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0 points9dev1mo ago0 comments

> So much cheaper to operate and control.

Until you factor in the salaries of the new employees you have to hire now, the cost of that hiring process, the compliance and security implications of operating servers on your premises, the ongoing maintenance of the software and operating systems, the new infrastructure to maintain, including but not limited to backup power supply and overall redundancy, the need to manage the lifecycle of the new hard- and software, the documentation for all of this… I could go on for a while.

It's not like these cloud solutions are just solving laziness.

0 comments

no_op1mo ago

A lot of this could be standardized and packaged into a product, a modern take on the 'server appliance.' Unpack some gear, plug it together according to a nice diagram, connect to a management console that feels familiar to anyone who's deployed to the cloud.

9devOP1mo ago

That's essentially the bet of https://oxide.computer

newsclues1mo ago

Yeah, this seems like a big opportunity for that business model.

belorn1mo ago

Listened to a story about a fairly large company that switched to cloud and then back to on-premise. When they went cloud they quickly found out that they needed employees to manage the cloud infrastructure. The employee costs were similar for both setup.

Compliance and security testing does not go away just because you use cloud. The steps and questions will be different, but regulations like NIS and GDPR have extensive requirements regardless if you implement it yourself or buy it from an external supplier.

I would also not recommend to go with a single cloud solution with no backup solution and overall redundancy, unless a $5 voucher is good enough compensation for the service being down a whole day. The general recommendation after the latest waves of outages was for cloud users to use multiple cloud providers and multiple backup solution. It is just like how on-premise solutions need off-premise backups.

9devOP1mo ago

> Compliance and security testing does not go away just because you use cloud. The steps and questions will be different, but regulations like NIS and GDPR have extensive requirements regardless if you implement it yourself or buy it from an external supplier.

That’s a bit disingenuous. If I don’t operate a physical server rack, I also do not need to take care of physical access control, fire suppression policies, camera monitoring, key handling, and a wide range of other measures I would be otherwise obliged to take care of under GDPR. You can absolutely outsource classes of problems. What’s true is that that doesn’t lift the responsibility from you to check your cloud provider fulfils these obligations, but that’s very different from having to fulfil them yourself.

belorn1mo ago

Go through a security review. It not as simple as just saying "we outsource that so we have no idea what they do or how they manage the data". It is disingenuous to claim that people can just outsource the whole problem and not care.

This would be part of the responsibility of the cloud managers, which need to be hired, paid and trained, on top of the cost of paying the cloud providers. There is no free lunch.

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Black616Angel1mo ago

But you can rent on-prem servers in some datacenter near you where all that is done for you.

9devOP1mo ago

First off, servers on someone else's premises are by definition not on-prem; and second, it still leaves you with a lot of the maintenance, management, and documentation overhead that comes with operating infrastructure equipment.

hsuduebc21mo ago

Do not forget that it is also cheaper. Main difference would be scalability which you do not inherently need. Not for ordinary bau.

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no_op1mo ago

9devOP1mo ago

That's essentially the bet of https://oxide.computer

newsclues1mo ago

Yeah, this seems like a big opportunity for that business model.

belorn1mo ago

9devOP1mo ago

belorn1mo ago

This would be part of the responsibility of the cloud managers, which need to be hired, paid and trained, on top of the cost of paying the cloud providers. There is no free lunch.

2 more replies

Black616Angel1mo ago

But you can rent on-prem servers in some datacenter near you where all that is done for you.

9devOP1mo ago

hsuduebc21mo ago

Do not forget that it is also cheaper. Main difference would be scalability which you do not inherently need. Not for ordinary bau.

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse