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Comment by gautamdivgi | Hacker News Reader

Why not just run IaaS on the cloud? Maintaining a datacenter is expensive. Now I’m not sure if there are companies that provide management of actual physical infrastructure - battery backup, generator, cabling, certifications of premises etc.

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> Maintaining a datacenter is expensive. Now I’m not sure if there are companies that provide management of actual physical infrastructure

I knew the cloud marketing machine had done the new generation dirty. I didn't know it was this bad.

So much this! PXE is apparently too hard for engineers to learn to bootstrap a VM, but they'll go to $5k worth of training to learn Terraform to deploy a CRUD app and call that a win :/

I mean, PXE and bootstrapping VMs aren't even close to being what people use terraform for. VM provisioning, in general, is basically just one of the many (and also most trivial) steps in the usual Terraform deployment.

Most terraform flows are just as trivial as any workflow, create/update/delete of infrastructure. Not like we haven't had a hundred frameworks to accomplish that over the last few decades of onprem. Short term enterprise memory just believes there's only one way/place to do that now.

What is ur opinion about hashicorp Tool terraform and vault who can help with multiclod provisioning can bring down the cost of cloud migration.

Didn't see your reply - but terraform can do a bit in the space of multi-cloud provisioning. I say a bit, because most of the work will be on the user, as your terraform plans are gonna be -MESSY- to support multi-cloud. It really isn't seamless or easy in my experience. AWS and Azure operate with enough differences that you'll have more exceptions to your workflow than actual steps. I find multi-cloud to be burdensome and an awful experience in general sadly, even with the "best" tools.

I’m not new gen. I’ve worked in telcos providing 5 9’s infra availability. A datacenter is not just servers. There is a whole host of civil, mechanical and electrical engineering that plays into it.

Edit: also OSHA rules, cable splicing, how to handle ladders, etc, etc.

> A datacenter is not just servers.

If you buy colocation, it is tho.

So basically trading one provider for another

This has to stop at some point.

That's called colocation: you provide the servers, they provide the racks

Do you need people in the colo to wire stuff up or is that handled by the colo folks?

You drop off the box and they wire it up and give you remote console access. You can even schedule an on-site meeting with your equip as needed. Some colo partners will also keep replacement parts for you like if a disk or power supply goes bad.

You can usually pay the data center staff for their time to push a button or connect a few wires. Seems expensive at first when they quote you 50€/15 minutes but often way cheaper than somebody driving there and going through security to do the same.

Unless you don't want strangers touching your assigned rack, then you need to bring the key.

In addition to the other comments, after it's up & running some colos will also offer "remote hands" assistance, like replacing a failed drive. In that case ideally the enclosure will or can be made to make that slot's LED red or something so they know exactly which drive to pull.

As others have mentioned, there's usually a remote hands feature that you can contract out. If you wanted to, many colos will rack and wire up all your equipment for you, for a cost. It really depends on how much you're wanting to offload on to the provider. They might do it all for you, they might just give you a cabinet or cage with power and a network drops.

The new term for this old concept is now being called, "Data Center as a Service".

Came here to suggest this - I'd have first run the numbers if running on a desirable cost IaaS to see if that was a comfortable middleground. It still amounts to self hosting everything yourself, except for compute, networking, storage - the basics (which are deceptively difficult when you account for secure access). And you get nice APIs to automate with still. Don't get me wrong, it might end up being more expensive at a threshold still, but do you really want to do your own... everything? Load balancing, DNS? What a total waste.

That said, some hardware companies have APIs to do most of that stuff - a little human runs out to fulfill your request if need be in some cases I think. Still like... much to worry about.

Uh. That's how essentially how the entire internet is run.

Yes. I know, I work for a telco and have worked with central office switches and telco edge clouds. I know what goes into designing a data center to maintain 5 9’s availability. I don’t think it’s a level of complexity most companies need though.

So to your point it’s how the internet is run. But your midsize enterprise isn’t a telco. They have no expertise with this stuff.

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