[watsocd]

It's not just the server cost that matters when you compare the cloud to a bare-metal server.

What about:

  Networking equipment
  Backup power - UPS and generators
  Internet backbone - Speed as well as reliability
  Cooling and other infrastructure costs

Then there is capital lock in risk. Once you buy the above hardware, you are probably stuck with it for a few years.

If you have stable load now for 25 big bare-metal servers, it may be cheaper to go bare metal. Otherwise, there is a lot more involved in the decision than going to dell.com and pricing a server.

[toast0]

Bare metal is a continuum too. You don't have to pick between a full cloud deploy and building your own datacenter from scratch.

You can get bare metal servers from a host on monthly or hourly terms.

You can get a 1/3rd rack cabinet at a colo facility and bring your own router, and use the colo's IPs

You can get a cage or a room at a colo and arrange for connecticity to your various upstreams and peers with your own ASN and IPs.

Only after all this is exhausted would I move towards and owned and operated datacenter where all the pieces are under company control and responsibility. (Although, if you rely on it, you're responsible for it, regardless of if you actually control it)

[watsocd]

That is all true but then you need to pay for the services and equipment as well as have the expertise on staff to configure and manage the equipment.

As far as reliability, you can't compare almost any COLO location with an AWS data center.

[toast0]

If you're running bare metal on someone else's servers, you basically have the same staffing requirements as running on EC2. Just need people who understand real machines instead of virtual machines. You'll be paying the host instead of amazon for services and equipment. But the prices might be less.

There's no super secret reliability technology. You can absolutely compare colo with AWS. Many colos may be less reliable, and some may be more reliable. You need to look at power redundancy: how many utility feeds, what kind of ups, generators, testing schedules, what the points of failur are, how they responded in the past, etc. Same for networking feeds. Most colos have simpler networks than AWS which reduces the possible failures, but they may be less redundant etc; they probably have better bandwidth prices though.

Anyway, if you want a reliable system, you're going to need to be in multiple locations, and if you're in multiple locations, you should be able to weather the inevitable power relay failures and border router failures, etc every couple of years.

[ericd]

>As far as reliability, you can't compare almost any COLO location with an AWS data center.

Why not? We had much less downtime than AWS' NoVa DC while coloing, and I don't think our DC was exceptional. AWS is probably much more competent, but they're also trying to build something much more complex than your average small-scale colo setup.

[nicolaslem]

Bare metal != On premise

There are plenty of hosting providers that will provide everything you mention plus the actual servers for a monthly fee without requiring you to buy anything.

[CharlesW]

> Bare metal != On premise

Trying to be helpful and not pedantic: "On premises" or "on prem" are good choices here, while "premise" means something else (e.g. "The premise of moving off-premises is that we can pay a little more in order not to worry about stuff that isn't our company's primary business.")

[ksec]

This is not the first time I have seen this but it is actually quite commonly used / mistake. I wonder if 20 years from now the word premise would have a different meaning.

[CharlesW]

> This is not the first time I have seen this but it is actually quite commonly used / mistake.

Very common, for sure. And although I think it's worth professionals being aware of the difference, I tend not to bother with less technical folks.

> I wonder if 20 years from now the word premise would have a different meaning.

Given that "literally" is now often used to mean "figuratively", it's absolutely possible!

[watsocd]

I agree but now the cost climbs. I am not saying AWS is cheap. Just that you need to look at all the services and components that support a server in a rack.

[jjeaff]

All included, still not even close. Not by a long shot. Renting bare metal from a major provider is going to be less than 20% the cost of aws and that's not even including the bandwidth which is even cheaper from bare metal vs aws.

There is no calculus that makes aws cheaper unless you need extreme variability or some of their managed services and even then, you can usually use those services in conjunction with your rented bare metals.

[tw04]

Network alone is enough to pay for on-prem. Amazon egress fees are beyond egregious.

The only reasons I've seen to justify putting something in the cloud are:

You're tiny - colocation is fine but generally speaking if you don't need more than a single-server's worth of performance and you've got a for-profit business, "the cloud" is probably easier.

Your workload is extremely bursty.

You're using the other stuff. AWS/Azure/GCP has all sort of services that require scale to be efficient - if you're subscribing to those services and are medium-sized (I know, that's not even loosely defined) - it probably makes sense to be in AWS/Azure/GCP.

If you don't need those services, or you're extremely large, you can almost always do it cheaper yourself. Whether you want to is another/completely different question.

[nisa]

You can rent a EPYC Server 32c/64t with 2x4TB NVMe and 512GB memory and 10Gbit (20TB free traffic - 1,20€/TB above that) port in a Hetzner datacentre (cooling, backbone, backup power, network all managed professionally) for ~450€/month.

The time from ordering to login is something between 15 minutes and 2-3 days (you know beforehand). You can cancel every month. Faulty disks are replaced 24/7 in 15-30 minutes.