Comment by gbeech | Hacker News Reader

Comment by gbeech | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

> eliminating internal sysadmin staff completely (and outsourcing all the remaining sysadmin work to Amazon)

Man, this idea is one of the most insane things I hear. Amazon does not install your operating systems, Amazon does not install and configure you applications, Amazon does not troubleshoot anything related to the operation of the servers, Amazon does not do analysis on your traffic patterns and decide when you need more instances, Amazon absolutely doesn't care about how well your product runs as much as your own staff does, in other words there is no way you outsource your WHOLE sysadmin staff. All Amazon does is provide the hardware and network infrastructure to run on. It is not a magic bullet that says I don't need to have these people around. SysAdmin != server monkey - yes it is part of our jobs, but quite honestly it is a very very small part of it.

> Anyone that thinks that it's pleasant to spend time in a data center is insane

Call me insane because I sure do love spending time in a datacenter, it's one of the few times working in IT you really get to do something with your hands, and that does have a certain appleal to me.

You conveniently left out the first part of the quoted sentence, "allow programmers to actually program infrastructure". Almost everything you wrote can be programmed these days without a "traditional" sysadmin.

Between AMIs, Configuration Engines, and things like http://susestudio.com/ make it simpler to create auto-scaling infrastructure.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_open_source_confi...

Granted that process is still under refinement, but with dedication you can achieve those goals.

Conversely, again with cost analysis, which is cheaper, a developer who can manage all that, or a sysadmin? I am sure there is a curve, small end a sysadmin, large end automation.

Do your "traditional" programmers want to deal with all the practices listed at http://everythingsysadmin.com/the-test.html ?

Do your "traditional" programmers want to develop the sort of skill listed at http://www.sage.org/field/jobs-descriptions.html ?

That is what good sysadmins do, and rack monkeys are training to do.

Sure. But often they don't have the programming background to do it cleanly.

>>* All Amazon does is provide the hardware and network infrastructure to run on. It is not a magic bullet that says I don't need to have these people around*.

Even in this case, I would still like to excuse my self of the headache dealing with real estate, electricity, air conditioning etc. In other words supporting factors required to keep the data center up and running.

Unless you are going to need ridiculous amounts of servers, its just not worth your time dealing with other support operations and its infrastructure. Hiring, managing and maintaining the staff full time to this job is not easy and takes a lot of your time.

For some large company it makes perfect sense to focus on data center infrastructure and support. But for small companies you are far better off letting some one else handle it and focus on your primary work.

This comment doesn't make any sense. Companies who need to build their own data-center aren't going to get by on Heroku.

For everyone else there's co-location, where you don't worry about those things anyways. Unless you have a just terrible facility I guess. I mean sure, one time in the past three years I've complained to our colo folks that it seemed warmer than it should be while one of the A/C units was being serviced.

Other than that your argument doesn't make much sense. It makes me think you've either got no actual experience with this sort of thing, or you're co-locating at "Bob's BBQ & Server Emporium"...

Actually I was replying to the parent comment:

>>Call me insane because I sure do love spending time in a datacenter, it's one of the few times working in IT you really get to do something with your hands, and that does have a certain appleal to me.

We are both saying the same thing. You need to draw a line between "fun" and how much feasible it is to afford that fun. Most people don't need a data center, but still want it.

All passion and fun talk aside. Sometime you need to look at it very pragmatically. That was my point.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com