[ale] Anyone done business cases for managing cloud servers?

[Elmer Masters]

Hi, Leam.

I haven't done any formal cases, but I can tell you a couple of things
about using Amazon's cloud. I think the main costs to look at are the
monthly costs for cloud service. These should be compared to the costs
associated with a data center or co-lo and the cost of buying your own
hardware. Amazon makes it real easy to provision new server instances,
but the costs start around $90/mo per server. Using Amazon means I can
run 17 servers without worrying about maintaining the physical space
for them and buying new and replacement hardware.
Of course once an instance is up and running it is a complete server
and, as we all know, servers don't run themselves. Managing systems in
the cloud still requires as much attention as if they were sitting in
a rack down the hall, the primary difference being I'm not going to
accidentally dump[ coffee on a cloud server.

There were a couple of blog posts this week that may be of interest:
http://gigaom.com/2012/02/11/which-is-less-expensive-amazon-or-self-hosted/
and http://aws.typepad.com/aws/2012/02/be-careful-when-comparing-aws-costs.html.

Hope this helps,

Elmer.
http://www.teknoids.net/

> ------------------------------
>
> Message: 9
> Date: Fri, 17 Feb 2012 20:36:43 -0500
> From: Leam Hall <leamhall at gmail.com>
> Subject: [ale] Anyone done business cases for managing cloud servers?
> To: Atlanta Linux Enthusiasts <ale at ale.org>
> Message-ID: <4F3F00AB.2040002 at gmail.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed
>
> Morning all!
>
> I'm looking at helping some friends with some Linux business and I've
> spouted off here a couple times about moving to the cloud. Has anyone
> done any business case studies on cloud server administration costs,
> support models, etc?
>
> Thanks!
>
> Leam
>
>