to build out to handle peak load (and run mostly dormant during non-peak hours), across multiple locations, to achieve the same availability. I'm not sure the costs for the convenience of AWS are so obscene in such a case. They may still be higher, I honestly don't know, but the convenience benefit is huge. They key bit is that AWS' costs are largely -known-, whereas the costs of DIYing aren't. Per Netflix's blog post about why they use AWS for serving everything except video content - "We could have chosen to build out new data centers, build our own redundancy and failover, data synchronization systems, etc. Or, we could opt to write a check to someone else to do that instead." Oftentimes for enterprise, having all your infrastructure in place, done right the first time, with someone else eating any costs associated with the unexpected, and ready to start building your application on, is worth the cost. For enterprise, paying a known amount to avoid risk is oftentimes worth it.

msravi 11y ago
So why would you not have localized infrastructure to handle average loads and use AWS to scale to peak only when necessary? Why use AWS even for your average loads?
- lostcolony 11y ago
  Because then you have to target two different sets of infrastructure. The extra work and complexity carries with it a rather large cost too, -and- greater risk. It's almost the worst of both worlds, rather than the best, as you have to solve all the problems of rolling your own, -and- pay Amazon for the extra utilization.
downandout 11y ago
I'm guessing that Netflix is getting truly massive discounts from their published rates. For most everyone else, it won't make sense.
latch 11y ago
Yes, it is. "If you’re used to designing and deploying applications in your own data centers, you need to be prepared to unlearn a lot of what you know." Which is it? Did it save them money because they didn't have to "build their own redundancy and failover" or did they have to build a bunch of custom tools like Chaos Monkey because "I knew to expect higher rates of individual instance failure in AWS, but I hadn’t thought through some of these sorts of implications." ??? From reading Netflix' blog, it's clear that it was a huge learning and engineering effort. That cost has to be taken into account and added to the fact that across many AWS offerings, you're looking at as much as a 10x price / performance penalty versus dedicated or collocation. I'm unconvinced that they couldn't have done it cheaper and better through more transitional approaches, and moreso that it's a meaningful indicator for anyone else. AWS has been massively innovative. But it's much more expensive, and a huge part of their business is sales and getting CXOs onboard, not necessarily providing good value.
- amazon_not 11y ago
  "That cost has to be taken into account and added to the fact that across many AWS offerings, you're looking at as much as a 10x price / performance penalty versus dedicated or collocation." This. The pricing is especially egrerious in bandwidth charges which for AWS are almost pure profit. Amazon is only cheap if you don't use it.
  - nulltype 11y ago
    I've heard that the prices are egregious only in bandwidth charges and that other things were not as bad. Does anyone have concrete numbers to compare?
Johnny555 11y ago
Plus, many companies have very bursty workloads - we can (and often do) scale from 100 servers up to 1000+ servers several times a day. Without AWS we'd be paying for 1000 servers 24x7, now we only pay for them several hours a day. We've run the numbers, and we can't host it ourselves anywhere close to what we pay Amazon if we want the same amount of redundancy that AWS gives us "for free" -- we'd have to duplicate most of our infrastructure across 4 separate datacenters to get the kind of multi-AZ, Multi-region redundancy we have now.
deleted 11y ago
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msravi 11y ago

So why would you not have localized infrastructure to handle average loads and use AWS to scale to peak only when necessary? Why use AWS even for your average loads?

lostcolony 11y ago
Because then you have to target two different sets of infrastructure. The extra work and complexity carries with it a rather large cost too, -and- greater risk. It's almost the worst of both worlds, rather than the best, as you have to solve all the problems of rolling your own, -and- pay Amazon for the extra utilization.

downandout 11y ago

I'm guessing that Netflix is getting truly massive discounts from their published rates. For most everyone else, it won't make sense.

latch 11y ago

Yes, it is. "If you’re used to designing and deploying applications in your own data centers, you need to be prepared to unlearn a lot of what you know." Which is it? Did it save them money because they didn't have to "build their own redundancy and failover" or did they have to build a bunch of custom tools like Chaos Monkey because "I knew to expect higher rates of individual instance failure in AWS, but I hadn’t thought through some of these sorts of implications." ??? From reading Netflix' blog, it's clear that it was a huge learning and engineering effort. That cost has to be taken into account and added to the fact that across many AWS offerings, you're looking at as much as a 10x price / performance penalty versus dedicated or collocation. I'm unconvinced that they couldn't have done it cheaper and better through more transitional approaches, and moreso that it's a meaningful indicator for anyone else. AWS has been massively innovative. But it's much more expensive, and a huge part of their business is sales and getting CXOs onboard, not necessarily providing good value.

amazon_not 11y ago
"That cost has to be taken into account and added to the fact that across many AWS offerings, you're looking at as much as a 10x price / performance penalty versus dedicated or collocation." This. The pricing is especially egrerious in bandwidth charges which for AWS are almost pure profit. Amazon is only cheap if you don't use it.
- nulltype 11y ago
  I've heard that the prices are egregious only in bandwidth charges and that other things were not as bad. Does anyone have concrete numbers to compare?

Johnny555 11y ago

Plus, many companies have very bursty workloads - we can (and often do) scale from 100 servers up to 1000+ servers several times a day. Without AWS we'd be paying for 1000 servers 24x7, now we only pay for them several hours a day. We've run the numbers, and we can't host it ourselves anywhere close to what we pay Amazon if we want the same amount of redundancy that AWS gives us "for free" -- we'd have to duplicate most of our infrastructure across 4 separate datacenters to get the kind of multi-AZ, Multi-region redundancy we have now.

deleted 11y ago

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