

Why we moved away from “the cloud” to a “real” server - dmytton
http://blog.boxedice.com/2009/09/08/why-we-moved-away-from-the-cloud-to-a-real-server/

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byoung2
_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
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
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.

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pyre
> _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
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.

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junklight
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.

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springcoil1
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.

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abalashov
Cloud servers are for bootstrapping only.

~~~
aaronblohowiak
Batch processing jobs or other "spikey" workloads.

~~~
Periodic
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
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
_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
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.

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schammy
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.

~~~
mechanical_fish
_I'm not counting sysadmin salary in that figure though, because I am the
sysadmin._

I think your accounting technique needs to be refined.

The time which you routinely spend each month, setting up and updating these
systems, is a cost.

When a system goes down and you must drop whatever you're doing to fix it,
that context switch is an additional cost. Especially if it costs you a
night's sleep. You might lose days of productivity on your regular job.

When something happens that you didn't foresee, and that you have no
experience with -- you are, after all, only a part-time sysadmin, not a
professional cloud administrator -- and you have to spend days reading manuals
and nagging Dell vendors on the phone, that's a cost. One that is easy to
overlook in advance (who likes to sit around, dreaming up the improbable but
scary ways that your systems might fail?) but which is very real when averaged
over time.

And when you get tired of playing sysadmin in your spare time and decide to
stop -- perhaps by quitting your job -- replacing you is going to cost your
company a fortune, especially if they end up hiring the wrong person, who
accidentally corrupts two years' worth of backups and then drops the main
database. The thing about paying (e.g.) Amazon is that it isn't just a way of
hiring a competent part-time sysadmin. It's also an algorithm for hiring a
_series_ of _future_ part-time sysadmins: As long as you keep paying Amazon,
they will probably keep finding and hiring the right people. (They are, after
all, more experienced at finding good sysadmins than you are.) Or, if they
fail at that task, perhaps one of their thousands of other customers will
discover that fact before you have to, and you'll hear the news early enough
to make a clean and event-free migration to another provider.

~~~
aaronblohowiak
Paying Amazon does not negate the need for a sysadmin!! Someone still needs to
manage all of the software, os, networking and upgrade stuff. Only the
hardware part is taken care of for you (which is a relatively small amount.)

~~~
mechanical_fish
_Paying Amazon does not negate the need for a sysadmin!!_

I didn't mean to suggest that it did. Administering Amazon is a big part of my
job at the moment. It's a lot of work.

Bare-bones Amazon is a poor example. I should have picked, e.g., Engine Yard:
someone at least one step farther up the food chain.

And, even then, I'm not suggesting that hiring a cloud host will make these
concerns magically go away. I'm just suggesting that _any_ argument which
assumes that these concerns have magically gone away -- rather than
specifically addressing them -- is leaving something out.

Meanwhile... it's a mistake to say that Amazon takes care of "only the
hardware part". That's like claiming that a car company only takes care of
"the hardware part" because you still have to learn how to drive in order to
use their product.

Among other things, Amazon provides an abstract interface for provisioning
hardware. They provide a standard platform that lots of people know how to
use, so that you can install pre-configured AMIs, follow canned recipes, run
third-party utilities for managing EC2 hardware, ask questions on Stack
Overflow, or hire people who are guaranteed to have experience with your exact
platform. And they provide the ability to rent variable amounts of hardware by
the minute.

One thing which I expect to see on the scene any minute now are third-party
hosting providers who provide similar services to Amazon _with a compatible
API_ , so that tools used for managing EC2 instances can be run transparently
against the new host.

~~~
aaronblohowiak
You're right in that they take care of the hardware part and the hardware
provisioning part.

Even with EY you have to administer anything non-standard yourself (at least
that was my experience with a former employer.)

I am saying that Amazon takes care of "only the hardware part" in the same way
that a trucking company might lease its trucks. Sure, maintenance, part
fulfillment, repair and truck acquisition are taken care of by the leasing
company, but the bulk of the business is in the logistics and operations.

I am pro-EC2 for a large class of problems, and just recommended cloudfront/s3
to a friend last night. But some people have this fantasy scenario where the
cloud is a magical place where applications can live and scale horizonatlly,
and the reality is that Amazon offers a _very good_ starting ground on which
to build and administer your systems. (As you know.)

I think we're largely in agreement. I apologize for minimizing the amount of
legwork that Amazon takes care of for you in an attempt to stress the amount
of work that still remains.

~~~
rjurney
This interchange is the model of informative civil discourse.

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cubedice
What an imbecilic name for a company

