[latch]

A number of managed providers have multiple DCs within a region as well as DCs in multiple geographic locations.

Also, many have been in operation since before AWS was a thing, and some are larger. So I can't imagine what AWS knows about running a datacenter that others don't.

Now maybe in theory if you can build something to be fully one with the cloud, considering all edge cases, and limiting yourself to only cloud-zen tools (or building your own, or doing vendor lock in). In theory, with enough money, I guess the cloud lets you maybe achieve higher reliability.

The fundamentals of EC2 (lack of dual NICs, dual power supplies and BBU RAID + virtualization and general complexity) means that a single instance is way less reliable (let alone, much worse value) than a single dedicated box. The complexity you need to throw on top of that building block (in the shape of lock-in, compromise, money, latency, application complexity or a combination of these) is pretty significant.

[retrovm]

It's adorable that you think batteries and dual PSUs are something that makes a node more reliable, rather than less reliable.

[zielmicha]

What's the point of dual PSU if not reliability?

[retrovm]

I'm not sure what the point is, actually. The variety of things that can go wrong with them is astonishing. For one thing, among many others, BMC cards will power-cap the max clock speed of CPUs when a machine is running on only one PSU, which can cause a degradation that's worse than if the machine had just halted. There are a zillion other edge cases like that.