[talk] /. on "don't be a server hugger"

[George Rosamond]

Edward Capriolo:
> The 'issue' with the cost debate is the cloud huggers have this term called
> 'cost of system admin'. So even when you prove doing it yourself is less,
> the cloud people factor in salaries of 2-3 people and then says 'cloud is
> cheaper'. What this argument fails to account for is that when you do not
> have system admins and networks, you have programmers spending time as
> system admins. Beside the fact that this takes away from there programming
> time not all programmers have the requisite experience to be decent system
> admins.
> 

Yes, and that's part of the issue isn't it?  Cloud advocates talk about
cost, which may be true in certain circumstances, but throwing in
sysadmin healthcare costs, and other irrelevant details really distorts
the comparison.  It's not much of a joke to say AWS is cheap until you
use it.

The "don't be a server hugger" character is just pushing marketing FUD.
 As I said in the OP, I have never seen slashdot comments so one-sided
on a topic from a side I agree with.

Chris states that the cloud is a godsend.  Well, in certain scenarios in
which your capital expenditures will not give you the depreciation
value, or for startups that won't last more than 6 mos, yes.

But in the case of you needing confidentiality for your data?  What if
you have heavy IP information?  Do you really want the provider scanning
the data for whatever happens to be the boogeyman of the day (eg,
terrorism, ip violations, etc)?

The first arguments I heard around the cloud were incredibly
non-technical sales people.  Probably not different for anyone else.
These were people who didnt know the difference between Xen and a
multi-user system.

I've seen the implicit hand of "it's what everyone is doing" affect some
people, ie, "I read everyone doing it in NYC, so I'll do it here in
Kentucky" attitude also.

At the end of the day the question isn't about the cloud v servers.
It's always *on* servers.  The marketing FUD dances around that.  *They*
have made it the thrust of the argument, but it's not enough to chase
that strawman argument.

g