6 ms·

It will ALWAYS be better to do it yourself.

fnid 17y ago
That is far from true. There are lots of things to do to get a site up and running that don't require managing infrastructure. If you spend time "doing it yourself," then you don't spend a lot of time and money on other parts of the business or the site. There is a scalability path that includes cloud computing. If you have a large complex site like GitHub with an architecture that isn't conveniently accommodated by your cloud host and you can do it yourself, then it may be better. Never say never and never say always.
- sunkencity 17y ago
  It's a lot cheaper to run on your own hardware, but maybe there's a scale issue here as well -- if you're big enough you might get a cheaper price per unit.
  - fnid 17y ago
    Still not always true. It's not a lot cheaper to run on your own hardware. Have you factored in shipping costs, depreciation, infrastructure management time, distractions, opportunity costs, colocation costs, interest. These things add up. Imagine comparing a $10/mo hosting account with a colocated server for $100/mo. There are a plethora of scenarios that don't warrant owning or running your own hardware.
    - lsc 17y ago
      I obviously don't have numbers for rackspace's dedicated servers, but their 15.5GiB slice is $800 a month. Are they going to charge less for dedicated than for virtual hosts? You can get a server with 8 cores and 16Gib ram for under $2K from places like serversdirect.com, or building from parts. I build from parts, and generally end up paying $1500 for a 32GiB ram box. co-location is another $150/month or so. (my costs are closer to $75/month for a dual-socket box, but I have two full racks) Unless you screwed up assembling the thing, the chances of something other than a drive failing are pretty small. I mean, not zero; don't count on hardware... I'm just saying, even if you have to get a $150/hr guy in to fix your bad hardware, that just doesn't happen very often. way less than once per server. Way less than once per every 10 servers (assuming you didn't screw up the assembly, and that you rotate out the server after 3 years.) So yeah, there are many situations where it makes sense to rent, especially if you can't use 8 cores/ 32GiB ram of capacity. but if you use a whole server (32GiB ram/8 core; go virtual until you need that capacity, I say.) the cost advantages of owning hardware yourself are overwhelming. Sure, there are reasons to rent... I'm just saying, owning ends up costing you a /lot/ less money.
      - sunkencity 17y ago
        Yep, my experience with EC2 is that it gets pricey fast, and that the slower instances aren't really that speedy. The sweet spot is probably where you don't need critical performance (like a database box with a really fast RAID array). My solution is to run most stuff in a colo on dell boxes running the linux-vserver kernel patch, sort of a cheap mans cloud solution.

fnid 17y ago

That is far from true. There are lots of things to do to get a site up and running that don't require managing infrastructure. If you spend time "doing it yourself," then you don't spend a lot of time and money on other parts of the business or the site. There is a scalability path that includes cloud computing. If you have a large complex site like GitHub with an architecture that isn't conveniently accommodated by your cloud host and you can do it yourself, then it may be better. Never say never and never say always.

sunkencity 17y ago
It's a lot cheaper to run on your own hardware, but maybe there's a scale issue here as well -- if you're big enough you might get a cheaper price per unit.
- fnid 17y ago
  Still not always true. It's not a lot cheaper to run on your own hardware. Have you factored in shipping costs, depreciation, infrastructure management time, distractions, opportunity costs, colocation costs, interest. These things add up. Imagine comparing a $10/mo hosting account with a colocated server for $100/mo. There are a plethora of scenarios that don't warrant owning or running your own hardware.
  - lsc 17y ago
    I obviously don't have numbers for rackspace's dedicated servers, but their 15.5GiB slice is $800 a month. Are they going to charge less for dedicated than for virtual hosts? You can get a server with 8 cores and 16Gib ram for under $2K from places like serversdirect.com, or building from parts. I build from parts, and generally end up paying $1500 for a 32GiB ram box. co-location is another $150/month or so. (my costs are closer to $75/month for a dual-socket box, but I have two full racks) Unless you screwed up assembling the thing, the chances of something other than a drive failing are pretty small. I mean, not zero; don't count on hardware... I'm just saying, even if you have to get a $150/hr guy in to fix your bad hardware, that just doesn't happen very often. way less than once per server. Way less than once per every 10 servers (assuming you didn't screw up the assembly, and that you rotate out the server after 3 years.) So yeah, there are many situations where it makes sense to rent, especially if you can't use 8 cores/ 32GiB ram of capacity. but if you use a whole server (32GiB ram/8 core; go virtual until you need that capacity, I say.) the cost advantages of owning hardware yourself are overwhelming. Sure, there are reasons to rent... I'm just saying, owning ends up costing you a /lot/ less money.
    - sunkencity 17y ago
      Yep, my experience with EC2 is that it gets pricey fast, and that the slower instances aren't really that speedy. The sweet spot is probably where you don't need critical performance (like a database box with a really fast RAID array). My solution is to run most stuff in a colo on dell boxes running the linux-vserver kernel patch, sort of a cheap mans cloud solution.