Moving from AWS to Bare-Metal saved us 230,000$ /yr. reddit / selfhosted ---------------------------------------------------------------------- TheApadayo · 2023-11-20 13:26 I’m honestly confused by this. The article tries to say that a fully managed highly available Kubernetes cluster running across multiple data centers on AWS is somehow equivalent to a self managed cluster in a single collocation center with NFS backed storage. Like of course it cost half as much. You just got rid of a ton of redundancy that were keeping you running. What happens when the next k8s version rolls around and the installation fails halfway through your cluster. Or your single DC that you just moved into have burns to the ground. You just don’t have to think about those things in the managed version which to some companies actually is with the $250k per year. That plus the the comment about “noisy neighbors”. From my understanding, basically all cloud providers already have “bare metal” virtual machine type to avoid this issue. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- tomistruth · 2023-11-20 13:38 How do you think people managed hosting before AWS? I honestly believe some people drink the koolaid that every single of their nodejs application needs to be hosted in an AWS cluster with the plethora of aws services. If it works for them, it's all good. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- tomistruth · 2023-11-20 13:38 How do you think people managed hosting before AWS? I honestly believe some people drink the koolaid that every single of their nodejs application needs to be hosted in an AWS cluster with the plethora of aws services. If it works for them, it's all good. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Craftkorb · 2023-11-20 13:46 To the surprise of no one. Cloud services are convenient and easily scalable - Which makes it cost effective for a lot of work loads. But for all work loads? Of course not! ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Qxt78 · 2023-11-20 13:53 We run multiple modes in multiple locations across the world and pay 1/15 of the cost vs using Google gcp. And yea, people forget that before cloud everyone was running things themselves. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- TheApadayo · 2023-11-20 13:55 Before AWS I think they hired multiple Sysadmins and SREs that probably cost 250k a year in salaries. I get that it’s the right tool for the right job but this article just feels like it’s bandwagoning on the recent trend of “we saved a million dollars a year by ditching the cloud” when the result is something not as good as the original was. The debate about if they NEED all those features is something only they can really make the call on but calling these equivalent isn’t completely correct in my opinion. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- r3dk0w · 2023-11-20 14:01 >You just got rid of a ton of redundancy that was keeping you running It sounds like their business use case doesn't require all of the redundancy they "lost". It is entirely possible to run a business and have acceptable business risk. For some companies, putting your entire business in a single cloud provider has more risk than running the workload in a non-cloud environment. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- -quakeguy- · 2023-11-20 14:05 If you’re starting a new business today, you are a moron if you aren’t starring in the cloud. Additionally, you’re a moron if you’ve grown your business to maturity, have clear projections for future IT capacity needs and are not migrating awaybfrom cloud. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- VirtualMage · 2023-11-20 14:15 "We saved $xxx by buying our own car instead of paying taxi every time.". ---------------------------------------------------------------------- wiseguy9317 · 2023-11-20 14:20 No mention of software costs, ongoing software and hardware maintenance. There is no cookie cutter answer, it really depends on the specific systems. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- RydRychards · 2023-11-20 14:31 Depends on the Nr of times you need a car. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- [deleted] · 2023-11-20 15:23 [deleted] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- PsychologicalBag6875 · 2023-11-20 15:42 business like stackoverflow ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Ok-Mammoth-7743 · 2023-11-20 16:12 I'm always a little surprised that we talk about NFS and Cloud Native, like gross figures without talking about payroll ---------------------------------------------------------------------- flaotte · 2023-11-20 16:23 for a simple no.js - how long does it take to deploy it on new server? maybe it takes 30min and you can use azure vm as a backup solution? maybe you run some traffic in azure and you can scale in minutes? if you have 3 sites, how likely it will go down all at once? is it mission critical (banking)? can it go down to one hour per month? (time reporting, orders system)? can it be offline for few days? (bmw heated seats subscription)? ---------------------------------------------------------------------- ASouthernBoy · 2023-11-20 16:24 sooo like they didn't do due diligence at the start and were just paying unnecessary services ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Markd0ne · 2023-11-20 16:28 We've come full circle. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Expensive_Finger_973 · 2023-11-20 17:21 If you need it fast, or have unpredictable load spikes, then cloud makes sense. If not, then it costs more, the end. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- bonyuri · 2023-11-20 17:32 “When planning a transition to bare metal, many believe that hiring server administrators is a necessity. While their role is undeniably important, it’s worth noting that a substantial part of hardware maintenance is actually managed by the colocation facility” lol? They’re going to fuck around and find out in the future I guess :) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- CatWeekends · 2023-11-20 17:35 They say their monthly op-ex is $5500. >> Our monthly operational expenditure (op-ex), which includes power, cooling, energy, and remote hands (although we seldom use this service), is now approximately $5,500. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- r3dk0w · 2023-11-20 17:37 Or their business needs and requirements changed over time. IT infrastructure is NEVER a once-and-done. In 2 years they might decide they need their app to burst and start using some kind of cloud services again to do that. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- reddittookmyuser · 2023-11-20 17:48 Yeah this is not the one to celebrate. They lost high availability and redundancy. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- who_you_are · 2023-11-20 18:00 >It sounds like their business use case doesn't require all of the redundancy they "lost Bets are open about how they will go nuts if their data is gone! ---------------------------------------------------------------------- FlattusBlastus · 2023-11-20 18:10 Holy crap... The train is already on the tracks and they are blind, deaf, and dumb. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- FlattusBlastus · 2023-11-20 18:12 As other people have said, there's a million different variables that preclude such generalities. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- adamshand · 2023-11-20 18:27 THIS ---------------------------------------------------------------------- i_hate_shitposting · 2023-11-20 18:34 Also, it's just super easy to waste money in the cloud. That convenience and scalability is a huge double-edged sword. Even if you try to be careful, analyze pricing structures, estimate your spend, optimize your utilization, etc. (which a lot of orgs and engineers don't), you can get one thing wrong and end up spending way more than you expected anyway. Given that, even as someone who likes using the cloud a lot more than my prior experiences with on-prem, I can see why a lot of companies would decide to throw their hands up and switch to on-prem anyway. However, I also feel like a lot of orgs could probably find a happier medium if they invested the time to understand, track, and optimize their cloud usage more effectively. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 22OpDmtBRdOiM · 2023-11-20 18:40 those statements should be in relative numbers ---------------------------------------------------------------------- CaptainFluffyTail · 2023-11-20 18:44 AWS is great for overengineering and spending on services you don't need. Take a look at the [reference architecture for WordPress on AWS](https://docs.aws.amazon.com/whitepapers/latest/best-practices- wordpress/reference-architecture.html) sometime. if you follow the template you have a WordPress instance with multiple levels of redundancy including geographical that runs you >$500 USD/mo. the last time I ran the numbers. Rock solid (as long as you're not in US- East-1) and hugely scalable, but do you need all the bells and whistles? ---------------------------------------------------------------------- dakjelle · 2023-11-20 18:45 That really depends on your business.. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Mephidia · 2023-11-20 19:00 Hilarious lmao. 230k is the salary of 2 or 3 ops engineers 😂 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Brekkjern · 2023-11-20 19:01 I'm gonna go against the grain and say that I like that they are open about this even if the results aren't amazing. It gives us more information about how low the returns of such a migration could be, and also what tradeoffs they made to complete it. They might be trying to spin it as a win, but as long as the information in the post is accurate it's good enough for me to use as a datapoint. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- PavelPivovarov · 2023-11-20 19:18 In addition to that, when you are switching from managed services, you must add maintenance cost. Otherwise, it looks like all engineers in your company are working for free, and once you add that additional spending, your savings figures won't be looking as good anymore. Also, what was the cost of the migration, and how long will it take for the company to return those investments considering the same steady business growth. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- clovepalmer · 2023-11-20 19:23 Yes and No. Speaking from experience, ye have had zero on-prem downtime in 5 years and too many Azure/365 outages to count. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- bripod · 2023-11-20 19:45 They probably could have rolled a few t3s in a single AZ and bought an RI to save more instead. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- ASouthernBoy · 2023-11-20 19:50 proves my point, they didn't do any research ---------------------------------------------------------------------- qonTrixzz · 2023-11-20 20:16 Provens, it's alot easier to keep a small-medium business system running than this cloud monstrosity M365, which is a card house in itself, lol ---------------------------------------------------------------------- reddittookmyuser · 2023-11-20 20:58 I mean they literally moved away from Kubernetes spread across multiple data centers and now have all their systems in 1 rack in 1 data center. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- clovepalmer · 2023-11-20 21:22 True, and they'd be risking something a like a 12-hour downtime if everything went wrong. How much that matters really depends on the business.