[KorematsuFred]

So many people forget that running data center is a super complex business not just in point of technology but also in terms of operation.

I have known people who tried to setup a data center in India and it took them around 2 years to have the first rack installed. Biggest hurdle was to get a license to store fuel in large tanks for their generators. Not to mention many of those permissions have to be renewed annually and if you fail to renew it which can take months, you are not in compliance and hence can't use the generators.

In India you can not start your own power generation plant and you can sell electricity only to the government. Depending on many situations you have to technically register a separate entity, get licenses as a "power company" then on paper sell the electricity to government and then buy it back from government for your own use.

[mmmBacon]

It’s difficult but it’s not that hard and it’s well worth the investment. When I was flirting with founding a company I looked at this trade off and with hiring/overhead etc... it was significantly cheaper to roll our own than it was to use AWS. It was only cheaper at the earliest stage.

The only actual reason to use AWS is to not divert any energy to doing anything else but scaling the company. The only problem was that by the time you are at some reasonable scale, AWS has you pretty locked in.

[blueblisters]

You can get around some of these operational constraints with technology. For example, Google had a server design with its own in-built backup battery supply, which incidentally could be cheaper than diesel generators. So backup power for your servers is solved but you still might need to figure out backup power for other parts of the datacenter.

[freepor]

Batteries don’t have anywhere near the energy density of hydrocarbons. Batteries are good for a few hours, but if you want to be able to run for days off-grid you will need hydrocarbons.

[throwaway888abc]

This, The certification barrier is steep and clients wants reliable DC (with ISO, redundant and working power, connectivity, etc.).