[problems]

Yeah, but I'm just trying to ballpark it. I figured the larger server would be a costsavings over many smaller ones.

Most of it does need to remain online at all times including several large databases. Just running my logstash server alone eats 8 GB of RAM and 200+ GB of disk.

In bandwidth and storage alone I'm past the cost of the server - so even if I could split this up and keep it mostly offline it still wouldn't be close to worth it unless I'm missing something more significant?

> You're not including the time costs of operating that server.

Do you mean swapping the drives about once every 3 years with free DC remote hands? Operational costs there are almost nothing - maybe 10 hours a year of my time. Surely much less than it would take to get everything running on a cloud architecture. And that cloud architecture would still require some level of maintenance and monitoring I'm sure.

[morgante]

> I figured the larger server would be a costsavings over many smaller ones.

Nope, you pay more for a single large machine than multiple small ones.

If your service is truly so stable that you only need to spend 10 hours a year maintaining it (and demand isn't growing), then maybe the cloud isn't right for you. But that's not true for most companies.

[gpapilion]

Actually pricing at both aws and gcp is linear.

[novembermike]

For a single host that you know you'll want in 3 years it probably isn't worth it. If demand grows 10x in the next year though, how does that look? What if the host has a sudden failure? What if the business dies and you want to get rid of the host?