The cloud has been a controversial concept for much of its existence. While the idea has been around for many decades, AWS started selling IT services in 2006, with Azure following suit in 2008. Since then, the use of cloud services has grown tremendously. While some applications and organizations have embraced the idea from the beginning. I found many of you at SQL Server Central were very hesitant at first. I guess some of you are still skeptical about the value of a production database in a public cloud.
From the beginning, I’ve felt that cloud computing has a place in the world, but in a way that is more appropriate for some situations than others. In terms of database (and maybe compute services), if you have a very well-known and predictable workload, the cloud can be very expensive. It might still be a good choice, but I think it often isn’t. If you have a variable or growing workload, then the cloud might serve you better than trying to keep up with new hardware in your own data center.
Bluesky has had a tremendous amount of growth since its founding. Twitter invested in this as a distributed project and when Elon Musk purchased the site, many users moved away. A lot of them went to Bluesky, which had to deal with a quickly changing workload. They started in AWS, but eventually decided to move to an on-premises setup.
Why? One would think their continued growth would mean AWS (or another cloud) would be a natural fit. However, they hired someone that provided an analysis showing they could invest in their own hardware, overprovision what they needed for growth, and keep up with the demands as they had developed a fairly accurate method of forecasting future needs. The savings in purchasing their own hardware allowed them to buy more than they needed and handle short-term spikes.
To be clear, this doesn’t mean the cloud is worse for most or even many organizations. Bluesky knows they need to continue to invest in hardware, and they are prepared to keep adding resources. They also architected a distributed system that still allows them to scale into AWS if needed in the short term. I don’t know many organizations that would prioritize those things alongside the rest of their business. Most of us do a poor job of forecasting load. Even if we do, often the difficulties of purchasing new resources mean that we can struggle to meet increased demands.
The companies that have moved to the cloud with success, and those that have left the cloud with success, are those that measure, monitor, and make appropriate decisions based on operational data, not opinions and feelings. They aren’t afraid to make a decision one way or the other, choosing what’s best for the organization, not what someone wants to do or thinks will be better.
The cloud might be better for you, or it might be worse, but you ought to have a way to measure and analyze the options. You also need a talented staff that isn’t afraid to try new things and adapt their architecture to take advantage of modern hardware and software. Too many of us aren’t as flexible as Bluesky and might not have the success they have, in or out of the cloud.
Steve Jones
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Voice of the DBA 
THIS! This is how the approach to using the cloud should be handled; use it when it fits the need and makes sense and not when it doesn’t.
Separate from the reliability of the cloud is the internet itself. We were down over half a day today, unable to do anything on a computer b/c everything we use is cloud based save for any local files. I asked my boss if while the net access was down he, I and 2 others could physically meet and continue reviewing a project we’re implementing (we had several 1-2 hour meetings on Monday & Tuesday) and we couldn’t do even that because all we needed to do that required internet access. I fear we, humanity, have become WAY too dependent on the net. Instead of treating it like a tool we’ve made ourselves dependent on it.
A few generations back when people who in the first part of their lives did not have electricity in their home, said the same thing about electricity and they weren’t wrong. There’s a recurring thing called a Carrington event; a solar storm that happens every 128 years or so if I remember correctly and we are over due. The last one fried telegraph lines,. The next time it happens any electronics not protected (i.e. by a faraday cage ) are gone, fried. Most people have no clue just how costly and time consuming it is to replace the hardware power plants would have to if while unprotected they were hit by a Carrington event. From what I read they aren’t even made in the US any more and it takes 8-12 months or more to order and receive one. What’s really going to get you is how little it would cost, in comparison to what our governments waste on garbage pork barrel projects, to protect the power grid.
My wife and I, now that the kids are about gone for college, are talking about relocating from our traditional Texas community neighborhood to a farm/compound like setting with 1 or more neighbors/friends where we’ll build a home capable of living with but also independent of these things we’ve created dependency layers on. We’ll have power and the internet but should those go down we’ll also be ready to make a go of it for as long as it takes.
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Glad you agree. I think that some of the “smart” apps are annoying in that they don’t always make it easy to work offline. I think about this more than most, since I’m often disconnected on planes or in places I don’t trust (or can’t rely) on a connection. So in OneDrive, I lock things to a machine so I have copies.
While I appreciate trying to free up space, and often it works well, it should be easy since we don’t always have connectivity. I gave up on Dropbox for this reason, as I could pin files to the disk, but not in a known place, so some apps didn’t handle that well.
Of course, being without Internet isn’t something a lot of our work would survive, so I’m not overly concerned. Same with power. We do need this. Good to prep in case it’s down for a few hours, but if its’ weeks, most of us are in trouble.
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