Thread: Cloud versus buying my own iron
At some point in the next year we're going to reconsider our hosting environment, currently consisting of several medium-sized servers (2x4 CPUs, 48GB RAM, 12-disk RAID system with 8 in RAID 10 and 2 in RAID 1 for WAL). We use barman to keep a hot standby and an archive.
The last time we dug into this, we were initially excited, but our excitement turned to disappointment when we calculated the real costs of hosted services, and the constraints on performance and customizability.
Due to the nature of our business, we need a system where we can install plug-ins to Postgres. I expect that alone will limit our choices. In addition to our Postgres database, we run a fairly ordinary Apache web site.
There is constant chatter in this group about buying servers vs. the various hosted services. Does anyone have any sort of summary comparison of the various solutions out there? Or is it just a matter of researching it myself and maybe doing some benchmarking and price comparisons?
Thanks!
Craig
Am 24.02.2016 um 06:06 schrieb Craig James: > At some point in the next year we're going to reconsider our hosting > environment, currently consisting of several medium-sized servers (2x4 > CPUs, 48GB RAM, 12-disk RAID system with 8 in RAID 10 and 2 in RAID 1 > for WAL). We use barman to keep a hot standby and an archive. > > The last time we dug into this, we were initially excited, but our > excitement turned to disappointment when we calculated the real costs of > hosted services, and the constraints on performance and customizability. > > Due to the nature of our business, we need a system where we can install > plug-ins to Postgres. I expect that alone will limit our choices. In > addition to our Postgres database, we run a fairly ordinary Apache web site. > > There is constant chatter in this group about buying servers vs. the > various hosted services. Does anyone have any sort of summary comparison > of the various solutions out there? Or is it just a matter of > researching it myself and maybe doing some benchmarking and price > comparisons? For starters, did you see Josh Berkus' presentation on the topic? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WV5P2DgxPoI I for myself would probably always go the "own iron" road, but alas! that's just the way I feel about control. And I'm kind of a Linux oldshot, so managing a (hosted root) server doesn't scare me off. OTOH, I do see the advantages of having things like monitoring, backup, HDD replacements etc. done for you. Which is essentially what you pay for. In essence, there's obviously no silver bullet ;-) Best regards, -- Gunnar "Nick" Bluth DBA ELSTER Tel: +49 911/991-4665 Mobil: +49 172/8853339
Having gotten used to using cloud servers over the past few years, but been a server hugger for more than 20 before that, I have to say the cloud offers a number of huge advantages that would make me seriously question whether there are very many good reasons to go back to using local iron at all. (Other than maybe running databases on your laptop for development and testing purposes.)
Rackspace offers 'bare metal' servers if you want consistent performance. You don't have to pay for a managed solution, there are a lot of tiers of service. AWS also offers solutions that are not on shared platforms. (AWS tends to be much more expensive and, in spite of the myriad [proprietary] industry leading new features, actually a little less flexible and with poorer support.)
The main advantage of cloud is the ability to be agile. You can upsize, downsize, add storage, move data centers, and adapt to changing business requirements on the fly. Even with overnight shipping and a minimal bureaucracy - selecting new hardware, getting approval to purchase it, ordering it, unboxing it, setting it up and testing it, and then finally getting to installing software - can take days or weeks of your time and energy. In the cloud, you just click a couple of buttons and then get on with doing the stuff that really adds value to your business.
I spent the better part of a couple of decades ordering servers and disks and extra cpu boards for big and small companies and getting them in the servers and provisioning them. Now that I use the cloud I just reach over with my mouse, provision an volume, attach it to the server, and voila - I've averted a disk space issue. I take an image, build a new server, swing DNS, and - there you have it - I'm now on a 16 cpu system instead of an 8 cpu system. Hours, at most, instead of weeks. I can spend my time worrying about business problems and data science.
Every 6 months to a year both Rackspace and AWS offer new classes of servers with new CPU's and faster backplanes and better performance for the buck. With only a little planning, you can jump into the latest hardware every time they do so. If you have your own iron, you are likely to be stuck on the same hardware for 3 or more years before you can upgrade again.
If the platform you are on suffers a catastropic hardware failure, it usually only takes a few minutes to bring up a new server on new hardware and be back and running again.
Yes, there is a premium for the flexibility and convenience. Surprisingly though, I think by the time you add in electricity and cooling and labor and shipping and switches and racks and cabling, you may find that even with their margin, their economy of scale actually offers a better total real cost advantage. (I've heard some arguments to the contrary, but I'm not sure I believe them if the cloud infrastructure is well managed.) Throw in the instant deep technical support you can get from some place like Rackspace when things go wrong, and I find few advantages to being a server hugger any more.
On Wed, Feb 24, 2016 at 4:01 AM, Gunnar "Nick" Bluth <gunnar.bluth.extern@elster.de> wrote:
Am 24.02.2016 um 06:06 schrieb Craig James:
> At some point in the next year we're going to reconsider our hosting
> environment, currently consisting of several medium-sized servers (2x4
> CPUs, 48GB RAM, 12-disk RAID system with 8 in RAID 10 and 2 in RAID 1
> for WAL). We use barman to keep a hot standby and an archive.
>
> The last time we dug into this, we were initially excited, but our
> excitement turned to disappointment when we calculated the real costs of
> hosted services, and the constraints on performance and customizability.
>
> Due to the nature of our business, we need a system where we can install
> plug-ins to Postgres. I expect that alone will limit our choices. In
> addition to our Postgres database, we run a fairly ordinary Apache web site.
>
> There is constant chatter in this group about buying servers vs. the
> various hosted services. Does anyone have any sort of summary comparison
> of the various solutions out there? Or is it just a matter of
> researching it myself and maybe doing some benchmarking and price
> comparisons?
For starters, did you see Josh Berkus' presentation on the topic?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WV5P2DgxPoI
I for myself would probably always go the "own iron" road, but alas!
that's just the way I feel about control. And I'm kind of a Linux
oldshot, so managing a (hosted root) server doesn't scare me off.
OTOH, I do see the advantages of having things like monitoring, backup,
HDD replacements etc. done for you. Which is essentially what you pay for.
In essence, there's obviously no silver bullet ;-)
Best regards,
--
Gunnar "Nick" Bluth
DBA ELSTER
Tel: +49 911/991-4665
Mobil: +49 172/8853339
--
Sent via pgsql-performance mailing list (pgsql-performance@postgresql.org)
To make changes to your subscription:
http://www.postgresql.org/mailpref/pgsql-performance