* Posts by BigZeus

7 publicly visible posts • joined 17 Feb 2023

Cisco dumps its Hyperflex hyperconverged infrastructure

BigZeus

Not surprised

I have to say I am not at all surprised.

I have currently had the unfortunate experience to try to upgrade a Hyperflex environment for a customer and it is certainly a very sensitive bucket of shit lol!

Anything and everything has gone wrong with it and it's only running ESXi which I have been playing with for a very long time.

It's taken every scrap of VMware knowledge I have to get as far as I have.

VSAN makes Hyperflex look very third rate so ditching that for a partnership with Nutanix makes sense for Cisco to try to get a foothold into the HCI market.

Save $7 million on cloud by spending $600k on servers, says 37Signals' David Heinemeier Hansson

BigZeus

Re: They don't even have to be the ones involved in the screw-up

While this is an extreme scenario, I have always said that cloud DCs are a perfect target not just for hackers but extremists who love to blow stuff up!! Even more so if they hit several at once like this article states. It's not something people right now would expect but they economic and financial chaos it would cause would be next level.

BigZeus

Re: Cloud is more than just servers

Cloud is a lot more than just servers yes but then again, so is on prem these days.

Anything you can do in the cloud, you can do on premise if you want.

I'm sorry but that is true.

To a few of your points

- You are still going to need "operators" regardless of whether it's in the cloud or not. PaaS services need to be administered as do IaaS VMs in a tenancy. Depending on your SaaS instance as well, it will still need apps support to a point maintaining your service instance. Ok sure, you don't have to worry about server room or DC costs but unless the cloud provider is doing to end to end support as managed service (which costs a lot more), you still need to do a proper cost comparison.

- I agree warm DR can be rendered obselete with active-active HA but you don't need cloud for that. I have done it myself with on prem solutions and have had plenty of customers who have done the same. To see it's not possible with "racks of servers" is just bollocks.

- You most certainly can have continuous backups with on prem and also the ability to restore in minutes. I have even seen ability to restore in seconds with on prem provided you have the right kit in place. The ability to scale 100 fold quickly does depend on what kit you have available and you are right, this most likely is easier to achieve for a hyperscaler.

- yes with elasticity and having your workloads designed to work with this in cloud can make this more cost effective. But to be very frank, you can do this with on prem solutions as well with the right tech in the mix and therefore optimising your on prem costs.

While some people here are being critical of IaaS (and very rightfully so) a lot of the criticism is also more widespread than that. As I have said in other comments on this thread, everything does have it's pros and cons and that includes public cloud and on prem solutions. In my opinion there is way too much evidence globally that customers are paying way too much for public cloud for the services they are getting. Bill shock is quite common and as the CEO of 37 Signals is finding, it can be cheaper to bring it all or some of your services back home. However, there are situations where cloud can be the right option. Just treat it like another tool and do the costings for it just like everything else.

The "we are more cheaper" catch cry is just rubbish and IMO, the public cloud provider salespeople need to stop using it as it's starting to cause brand damage. As I said before as well, the "we are more secure" sales pitch also needs to stop. Plenty of public cloud breaches in recent times. Okta copped a couple last year and what about the classic LastPass hack? Last their ENTIRE global DB. We are going to here about these more and more in the next few years.

BigZeus

Re: It's not the cloud, it's you!

TBH there are plenty of environments in my market who have on prem 24x7 availability and have it still cheaper than cloud so to say a cloud provider is a far better solution cost and headache-wise I reckon is a bit of a stretch.

Especially when whole continents for some cloud services have gone down.

As I said in my original post though. if you can make cloud work for you than great - use it.

Managing cost though is not just specific to cloud - you need to do that with on prem as well to ensure there is no overspend.

The economics of opex v capex are just different but hardware vendors through XaaS are now bring cloud consumption opex based costings to on prem solutions.

Hardware vednors are getting market share back with this as it's using the same cost model as cloud but we total environmental control if the customer wants it.

BigZeus

Re: Seems quite simple to me...

Wait for silicon photonics inside servers - that kind of throughput and compute power close to you will smash the cloud providers initially out of the park. It will be massive driver for repatriation. Intel already know they are approaching the maxims of a copper based bus and have been working on this for years. Once this technology is released and mainstream, cloud providers will need to spend multi billions changing out their compute platforms to compete with this. For business and customers, it will become a case of spend now to get much better performance and near zero latency in our own DCs or we can wait for years for cloud provider X to upgrade all their kit for us to get that performance.

I think I know what a lot of people will do.

BigZeus

Cloud finally getting a reality check

I have been telling public cloud evangelists in my market for years that there will be a swing back and that not all workloads will stay in the cloud.

I was constantly told I was living in the past but it's good to see the global industry finally seeing that public cloud is not the answer to everything despite the mass marketing machines of AWS and Azure.

The costs haven't been adding up for a long time unless you are prepared to use or require a dynamic platform that allows for spin up / spin down of workloads.

I built a private cloud of sorts for developers in a place I used to work 13 years ago where this was meant to be the process for them testing code, building code etc.

They just weren't interested and always wanted static servers which semi defeated the purpose of the environment.

My point being a lot of customers still want a good percentage of workloads to be static which cloud is uber expensive for - IaaS is just over priced rubbish.

Another strength of cloud are SaaS offerings and some PaaS offerings.

I also never bought into the whole "we are more secure" rubbish and cloud is just becoming more and more of a target.

I mentioned on another article I commented on, one of the big three cloud providers I reckon will get done with a multi regional, cross tenancy hack which will cause them permanent brand damage.

These environments are so vast with thousands of tenancies there are so many places to hide and launch attacks from.

Cross tenancy vulnerabilities have been found in both AWS and Azure last year and will continue to be found.

Cloud has it's place and is another tool in the box.

Everyone just needs to use it as such and consider it appropriately.

It's not going to bring forth unicorns and rainbows and be the answer to world peace! :)

The world was promised 'cloud magic'. So much for that fairy tale

BigZeus

Cloud is not always the answer

I only just came across this article the other day and found it very interesting not just for the article itself but for all the comments.

You can pick cloud evangelists and those who work for the big three cloud providers a mile away.

I do find it amazing how worked up people get over this debate and personally find IT tech pros now fitting into two categories with this.

You have the die hard cloud evangelists / cloud providers who are stubbornly holding to the "ra ra cloud" catch cry and refuse to be convinced otherwise.

You then have the IT pros who yes, still work with on prem kit but who have the skills to know how to mesh solutions all together.

For the cloud evangelists who think the cloud is going to feed every starving child in the world and going to bring forth unicorns and rainbows all day everyday, just take a breath.

Yes, the cloud does have it's advantages and has shaken the industry up.

However, to say that public cloud is cheaper and more secure than on premise is just plain wrong.

There are WAY too many examples of cloud bill shock now and look at the exponentially growing rates of cloud repatriation because of it.

AWS and Azure have cloud economics that are so bloody confusing and extensive that most of their own staff don't even understand them.

They also don't care for helping customers optimise the costs as it doesn't help their profit margins - "oh well, you consumed this service now cough up" is really becoming tiresome for a lot of customers.

I am seeing this is my region all the way from SMB up until the top companies - it's not limited to a particular environment size.

At least people with decent on premise technical skills can help mesh on prem environments with public cloud for decent hybrid environments or even build public cloud only environments as they have the technical fundamentals understood.

I consider myself cloud pragmatic and if a public cloud service for a customer with the right use case makes sense, then awesome - use it.

It should be another tool in the box and used as such.

I am sure people here remember when Gartner 10+ years ago was predicting most workloads and data were going to be in the cloud by the 2020s.

How wrong was that?

I would love to know the payday Gartner had for skewing that market research for AWS and Azure.

I do recognise cloud can be very effective with workloads that can be spun up and down dynamically as needed and even better, removed quickly when no longer required.

Then you are very likely going to see financial benefit.

However considering a number of workloads these day need 24x7 availability, I'm sorry but if it's not SaaS and some PaaS offerings, it doesn't add up cost wise.

I also don't buy into the myth that cloud is way more secure.

Sure - the cloud vendors invest a lot into security but look at the size of their environments.

The attack surface is so vast, I refuse to believe that have every entry point covered.

Also considering public cloud API is becoming one of the most common attack vectors as well (some global security analysts have this as THE number one attack vector) that does start to take the gloss of this shiny solution.

Also look at the cross tenancy vulnerabilities that Azure and AWS uncovered last year.

Again they will tell you we got to them before hostile actors but I pose the question - did they?

We all know that very smart hostile attackers will breach, see if they were detected and if not, stay in for very long periods of time.

They will be very patient and meticulously plan when they will strike and how.

Do we have sleepers sitting inside AWS / Azure just waiting for the right time?

I use cloud, albeit sparingly (moreso after the LastPass hack), within my own company and will use it where it makes sense.

However, I don't think I will ever recommend to a customer to go 100% public cloud but if it's the right tool for the right job, go for it.

I also predict within the next 5 years or so , one of these providers is going to be so crippled by a massive multi regional, global hack that will have such far reaching implications, that the cloud industry will be shaken to the core.

My two cents worth :)