I believe you, but many people self host on rented hardware for various reasons. For example “proper” self hosting comes with upfront cost. But self hosting ln a VPS comes with reliability, uptime, predictability. But you’re still the master of the software you host, of backups, etc.
So, running a VM in the cloud is somehow different from “running everything in the cloud”? I’m genuinely confused here, willing to bet I’ve misunderstood something.
Operating and administering your own systems infrastructure requires that your business invest in the people to do so, this builds institutional knowledge which makes the important bit, the data and knowledge, portable. If the VM in the cloud gets too expensive you can use another provider, or you can buy hardware and run it locally. If the VM provider cuts your service you still have access to your data because you never lost control of it. Problems can be fixed by in house staff that don’t suddenly evaporate for arbitrary reasons or have service outages.
If your entire business depends on Microsoft services and it gets too expensive you have no options but to pay more. If your account gets locked then you’re out of business until you can get Microsoft to give you access again. If you want to migrate away, there isn’t another Microsoft to move your data to and you’ve replaced all of your technical staff with a support phone number, which isn’t currently accepting your calls.
I see. And the hardware (realistically for small businesses) one-time payment of say (quite overkill) $10 grand is somehow more prohibiting than adding the sysadmin(s) and whatnot to your payroll?
Sounds backwards to me.
A small 3-4 person office is probably saving way more money using cloud-based SAAS than hiring an IT team. The larger the company gets the less of an impact they would feel hiring more personnel or buying hardware.
It isn’t that these services are always bad. It’s just that, like everything in the tech sector, they’ve collectively reached the point where they’re enshittifying and trying to squeeze their existing customers rather than find new ways to add value.
Eventually the increasing costs will make alternatives more attractive.
It’s a VM that you set up, you have the image yourself, you could put it on a machine in your living room if you had to.
“I’m paying for a colocation of a machine I administer” is very different from “I’ve written my application such that it can only run inside an AWS system”
The idea is that your services run on remote systems without regard for what those systems are (as a VM, docker image, etc.) Your architecture is decoupled from theirs - you can run on an Amazon host one week, and a server in your closet the next.
And as a bonus, systems hosted this way are often harder to scrape as they’re all structured differently. Additionally, you can (and should!) take additional measures to protect your data from your provider - something that just can’t be done when the provider controls the data architecture.
Solid example. I could pay Lyrasis to host an instance of Archivesspace for me. They’d control updates, backups, etc, I’d just use the web interface to manage my archival collections.
OR I could rent a server, install Archivesspace myself (it’s open source), sysadmin it myself, take on all that headache and control.
They’re both in the cloud, but one’s software as a service (SAaS) and the other is just a Linux box on someone else’s machine. The second is cheaper in my experience, but only if you have someone that can sysadmin it. Otherwise you’ve got a learning curve ahead of you.
(it’s late, so feel free to tell me I’ve misread the thread).
You could, I could. The business-owner who decided to hire @anamethatisnt most likely couldn’t. I fail to see the hardware being the pinch point here - adding a sysadmin to your payroll sure seems like the bigger budget outpost.
The end result is the same:
You control what the machine does. The data as well as backups (assuming you arent using specific hardware offerings but just compute and storage)
Example:
I am done with AWS pricing and Azure gave me a fat stack credits to go over there.
Agnostic VMs could be backed up and migrated over to Azure.
Essentially the same as migrating Hyper-V or VMware to Proxmox-VE
And the day your VM host exits the market/bumps their prices/decided to pull the rug from under you, your backups that absolutely couldn’t be made in the SaaS instance will magically continue to exist outside of your Cloud VM setup?
Not if you needed it for a short time.
If I need hardware for >5 years I’d buy hardware
If I need the performance of it for just 1 month, why should I bother acquiring the hardware for multiple thousands?
I feel like I was misunderstood here.
I’m making the same argument you did - it makes little to no sense setting up a VPS yourself if you can just as easily grab your data from the SaaS instance.
I’m of the opposite opinion - would you mind elaborating on how a selfhosted-on-nonowned-hardware setup would work?
I believe you, but many people self host on rented hardware for various reasons. For example “proper” self hosting comes with upfront cost. But self hosting ln a VPS comes with reliability, uptime, predictability. But you’re still the master of the software you host, of backups, etc.
So, running a VM in the cloud is somehow different from “running everything in the cloud”? I’m genuinely confused here, willing to bet I’ve misunderstood something.
Operating and administering your own systems infrastructure requires that your business invest in the people to do so, this builds institutional knowledge which makes the important bit, the data and knowledge, portable. If the VM in the cloud gets too expensive you can use another provider, or you can buy hardware and run it locally. If the VM provider cuts your service you still have access to your data because you never lost control of it. Problems can be fixed by in house staff that don’t suddenly evaporate for arbitrary reasons or have service outages.
If your entire business depends on Microsoft services and it gets too expensive you have no options but to pay more. If your account gets locked then you’re out of business until you can get Microsoft to give you access again. If you want to migrate away, there isn’t another Microsoft to move your data to and you’ve replaced all of your technical staff with a support phone number, which isn’t currently accepting your calls.
I see. And the hardware (realistically for small businesses) one-time payment of say (quite overkill) $10 grand is somehow more prohibiting than adding the sysadmin(s) and whatnot to your payroll? Sounds backwards to me.
You’re right, it would depend on the business.
A small 3-4 person office is probably saving way more money using cloud-based SAAS than hiring an IT team. The larger the company gets the less of an impact they would feel hiring more personnel or buying hardware.
It isn’t that these services are always bad. It’s just that, like everything in the tech sector, they’ve collectively reached the point where they’re enshittifying and trying to squeeze their existing customers rather than find new ways to add value.
Eventually the increasing costs will make alternatives more attractive.
It’s a VM that you set up, you have the image yourself, you could put it on a machine in your living room if you had to.
“I’m paying for a colocation of a machine I administer” is very different from “I’ve written my application such that it can only run inside an AWS system”
Sure. But VPS and colocation are not the same, are they?
The idea is that your services run on remote systems without regard for what those systems are (as a VM, docker image, etc.) Your architecture is decoupled from theirs - you can run on an Amazon host one week, and a server in your closet the next.
And as a bonus, systems hosted this way are often harder to scrape as they’re all structured differently. Additionally, you can (and should!) take additional measures to protect your data from your provider - something that just can’t be done when the provider controls the data architecture.
Solid example. I could pay Lyrasis to host an instance of Archivesspace for me. They’d control updates, backups, etc, I’d just use the web interface to manage my archival collections.
OR I could rent a server, install Archivesspace myself (it’s open source), sysadmin it myself, take on all that headache and control.
They’re both in the cloud, but one’s software as a service (SAaS) and the other is just a Linux box on someone else’s machine. The second is cheaper in my experience, but only if you have someone that can sysadmin it. Otherwise you’ve got a learning curve ahead of you.
(it’s late, so feel free to tell me I’ve misread the thread).
You could, I could. The business-owner who decided to hire @anamethatisnt most likely couldn’t. I fail to see the hardware being the pinch point here - adding a sysadmin to your payroll sure seems like the bigger budget outpost.
The end result is the same:
You control what the machine does. The data as well as backups (assuming you arent using specific hardware offerings but just compute and storage)
Example:
I am done with AWS pricing and Azure gave me a fat stack credits to go over there.
Agnostic VMs could be backed up and migrated over to Azure.
Essentially the same as migrating Hyper-V or VMware to Proxmox-VE
And the day your VM host exits the market/bumps their prices/decided to pull the rug from under you, your backups that absolutely couldn’t be made in the SaaS instance will magically continue to exist outside of your Cloud VM setup?
Veeam for example can do that pretty well.
So, yeah it can happen.
Or you extract the data from backup and migrate it to the new host and import it.
And thus administering the server yourself proved to be a waste of time and money as the SaaS was just as resilient? I’m still confused.
Not if you needed it for a short time.
If I need hardware for >5 years I’d buy hardware
If I need the performance of it for just 1 month, why should I bother acquiring the hardware for multiple thousands?
I feel like I was misunderstood here. I’m making the same argument you did - it makes little to no sense setting up a VPS yourself if you can just as easily grab your data from the SaaS instance.