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Comment by olegkikin | Hacker News Reader

Here's a server with 512GB RAM, 40 cores for $1,850:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/122593732313

Cool. So, where do you put that server? does it have sufficient power, AC, generators, UPS? How much does that cost per month?

Who monitors that PC, and does preventative maintenance, etc? If a part looks like its going to fail, where do you migrate your workload to, so you can take that server offline for repairs. (you need multiple servers)

Since you have multiple servers, how much does your 40GB networking cost (with 100GB uplinks) so you aren't constrained by the network? And what kind of storage network do you have, so that you can live-migrate these running machines around to different machines?

Lastly, if you co-locate the server somewhere, what does it cost for multiple redundant internet connections to the facility? And where is your failover facility, that is at least a few hundred miles away?

I think this is a very important point and one that many folks don't fully appreciate:

The total cost of ownership of a computing asset is several times greater than the cost of the actual asset.

Think of it this way: a dog can be obtained for a very nominal cost (or free) but the cost to house, feed, entertain, and provide healthcare for is non-trivial.

it's not unheard of for just the costs of deploying a new device into a large organization to be something like EIGHT TIMES what the cost is for the actual asset. That's just to get the hardware deployed and NOT the cost to keep it running.

Cutting down on TCO and streamlining the deployment of resources is a big part of the sell for cloud deployments. Particularly for computing assets that may otherwise spend a lot of their time idle.

Right and all the bare metal providers like softlayer are probono orgs

Softlayer's network is crap compared to google and aws. That being said in my previous company we used a combination of Softlayer (for dedicated machines) and AWS for cloud. There is definitely a use case for each, but as Nrsolis mentions there is additional cost in things beyond the cost of the initial hardware itself.

Not a Softlayer customer but hard to imagine network crappier than AWS.

At least with AWS you get placement groups, which can help a lot. With Softlayer we saw entirely too much packet loss on a regular basis, and they try to upsell you on things to "fix" it.

default port speed was 100Mbps as of 10 months ago

It's also a very old CPU generation, and slower memory.

They're great boxes for cheap on-prem etl clusters.

I prefer sell R810s over those hps because they're 2U and have better power consumption with the same specs.

Thank you, I was looking for this comment. That is the value of the cloud: the reduction in TCO, the predictable pricing, up-time guarantees, and bandwidth availability.

...ok? As I just said, we (as a company) dont care about a few thousand per month in exchange for letting Google Cloud handle everything for us. We're definitely not interested in buying some used server from ebay and then figuring out where to run it.

How old is that server? I do not see ECC RAM if you care... also are the other pieces of the server going to fail anytime soon?

How loud is it? How much energy does it consume while running? How hard is it to configure and keep running? What kind of firmware does it have and will it be a problem updating?

These are all the questions I would have before buying a beast like that...

People tend to ignore even quite a big costs if they are spending company's money, not their own :)

Also, this machine you link to might cost $1,850 but:

- it is used, not new, so it can break any minute, and you don't have any warranty.

- on GCP just $2,100 per month buys you similary speced machine AND peace of mind.

- running this machine 24/7 poses some significant electricity cost.

EDIT: - $2,100 is probably lower than a salary you would pay an IT technician maintaining your machine(s).

The whole “electricity costs a lot” argument is getting tiresome. Where I live, electricity is 11 cents per KWh. That means even if you run that machine full tilt 24x7 (which you won’t), and even if it draws 1KW (which it won’t), it’s still only $79/mo in electricity cost.

> electricity costs a lot

well it's not just electricity. to run your server you probably at least need a network, ups and probably other things. this stuff especially gets ugly when you want to have a network with many servers. at least most dedicated server providers charge a ton of money for interconnection of servers. well at least ova actually provides a vRack for dedicated servers but its not always free.

Power in a lot of places is 2-3x that, and for a naively designed data centre you can double that to include the cost for air conditioning (yes you can do a lot better but on a small scale, basic AC is going to equal your workload draw).

Data centers aren’t built in such places. And for just a few machines a simple building HVAC will do fine.

then you would need multiple of them (for redundancy) if you use it in production environment, then goes addirional maintenance of hard drives and so on. so what would be end prive for bare bones?

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