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Comment by 18pfsmt | Hacker News Reader

Ok. What happens when the 3rd party service is acquired and shuts down, or shuts down due to lack of funds? I've got several machines that have been running non-stop for 3-5 years, and I've had several services I've relied on that have shutdown after being acquired, so there seems to be a need for a backup solution either way. People that derive their income from providing 3rd party services seem to have a bias in favor of 3rd party services for everything.

Edit: Why am I not surprised to learn that you work for a hosting provider? I'm not trying to pick on you, I've just noticed a trend that makes little sense to me.

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I'm not the person you're replying to, but someone that disagrees with you.

I run multiple servers, at this minute there's 8 web servers online and 1 mysql server. Each server has a different purpose, some are long term and some are short term (taken offline after purpose served). Having to manage the cron jobs running on each server is a pain, having 8 servers all running different things is fine if you have the time and want to save money, but for me I'd rather pay $20 a month and outsource it to someone else. It's the same reason I use Postmark (http://postmarkapp.com) for my email. I could manage email myself but I value my time, same deal here. Same reason I use google apps for personal email, same reason I use Linode for servers instead of buying hardware and colocating.

Time is my biggest constraint not money, so spending an hour to save $20 isn't worth it.

>Having to manage the cron jobs running on each server is a pain

Agreed, that's why you would use a single, cheap Atom box sitting under your desk managing all of your cron jobs.

>spending an hour to save $20 isn't worth it

This isn't saving $20, it is saving $240 per year, so having your own hardware is break-even for year one. Year two is essentially free.

>it's the same reason I use Postmark [...] for my email

Email is an entirely different beast, dealing lots of config files, blacklists, and a kludge of MTAs/ MUAs. I completely understand outsourcing that piece of operations.

>instead of buying hardware and colocating

There is no reason such operations need to be run from a datacenter/ colo. Any office/ business connection should be adequate to run cron jobs.

The only reason I'm putting these thoughts out there is because I want to understand why things do not work out the way that makes sense to me. When people just down-vote, I can't understand what I am getting wrong. Please help explain what I'm missing, it would help a lot, thanks.

Nothing to do with work. I've been "in technology" for my entire life and professionally for the last 18 years. I have learned that whilst homebrew is satisfying an itch, sometimes there are people who do things better. I've had companies go bankrupt on me and that's why I have contingency plans in place to remedy things, but I sometimes like the fact I can pay someone to do a specific thing for me better than I could do it myself (or at least as well). I'm past the point in my life where it seems useful to spend my time doing something because I can, I'd much rather spend that time on something else (other work, family, friends, hobbies) if there's a viable way that makes good business sense.

p.s. Flattered you care ;)

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