Software startup can use consumer grade workstations and self host at their office (or at home). Cloud at scale is VERY expensive. And if you do not need the scale, but reliability, it is easier to rent two servers at coloc.
> Software startup can use consumer grade workstations and self host at their office (or at home) (...) And if you do not need the scale, but reliability, it is easier to rent two servers at coloc.
Yeah, just don't forget the backups and monitoring, the networking setup (load balancing between your two servers or workstations at the very least), patching, moving to new servers/workstations when you outgrow the current ones (while also taking the risk of overprovisioning) etc.
Or just throw it all in a PaaS, ideally a container-based one (like Google Cloud Run or AWS Lambda or Scaleway Serverless Containers) where you won't have any lock-in and migrating away to something that makes more sense at your new scale would be easy. The only concern that would remain in that case is data backups to a different provider/place - scaling up/down is automatic, monitoring (at least the basics) are already covered, and there's no patching outside of your application's libraries.
It is a startup, not a space program. Backup can be done with simple ssh+rsync script. Patching is a weekly weekend cron script+reboot. Some heartbeat monitoring... If it goes down for a few hours, not a biggie.
For "throw it all in a PaaS" you need dedicated person, monitoring, billing etc... It is more expensive, not simpler. Cloud provider may also terminate your accounts, change settings etc...
If I had a nickel for every time that restores from "simple SSH+rysnc script" backups failed, I would not need my job as an infra engineer. You can do that, but being sure they work is hard
My clients spend a lot more on AWS bills than they would on self-hosted infra; $1000ish compared to $200/mo from self-hosted or a pair of $1000 servers colo'd for about $100/mo. They get a lot more - Reliability and support channels. That's what they're paying for. Absolutely, I recommend that they when they scale, they move their most expensive parts in terms of AWS costs (bandwidth-intensive things like gameservers and media bouncers) from AWS to self-hosted, because those are the things that are too expensive on AWS and have reliability properties where "Throw a bunch at the wall, fail them fast" is a good guarantee. For your production backups, don't rely on simple scripts. Don't rely on complex scripts. Rely on commonly tested solutions of other people's amortized experience.
SSH+Rsync is the wrong way to go about it, you will fail to restore backups. You need something that allows you to make snapshots. Fortunately that's easy and cheap if you use something like Proxmox.
It would be interesting to map out what kind of industries and startups require a load balancing and multiple production servers for the first few years of setting up. A single 32/64/128/256 core server is pretty decent for most work loads, and anycast services are decent in terms of static content delivery.
Was there a specific kind of startup that you had in mind for this?
VPNs and hybrid architectures exist for a reason. If 99% of your IT infra is boring crap but you have this one special unicorn machine, maybe throw it on an employee's fiber connection and set up a point-to-site VPN for that machine.
Does it make sense to abandon the entire cloud because of 1 use case?
I was never on cloud. I have a big home with fiber connection and some backup connectivity. Setting up new server is like $50/year in electricity. If project works I will sell it, and let new owner deal with cloud and scaling it up!
Just reading price list from cloud providers gives me a headache. We will charge you between X and Z, and hopefully you will not bankrupt on next bill. Also we may terminate services anytime for whatever reason.
> unicorn machine
If you have a specialized startup, that is 90% of your cost! Not some sort of unicorn single machine. If you can use consumer grade hardware without extra cost, that is major competitive advantage!
> VPNs and hybrid architectures
What is that? Do I have to study that? Seems like a major obstacle!
That unicorn machine had better not use unicorn data transfer. Transferring an average of 100Mbps from S3 to your unicorn? That will cost you $1-3k / mo depending on how you configure it and what tier you’re in. Never mind that buying the hardware to sustain these data rates at home or in the colo is so cheap as to not even be worth mentioning and can easily be done on 20-year-old gear.
Of course, those prices to rapidly up if you use serious data. Want to train your fancy ML model to draw cats based on your giant data set of customer cat photos stored on S3? Want to do it on your nice nVidia box at home? That, by itself, might cost as much as an expensive Silicon Valley FTE who could manage an entire installation in a colo facility nearby.
