Re: AWS EC2 and Perl

For the last 15 (or so) years i have my own hardware in a Colo. It's not the cheapest solution, but it has turned out to be very reliable and flexible. It's easy enough to upgrade the hardware if your really have to (as long as the colo is in driving distance) and you have *fixed* costs every month.

All my stuff (Host with big database + 2 VMs) and a VM of a friend is currently running on a 10 year old 4 Core Intel Xeon at 3.3 Ghz with 32 Gigs of RAM.

Owning your own server hardware has pros and cons. But for me, the pros are in the majority. When it's your own hardware, you can really adapt it to your requirements, install a Raid controller of your choice etc. If you need a GPU for some neural network stuff, it's a one-time cost instead of paying for the service on a monthly basis (or on some weird "GPU cycles used" scheme).

After the initial setup it doesn't take all that much extra time for system admin stuff except for the occasional "sudo apt update && sudo apt dist-upgrade && sudo reboot". The rest of the work is, just as in any other server solution, spent on keeping the software working. As for the initial setup, this can be less stressful that the usual rent-a-server solutions, because you can set up and test the server in the comfort of your home without the worry that you shut yourself out of the system by accident by changing something network related...

perl -e 'use Crypt::Digest::SHA256 qw[sha256_hex]; print substr(sha256_hex("the Answer To Life, The Universe And Everything"), 6, 2), "\n";'

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Re^2: AWS EC2 and Perl by Bod (Parson) on Oct 28, 2021 at 23:21 UTC
Thanks for the suggestion. I've just looked and found that one of the first results from a Google search has a datacentre in my hometown. So definitely worth looking into...	[reply]
Re^3: AWS EC2 and Perl by hippo (Archbishop) on Oct 29, 2021 at 09:14 UTC
Look into it but also be aware that your responsibilities for colo are even greater than for a managed solution. Not only are you responsible for the data (incl backups), the applications and the O/S but now also for the hardware, the BIOS, the networking kit within the rack, etc. If anything inside the rack fails in the middle of the night it will be up to you to fix it - and that often includes physically travelling to to the datacentre. Colo does have its merits and if, like cavac, you need/want hardware or a networking configuration which is too niche for a managed provider then it can be a good solution. Also of course for big firms who can afford all the redundancy needed to offset some of the downsides. We stopped using colo more than a decade ago and it was the right decision for us. YMMV. 🦛	[reply]