

Ask HN: Which large websites are still using dedicated servers? - asto


======
kaolinite
Not sure, but I know that since the company I work for has switched to AWS,
hosting costs have gone through the roof and performance has been reduced
massively. Reason that I mention this is that the only clients that have
actually benefited from the move are the larger, very high traffic clients,
though even with those the difference is negligible for the huge increase in
costs.

~~~
asto
The more I think about it, the more I'm convinced that the vast majority of
websites have nothing to gain from going the cloud way. Couldn't find any high
traffic websites that are hosted on dedicated hardware to make a comparison
though, hence the question.

~~~
byoung2
_vast majority of websites have nothing to gain from going the cloud way_

The main benefit that I've seen from cloud computing is scalability, not price
or performance. If you are running a website with predictable load, get a box
that will handle that load plus some cushion. But if you have an app that has
unpredictable load, the cloud will let you run 50 boxes one hour, and 2 the
next. The savings come from not running 50 boxes when you only need 2.

~~~
shepbook
It sounds like you are saying that you can "cloud burst". If anyone tells you
that you can "autoscale", they're full of shit. It's true that you can "spin
up" more instances on AWS, but that still takes time, even with the best
automation.

The advantage you get from AWS is not related to the "cloud" (eg. virtual
machines hosted elsewhere). The advantage is from the virtualization. If you
have unpredictable load (like many people do) then you would actually benefit
far more from having physical hardware utilizing virtualization.

If you think "scalability" is simply "spin up more AWS instances", you're
wrong. In the time it takes for you to "cloud burst" from 2 instances to 50
instances (which, mind you, in most cases happens in an extremely short period
of time... think measured in seconds), you're site will be screwed. Even if
you have the best automation setup ever known, it still takes on the order of
several minutes to get an instance of a machine up and running on AWS.

"So, the next time a vendor is like, 'It's going to be so cool, you can cloud
burst your way to safety.' just tell him you are not a magical unicorn." -
Adam Jacob (on Cloud Bursting and Other Magical Unicorns
<http://youtu.be/NTijokrOw6o> )

~~~
byoung2
Where I currently work (a stealth mode startup), we currently have a data
aggregation engine running on between 20 and 120 instances. We take advantage
of the ability to spin up instances quickly, not in response to a spike in
traffic (since we don't have any yet), but in response to the size of the
queue of jobs (which varies depending on what we've collected). We only need
120 running for an hour or so, then we terminate them. The cost savings we get
is from not having to run 120 physical boxes all the time, and there is no
downside if the queue grows a little while new instances spin up.

------
byoung2
At my last job (ClearChannel), we had our own standalone datacenter in San
Antonio with our own dedicated servers, as well as smaller server rooms in LA
and NY. Our sites were all served by Akamai, so the dedicated servers were
just origin servers.

