Re: [vcf-midatlantic] Snipe-It
On 11/29/2018 2:18 PM, Evan Koblentz via vcf-midatlantic wrote:
Eric,
Quick question - how well does the current version of Snipe-It run on Ubuntu Server 18.04.1 LTS on top of ESXi?
Might be usable to track stuff in the Makerspace (also at Infoage in Building 9059)
I don't know if they have a server version. We were shopping for a cloud-based product.
local version is free - I'm willing to spin up a server to save $399.00 a year
On 11/29/18 3:07 PM, Martin Flynn via vcf-midatlantic wrote:
Quick question - how well does the current version of Snipe-It run on Ubuntu Server 18.04.1 LTS on top of ESXi?
Might be usable to track stuff in the Makerspace (also at Infoage in Building 9059)
I don't know if they have a server version. We were shopping for a cloud-based product.
local version is free - I'm willing to spin up a server to save $399.00 a year
That would certainly beat running it on "someone else's computer". Seriously. Let me know if you need hardware; I'm swimming in it. -Dave -- Dave McGuire, AK4HZ New Kensington, PA
On 11/29/18 3:08 PM, Dave McGuire via vcf-midatlantic wrote:
On 11/29/18 3:07 PM, Martin Flynn via vcf-midatlantic wrote:
Quick question - how well does the current version of Snipe-It run on Ubuntu Server 18.04.1 LTS on top of ESXi?
Might be usable to track stuff in the Makerspace (also at Infoage in Building 9059) I don't know if they have a server version. We were shopping for a cloud-based product. local version is free - I'm willing to spin up a server to save $399.00 a year
Certainly it's your call for the makerspace; as for VCF we still aren't 100% decided about using that product. Eric noted that it would take a bunch of customizing to meet our needs. Also for any organization, especially a growing one like VCF, it would be poor business practice to put our data on any individual's server or any account at all that is not fully under our control.
On 11/29/18 3:15 PM, Evan Koblentz via vcf-midatlantic wrote:
Quick question - how well does the current version of Snipe-It run on Ubuntu Server 18.04.1 LTS on top of ESXi?
Might be usable to track stuff in the Makerspace (also at Infoage in Building 9059) I don't know if they have a server version. We were shopping for a cloud-based product. local version is free - I'm willing to spin up a server to save $399.00 a year
Certainly it's your call for the makerspace; as for VCF we still aren't 100% decided about using that product. Eric noted that it would take a bunch of customizing to meet our needs. Also for any organization, especially a growing one like VCF, it would be poor business practice to put our data on any individual's server or any account at all that is not fully under our control.
Like a "cloud" server, for example. -Dave -- Dave McGuire, AK4HZ New Kensington, PA
Certainly it's your call for the makerspace; as for VCF we still aren't 100% decided about using that product. Eric noted that it would take a bunch of customizing to meet our needs. Also for any organization, especially a growing one like VCF, it would be poor business practice to put our data on any individual's server or any account at all that is not fully under our control. Like a "cloud" server, for example.
I know it's your favorite pasttime to make fun of that idea, but -- yes. By "control" I don't mean security. I meant we would want a business account with accessible support staff, receipts for all expenses, and so on. Clearly you, Martin, and any number of VCF members have the * capability * to run a pro-grade server; I'm just saying it is poor form to rely on individuals who have their own priorities vs. companies that are paid to perform a given service. This is not an attack on anyone's ability, experience, skills, or tech.
On 11/29/18 3:27 PM, Evan Koblentz wrote:
Certainly it's your call for the makerspace; as for VCF we still aren't 100% decided about using that product. Eric noted that it would take a bunch of customizing to meet our needs. Also for any organization, especially a growing one like VCF, it would be poor business practice to put our data on any individual's server or any account at all that is not fully under our control. Like a "cloud" server, for example.
I know it's your favorite pasttime to make fun of that idea,
Yes, because it's stupid. (sorry, no offense intended!)
but -- yes. By "control" I don't mean security. I meant we would want a business account with accessible support staff, receipts for all expenses, and so on. Clearly you, Martin, and any number of VCF members have the * capability * to run a pro-grade server; I'm just saying it is poor form to rely on individuals who have their own priorities vs. companies that are paid to perform a given service. This is not an attack on anyone's ability, experience, skills, or tech.
Hey, I DID NOT OFFER to host this stuff! I offered to donate server hardware to VCF for YOU to do it in-house...where it belongs. But, since you mentioned it... In my case, my company is a registered, tax-collecting, tax-paying corporation, it runs professional hardware in a commercial building with redundant systems and a support staff, and it is paid to provide these services. But I am the owner of this company, and you know me personally, so some random hosting/VPS company that's owned by strangers of heaven-only-knows-what expertise and motivations would obviously be preferable! Of course, I see the logic now. -Dave -- Dave McGuire, AK4HZ New Kensington, PA
On 11/29/18 4:13 PM, Evan Koblentz via vcf-midatlantic wrote:
I offered to donate server hardware to VCF for YOU to do it in-house...where it belongs. But, since you mentioned it...
Generous offer is noted and appreciated.
The offer stands; just keep it in mind if/when you need it.
Martin was asking for the makerspace, not for VCF.
Understood. -Dave -- Dave McGuire, AK4HZ New Kensington, PA
Like a "cloud" server, for example.
I know it's your favorite pasttime to make fun of that idea,
Yes, because it's stupid. (sorry, no offense intended!)
https://www.ceos3c.com/cloud/how-to-install-snipeit-on-ubuntu-16-04-on-aws-f... AWS is not going anywhere- case in point, a huge portion of the companies I work for services are now run on AWS. I believe AWS is a perfectly acceptable choice for hosting something like this, esp in their free tier :) -andy
On 11/29/18 9:42 PM, Andrew Diller wrote:
Like a "cloud" server, for example.
I know it's your favorite pasttime to make fun of that idea,
Yes, because it's stupid. (sorry, no offense intended!)
https://www.ceos3c.com/cloud/how-to-install-snipeit-on-ubuntu-16-04-on-aws-f...
AWS is not going anywhere- case in point, a huge portion of the companies I work for services are now run on AWS.
Same here. Don't make the mistake of assuming my opinion is based on a lack of experience with AWS.
I believe AWS is a perfectly acceptable choice for hosting something like this, esp in their free tier :)
What "these kids today" don't seem to get is that it's "someone else's computer". In my world, that's about as reasonable as using someone else's toothbrush. I've had to mop up the remains of too many companies who depended on outside services like that. Amazon or not, I won't trust them. End of story. Ror this organization, it's not my decision to make; I can only offer advice based on my professional experience. I lead horses to water...If they don't drink, I'm here to help if it blows up. -Dave -- Dave McGuire, AK4HZ New Kensington, PA
I dunno, Dave. Some pretty damn big companies like Netflix, AirBNB, Atlassian, et. al., all seem to think its the right thing to use someone else's toothbrush. Fact is, thousands of companies use AWS. Almost 100% of start ups, my own included, with tens of millions of investment use cloud systems (aws and azure - another toothbrush, not our own) all seem to think it is a better idea to use someone else's toothbrush rather than using their own. As a CTO myself with 39 years in IT, if I were to go on a job interview and insist that purchasing, depreciating, maintaining and staffing my own data center (24x7) was a better idea than using a cloud infrastructure (because that would be stupid), I don't think that would be a winning interview 9 times out of 10. I dunno. Hard to swim against the tide on this one but YMMV. ________________________________________ From: vcf-midatlantic <vcf-midatlantic-bounces@lists.vcfed.org> on behalf of Dave McGuire via vcf-midatlantic <vcf-midatlantic@lists.vcfed.org> Sent: Thursday, November 29, 2018 9:56 PM To: vcf-midatlantic Cc: Dave McGuire Subject: Re: [vcf-midatlantic] Snipe-It On 11/29/18 9:42 PM, Andrew Diller wrote:
Like a "cloud" server, for example.
I know it's your favorite pasttime to make fun of that idea,
Yes, because it's stupid. (sorry, no offense intended!)
https://www.ceos3c.com/cloud/how-to-install-snipeit-on-ubuntu-16-04-on-aws-f...
AWS is not going anywhere- case in point, a huge portion of the companies I work for services are now run on AWS.
Same here. Don't make the mistake of assuming my opinion is based on a lack of experience with AWS.
I believe AWS is a perfectly acceptable choice for hosting something like this, esp in their free tier :)
What "these kids today" don't seem to get is that it's "someone else's computer". In my world, that's about as reasonable as using someone else's toothbrush. I've had to mop up the remains of too many companies who depended on outside services like that. Amazon or not, I won't trust them. End of story. Ror this organization, it's not my decision to make; I can only offer advice based on my professional experience. I lead horses to water...If they don't drink, I'm here to help if it blows up. -Dave -- Dave McGuire, AK4HZ New Kensington, PA
I've started referring to myself as the "Lead On-Prem Evangelist" at work. When I'm finally reduced to a Cloud Panel Operator is when I'll be out of this business -- I have a looong way to go till retirement -- I hope the tide holds until then. In all likely hood, we're already seeing a new evolution, with "Edge Clouds" -- because, and here's a shock -- latency sucks and moving large hunks of data over the public 'net 1/2 way across the country is slow! In all seriousness, for a business where one dollar spent on compute can be tied back to some dollar amount greater than one in revenue, it can make sense. In research and learning environments the main things the cloud offers are budgeting headaches, expense and administrative overhead. We use external hosting and "cloud" providers sparingly and strategically -- where is gets us something we either can't or are unwilling to do ourselves, you know, where it makes sense for us. This seems like the minimum of care of any business should approach their infrastructure with. Sadly, many seem to regard outsourcing the works as new hotness that will Solve All Our Problems (tm). --Jason On 11/29/18 8:40 PM, W2HX via vcf-midatlantic wrote:
I dunno, Dave. Some pretty damn big companies like Netflix, AirBNB, Atlassian, et. al., all seem to think its the right thing to use someone else's toothbrush. Fact is, thousands of companies use AWS. Almost 100% of start ups, my own included, with tens of millions of investment use cloud systems (aws and azure - another toothbrush, not our own) all seem to think it is a better idea to use someone else's toothbrush rather than using their own.
As a CTO myself with 39 years in IT, if I were to go on a job interview and insist that purchasing, depreciating, maintaining and staffing my own data center (24x7) was a better idea than using a cloud infrastructure (because that would be stupid), I don't think that would be a winning interview 9 times out of 10.
I dunno. Hard to swim against the tide on this one but YMMV.
________________________________________ From: vcf-midatlantic <vcf-midatlantic-bounces@lists.vcfed.org> on behalf of Dave McGuire via vcf-midatlantic <vcf-midatlantic@lists.vcfed.org> Sent: Thursday, November 29, 2018 9:56 PM To: vcf-midatlantic Cc: Dave McGuire Subject: Re: [vcf-midatlantic] Snipe-It
On 11/29/18 9:42 PM, Andrew Diller wrote:
Like a "cloud" server, for example. I know it's your favorite pasttime to make fun of that idea, Yes, because it's stupid. (sorry, no offense intended!) https://www.ceos3c.com/cloud/how-to-install-snipeit-on-ubuntu-16-04-on-aws-f...
AWS is not going anywhere- case in point, a huge portion of the companies I work for services are now run on AWS. Same here. Don't make the mistake of assuming my opinion is based on a lack of experience with AWS.
I believe AWS is a perfectly acceptable choice for hosting something like this, esp in their free tier :) What "these kids today" don't seem to get is that it's "someone else's computer". In my world, that's about as reasonable as using someone else's toothbrush. I've had to mop up the remains of too many companies who depended on outside services like that. Amazon or not, I won't trust them. End of story.
Ror this organization, it's not my decision to make; I can only offer advice based on my professional experience. I lead horses to water...If they don't drink, I'm here to help if it blows up.
-Dave
-- Dave McGuire, AK4HZ New Kensington, PA
On 11/29/18 11:40 PM, W2HX via vcf-midatlantic wrote:
I dunno, Dave. Some pretty damn big companies like Netflix, AirBNB, Atlassian, et. al., all seem to think its the right thing to use someone else's toothbrush. Fact is, thousands of companies use AWS. Almost 100% of start ups, my own included, with tens of millions of investment use cloud systems (aws and azure - another toothbrush, not our own) all seem to think it is a better idea to use someone else's toothbrush rather than using their own.
And of course they're free to do so. I would never deny that it's common, but I'm not too worried about that, as I've never been much of a "follower". I do (and recommend) what's right in my judgment, not what others tell me to do. That said, though, I don't build Netflix-sized networks. Netflix seldom asks for my advice. ;) If Netflix came asking, I'd have to say "I'm sorry, you're talking to the wrong guy, I cannot do what you need." I've built Netflix-sized networks, but that was a long time ago, and it's no longer in my area of expertise. But small organizations of 1-30 people with specialized needs do solicit my advice, and what I tell them in most cases is "keep your own data". In the present context, we're talking about an inventory database for a club, to keep track of a few thousand items. There is no earthly need to farm that out to a timesharing provider. Further, such a small organization is a lot more likely to be hurt by a hosting provider's outage than a company like Atlassian, which will have SLAs with big penalties, offsite backups, and DR plans to cover their asses. Is VCF prepared to set up all of that? If not, are they prepared to periodically start over from scratch?
As a CTO myself with 39 years in IT, if I were to go on a job interview and insist that purchasing, depreciating, maintaining and staffing my own data center (24x7) was a better idea than using a cloud infrastructure (because that would be stupid), I don't think that would be a winning interview 9 times out of 10.
If you have 39 years in IT, that's six or seven years more than me, and that means both of us separately have been doing this longer than Netflix, AirBNB, and Atlassian, combined, have existed. In my experience, the vast majority of the kids managing those networks have no idea of what they're doing, and it shows in the downtime. I'm grateful that I, for any of MY important data, don't have to rely on them for anything. Most of the data stored on my network is generated, not downloaded (and thus easily replaced). I can't just start over when AWS burps and files disappear, and I can't afford to just take the afternoon off when the "cloud" service blows up. You can take that risk if you want, but I won't. For my work, there is zero benefit to farming it out. That's actually true of many small organizations, but most people have fallen for the "cloud" hype. (For added fun, ask Matt Patoray how well that works for the support department's cloud-hosted VoIP phone system at his place of work. Better get some popcorn, in case you get him started.) About job interviews...I generally don't go on job interviews, so I'm not too worried about what the right HR buzzwords are. My singular focus is uptime and data preservation, not "sounding right" to someone who has fallen for the hype in order to get a job. Please understand that this isn't a case of hiding one's head in the sand or not being aware of what's cool and trendy in I.T. this year. I'm not a hobbyist...I assure you that I know exactly what AWS is, and rare is a day when I'm not logged into a couple of AWS-hosted servers. My experience tells me that it is a colossally bad idea. If your experience has been better, that's great. I respect your opinion, but I do not share it. For years, we've all seen a great push to get rid of all internal I.T. infrastructure, datacenters in particular. This is driven primarily by economics, rather than technical merit. Being able to write it off as an operating expense for the tax benefit is a lot more palatable than shelling out the money for a big purchase and putting it on a depreciation schedule, and then there's having to employ all those inconvenient technical people who aren't team players, don't play golf, and aren't even decent enough to wear ties. There are no such concerns in the context of VCF's inventory database.
I dunno. Hard to swim against the tide on this one but YMMV.
I have no need to swim against any tide. It's just that I learned very early on not to depend on other peoples' computers for any of my operations, and I don't recommend that others do it either. I realize that this is not a commonly-held opinion, but I'm not too worried about that. My clients do not come to me for commonly-held opinions. They can Google for those. With respect, -Dave -- Dave McGuire, AK4HZ New Kensington, PA
While I am beginning to doubt my “belonging” in this group, primarily because my experience in IT has been limited to individual artists and their Macs and developing databases for them in FileMaker to keep up mailing lists (when people used to use mail). I often sound like I know less than I do, because I am more interested in big pictures than technical terminology (which is why Apple Store hired me... my ability to “plain speak” technology. However many true tech folk think I am an idiot when they first talk to me about it. Why say all of this? Two reasons. First, I didn’t formally introduce myself to this list and since I will be at Festivus am worried that “they’re all gonna laugh at me”. Second, I replied to this particular post because of my complete distrust in cloud storage. There is no way to even pretend they can be “safe”. Ever since I bought my 2010 iMac and had no disc to boot from and had to rely on everything being web-based, I have had nothing but horrible experiences, primarily because of my early Mac user ignorance about viruses and malware. I realize that was not the clouds fault, but the concept of “everything wireless” is mind-boggling naive and this post seems to agree? Also, confirmed my thought that this shift to such insecure methods of data management/storage is because young “bros” are in charge lol. Hope this meandering response made sense and doesn’t serve to make me appear even less tech nerdy to you all. Hopefully Festivus won’t be like a middle school dance I have to call my mom from haha! See you all there. Laura On Nov 30, 2018, 12:42 AM -0500, Dave McGuire via vcf-midatlantic <vcf-midatlantic@lists.vcfed.org>, wrote:
On 11/29/18 11:40 PM, W2HX via vcf-midatlantic wrote:
I dunno, Dave. Some pretty damn big companies like Netflix, AirBNB, Atlassian, et. al., all seem to think its the right thing to use someone else's toothbrush. Fact is, thousands of companies use AWS. Almost 100% of start ups, my own included, with tens of millions of investment use cloud systems (aws and azure - another toothbrush, not our own) all seem to think it is a better idea to use someone else's toothbrush rather than using their own.
And of course they're free to do so. I would never deny that it's common, but I'm not too worried about that, as I've never been much of a "follower". I do (and recommend) what's right in my judgment, not what others tell me to do.
That said, though, I don't build Netflix-sized networks. Netflix seldom asks for my advice. ;) If Netflix came asking, I'd have to say "I'm sorry, you're talking to the wrong guy, I cannot do what you need." I've built Netflix-sized networks, but that was a long time ago, and it's no longer in my area of expertise. But small organizations of 1-30 people with specialized needs do solicit my advice, and what I tell them in most cases is "keep your own data". In the present context, we're talking about an inventory database for a club, to keep track of a few thousand items. There is no earthly need to farm that out to a timesharing provider. Further, such a small organization is a lot more likely to be hurt by a hosting provider's outage than a company like Atlassian, which will have SLAs with big penalties, offsite backups, and DR plans to cover their asses. Is VCF prepared to set up all of that? If not, are they prepared to periodically start over from scratch?
As a CTO myself with 39 years in IT, if I were to go on a job interview and insist that purchasing, depreciating, maintaining and staffing my own data center (24x7) was a better idea than using a cloud infrastructure (because that would be stupid), I don't think that would be a winning interview 9 times out of 10.
If you have 39 years in IT, that's six or seven years more than me, and that means both of us separately have been doing this longer than Netflix, AirBNB, and Atlassian, combined, have existed. In my experience, the vast majority of the kids managing those networks have no idea of what they're doing, and it shows in the downtime. I'm grateful that I, for any of MY important data, don't have to rely on them for anything. Most of the data stored on my network is generated, not downloaded (and thus easily replaced). I can't just start over when AWS burps and files disappear, and I can't afford to just take the afternoon off when the "cloud" service blows up. You can take that risk if you want, but I won't. For my work, there is zero benefit to farming it out. That's actually true of many small organizations, but most people have fallen for the "cloud" hype.
(For added fun, ask Matt Patoray how well that works for the support department's cloud-hosted VoIP phone system at his place of work. Better get some popcorn, in case you get him started.)
About job interviews...I generally don't go on job interviews, so I'm not too worried about what the right HR buzzwords are. My singular focus is uptime and data preservation, not "sounding right" to someone who has fallen for the hype in order to get a job.
Please understand that this isn't a case of hiding one's head in the sand or not being aware of what's cool and trendy in I.T. this year. I'm not a hobbyist...I assure you that I know exactly what AWS is, and rare is a day when I'm not logged into a couple of AWS-hosted servers. My experience tells me that it is a colossally bad idea. If your experience has been better, that's great. I respect your opinion, but I do not share it.
For years, we've all seen a great push to get rid of all internal I.T. infrastructure, datacenters in particular. This is driven primarily by economics, rather than technical merit. Being able to write it off as an operating expense for the tax benefit is a lot more palatable than shelling out the money for a big purchase and putting it on a depreciation schedule, and then there's having to employ all those inconvenient technical people who aren't team players, don't play golf, and aren't even decent enough to wear ties. There are no such concerns in the context of VCF's inventory database.
I dunno. Hard to swim against the tide on this one but YMMV.
I have no need to swim against any tide. It's just that I learned very early on not to depend on other peoples' computers for any of my operations, and I don't recommend that others do it either.
I realize that this is not a commonly-held opinion, but I'm not too worried about that. My clients do not come to me for commonly-held opinions. They can Google for those.
With respect, -Dave
-- Dave McGuire, AK4HZ New Kensington, PA
On 11/30/18 1:21 AM, Laura S. Reinhard wrote:
While I am beginning to doubt my “belonging” in this group, primarily because my experience in IT has been limited to individual artists and their Macs and developing databases for them in FileMaker to keep up mailing lists (when people used to use mail).
I often sound like I know less than I do, because I am more interested in big pictures than technical terminology (which is why Apple Store hired me... my ability to “plain speak” technology. However many true tech folk think I am an idiot when they first talk to me about it.
Why say all of this? Two reasons. First, I didn’t formally introduce myself to this list and since I will be at Festivus am worried that “they’re all gonna laugh at me”.
Yeah I realllllllly don't think you have to worry about that sort of thing in this crowd.
Second, I replied to this particular post because of my complete distrust in cloud storage. There is no way to even pretend they can be “safe”. Ever since I bought my 2010 iMac and had no disc to boot from and had to rely on everything being web-based, I have had nothing but horrible experiences, primarily because of my early Mac user ignorance about viruses and malware. I realize that was not the clouds fault, but the concept of “everything wireless” is mind-boggling naive and this post seems to agree? Also, confirmed my thought that this shift to such insecure methods of data management/storage is because young “bros” are in charge lol.
Agreed 100%. A lot of it is "user beware", just like doing backups and such...part of the problem with "the cloud" is the near-universal perception that anything...data, services, etc....placed there is automatically safe, in every way, so people don't have to take precautions. "I just lost all of my baby pictures!!!" is all too common an occurrence anymore.
Hope this meandering response made sense and doesn’t serve to make me appear even less tech nerdy to you all. Hopefully Festivus won’t be like a middle school dance I have to call my mom from haha!
Once again, I don't think you have anything to worry about. It is a great crowd...even Evan. ;) And Festivus is always a great get-together. -Dave -- Dave McGuire, AK4HZ New Kensington, PA
Doesn’t help that I didn’t proofread! Using my phone too much has made me lazy. Sbt. On Nov 30, 2018, 12:42 AM -0500, Dave McGuire via vcf-midatlantic <vcf-midatlantic@lists.vcfed.org>, wrote:
On 11/29/18 11:40 PM, W2HX via vcf-midatlantic wrote:
I dunno, Dave. Some pretty damn big companies like Netflix, AirBNB, Atlassian, et. al., all seem to think its the right thing to use someone else's toothbrush. Fact is, thousands of companies use AWS. Almost 100% of start ups, my own included, with tens of millions of investment use cloud systems (aws and azure - another toothbrush, not our own) all seem to think it is a better idea to use someone else's toothbrush rather than using their own.
And of course they're free to do so. I would never deny that it's common, but I'm not too worried about that, as I've never been much of a "follower". I do (and recommend) what's right in my judgment, not what others tell me to do.
That said, though, I don't build Netflix-sized networks. Netflix seldom asks for my advice. ;) If Netflix came asking, I'd have to say "I'm sorry, you're talking to the wrong guy, I cannot do what you need." I've built Netflix-sized networks, but that was a long time ago, and it's no longer in my area of expertise. But small organizations of 1-30 people with specialized needs do solicit my advice, and what I tell them in most cases is "keep your own data". In the present context, we're talking about an inventory database for a club, to keep track of a few thousand items. There is no earthly need to farm that out to a timesharing provider. Further, such a small organization is a lot more likely to be hurt by a hosting provider's outage than a company like Atlassian, which will have SLAs with big penalties, offsite backups, and DR plans to cover their asses. Is VCF prepared to set up all of that? If not, are they prepared to periodically start over from scratch?
As a CTO myself with 39 years in IT, if I were to go on a job interview and insist that purchasing, depreciating, maintaining and staffing my own data center (24x7) was a better idea than using a cloud infrastructure (because that would be stupid), I don't think that would be a winning interview 9 times out of 10.
If you have 39 years in IT, that's six or seven years more than me, and that means both of us separately have been doing this longer than Netflix, AirBNB, and Atlassian, combined, have existed. In my experience, the vast majority of the kids managing those networks have no idea of what they're doing, and it shows in the downtime. I'm grateful that I, for any of MY important data, don't have to rely on them for anything. Most of the data stored on my network is generated, not downloaded (and thus easily replaced). I can't just start over when AWS burps and files disappear, and I can't afford to just take the afternoon off when the "cloud" service blows up. You can take that risk if you want, but I won't. For my work, there is zero benefit to farming it out. That's actually true of many small organizations, but most people have fallen for the "cloud" hype.
(For added fun, ask Matt Patoray how well that works for the support department's cloud-hosted VoIP phone system at his place of work. Better get some popcorn, in case you get him started.)
About job interviews...I generally don't go on job interviews, so I'm not too worried about what the right HR buzzwords are. My singular focus is uptime and data preservation, not "sounding right" to someone who has fallen for the hype in order to get a job.
Please understand that this isn't a case of hiding one's head in the sand or not being aware of what's cool and trendy in I.T. this year. I'm not a hobbyist...I assure you that I know exactly what AWS is, and rare is a day when I'm not logged into a couple of AWS-hosted servers. My experience tells me that it is a colossally bad idea. If your experience has been better, that's great. I respect your opinion, but I do not share it.
For years, we've all seen a great push to get rid of all internal I.T. infrastructure, datacenters in particular. This is driven primarily by economics, rather than technical merit. Being able to write it off as an operating expense for the tax benefit is a lot more palatable than shelling out the money for a big purchase and putting it on a depreciation schedule, and then there's having to employ all those inconvenient technical people who aren't team players, don't play golf, and aren't even decent enough to wear ties. There are no such concerns in the context of VCF's inventory database.
I dunno. Hard to swim against the tide on this one but YMMV.
I have no need to swim against any tide. It's just that I learned very early on not to depend on other peoples' computers for any of my operations, and I don't recommend that others do it either.
I realize that this is not a commonly-held opinion, but I'm not too worried about that. My clients do not come to me for commonly-held opinions. They can Google for those.
With respect, -Dave
-- Dave McGuire, AK4HZ New Kensington, PA
-----Original Message----- From: vcf-midatlantic <vcf-midatlantic-bounces@lists.vcfed.org> On Behalf Of W2HX via vcf-midatlantic Sent: 30 November 2018 04:40 To: vcf-midatlantic <vcf-midatlantic@lists.vcfed.org> Cc: W2HX <w2hx@w2hx.com> Subject: Re: [vcf-midatlantic] Snipe-It
I dunno, Dave. Some pretty damn big companies like Netflix, AirBNB, Atlassian, et. al., all seem to think its the right thing to use someone else's toothbrush. Fact is, thousands of companies use AWS. Almost 100% of start ups, my own included, with tens of millions of investment use cloud systems (aws and azure - another toothbrush, not our own) all seem to think it is a better idea to use someone else's toothbrush rather than using their own.
I think for companies such as those you mentioned, who are basically selling things via web servers, it makes sense to host your web presence off-site. However, for folks where the main access is by local staff, then having locally based servers makes sense. When I am at home using my own nice electric toothbrush makes sense. If I can be sure there will be one provided in the hotels I am visiting on my travels then not taking one makes sense.
As a CTO myself with 39 years in IT, if I were to go on a job interview
and
insist that purchasing, depreciating, maintaining and staffing my own data center (24x7) was a better idea than using a cloud infrastructure (because that would be stupid), I don't think that would be a winning interview 9 times out of 10.
It's a bit easier today. I know its not AWS but again many businesses use Microsoft OneDrive and "yesterday" for some approximation of yesterday, it was down for most of Europe. AWS has taken hits in the past as has google. Cloud infrastructure does fail. When its does, it does so "big time". Connections fail and if everything you have is in the cloud you can't get to it. Putting your servers in the cloud doesn't mean you don't need an IT Infrastructure. It means that instead of it being sat in the next office on a nice 1gb connection its some where a long way away And the connection won't be at gigabit ethernet speeds and won't have the low latency you can achieve over such links. For many it can also be expensive. When I was providing infrastructure, I found cloud providers surprisingly expensive. I guess that they budget for a pretty short server lifecycle. When I was providing servers for local use, "the management" wanted to get rid of me and use cloud services. The trouble is that at $5 a person a month (yes that's plucked out of the air but I think its valid) Even when you have only 1,000 users starts to get horribly expensive, and it becomes a revenue cost, not a capital cost which under UK (where I live) tax rules may not be great. I find it interesting that the big retail businesses in the UK that sold and leased back their premises 10 or 15 years ago are now complaining about the cost of the rent..... https://citywire.co.uk/funds-insider/news/mands-raises-348-million-in-proper ty-deal/a230517 and now https://www.ft.com/content/bdf03d40-5c24-11e8-9334-2218e7146b04
I dunno. Hard to swim against the tide on this one but YMMV.
Its not about swimming against the tide, its about staying out of the water.. Dave Wade
________________________________________ From: vcf-midatlantic <vcf-midatlantic-bounces@lists.vcfed.org> on behalf of Dave McGuire via vcf-midatlantic <vcf-midatlantic@lists.vcfed.org> Sent: Thursday, November 29, 2018 9:56 PM To: vcf-midatlantic Cc: Dave McGuire Subject: Re: [vcf-midatlantic] Snipe-It
On 11/29/18 9:42 PM, Andrew Diller wrote:
Like a "cloud" server, for example.
I know it's your favorite pasttime to make fun of that idea,
Yes, because it's stupid. (sorry, no offense intended!)
https://www.ceos3c.com/cloud/how-to-install-snipeit-on-ubuntu-16-04- on -aws-free-tier/
AWS is not going anywhere- case in point, a huge portion of the companies I work for services are now run on AWS.
Same here. Don't make the mistake of assuming my opinion is based on a lack of experience with AWS.
I believe AWS is a perfectly acceptable choice for hosting something like this, esp in their free tier :)
What "these kids today" don't seem to get is that it's "someone else's computer". In my world, that's about as reasonable as using someone else's toothbrush. I've had to mop up the remains of too many companies who depended on outside services like that. Amazon or not, I won't trust them. End of story.
Ror this organization, it's not my decision to make; I can only offer advice based on my professional experience. I lead horses to water...If they don't drink, I'm here to help if it blows up.
-Dave
-- Dave McGuire, AK4HZ New Kensington, PA
I think for companies such as those you mentioned, who are basically selling things via web servers, it makes sense to host your web presence off-site. However, for folks where the main access is by local staff, then having locally based servers makes sense. When I am at home using my own nice electric toothbrush makes sense.
Ehhh. So AWS has over 100 data centers in Northern Virginia, each with 80,000 to 100,000 servers (I've read/heard.) The facilities are usually 2 or 3 buildings next to each other (very close), then large distances to the next clusters. Some might be half a mile, some are miles. They're all over in random industrial parks. When you store your data in S3, Amazon will replicate the data between two buildings, which are geographically separate. The few outages are usually in one of these zones, so if your uptime is a big deal you replicate across zones using a load balancer instance. I would hope all users back up their important data offsite onto their own systems. Not a big deal. With the way much of the applications and software setup is engineered today, things are setup to be built out automatically and destroyed easily. Persistant data is kept separately. My prior job for a major music streaming provider, we did not use cloud much and had our own own CDN. We constantly heard we were a lot cheaper than using AWS, but we had a pretty bad ass group of engineers and things were done very well. The company grew up prior to the cloud thing. That being said, public cloud gives a much quicker turn around time to deployment of new servers for services. Stuff is pretty crazy out there. Facebook has been using 400 gigabit network switches for a while, the standard now is 100 gigabit. Cage neighbors of ours was doing well over 20 tarabit of internet connectivity (and maxed it out from time to time) out of 12 racks or so. Where I work now, we can routinely destroy and redeploy 100+ server applications without issue.
AWS has taken hits in the past as has google. Cloud infrastructure does fail. When its does, it does so "big time". Connections fail and if everything you have is in the cloud you can't get to it.
Usually within a region I Think? With AWS it's usually like AWS-EAST-1 is down or EAST-2 or whatever. Things have changed, but if you'ree not horrible at engineering things you can mitigate the risks. For the small mom and pop, it's pretty expensive to put in 3 or 4 separate path internet connections, manage BGP, and have your own array of N+1 generators.
Just for info... https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/11/29/microsoft_onedrive_down/ and https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/06/01/aws_outage/ Dave
-----Original Message----- From: vcf-midatlantic <vcf-midatlantic-bounces@lists.vcfed.org> On Behalf Of W2HX via vcf-midatlantic Sent: 30 November 2018 04:40 To: vcf-midatlantic <vcf-midatlantic@lists.vcfed.org> Cc: W2HX <w2hx@w2hx.com> Subject: Re: [vcf-midatlantic] Snipe-It
I dunno, Dave. Some pretty damn big companies like Netflix, AirBNB, Atlassian, et. al., all seem to think its the right thing to use someone else's toothbrush. Fact is, thousands of companies use AWS. Almost 100% of start ups, my own included, with tens of millions of investment use cloud systems (aws and azure - another toothbrush, not our own) all seem to think it is a better idea to use someone else's toothbrush rather than using their own.
As a CTO myself with 39 years in IT, if I were to go on a job interview and insist that purchasing, depreciating, maintaining and staffing my own data center (24x7) was a better idea than using a cloud infrastructure (because that would be stupid), I don't think that would be a winning interview 9 times out of 10.
I dunno. Hard to swim against the tide on this one but YMMV.
________________________________________ From: vcf-midatlantic <vcf-midatlantic-bounces@lists.vcfed.org> on behalf of Dave McGuire via vcf-midatlantic <vcf-midatlantic@lists.vcfed.org> Sent: Thursday, November 29, 2018 9:56 PM To: vcf-midatlantic Cc: Dave McGuire Subject: Re: [vcf-midatlantic] Snipe-It
On 11/29/18 9:42 PM, Andrew Diller wrote:
Like a "cloud" server, for example.
I know it's your favorite pasttime to make fun of that idea,
Yes, because it's stupid. (sorry, no offense intended!)
https://www.ceos3c.com/cloud/how-to-install-snipeit-on-ubuntu-16-04- on -aws-free-tier/
AWS is not going anywhere- case in point, a huge portion of the companies I work for services are now run on AWS.
Same here. Don't make the mistake of assuming my opinion is based on a lack of experience with AWS.
I believe AWS is a perfectly acceptable choice for hosting something like this, esp in their free tier :)
What "these kids today" don't seem to get is that it's "someone else's computer". In my world, that's about as reasonable as using someone else's toothbrush. I've had to mop up the remains of too many companies who depended on outside services like that. Amazon or not, I won't trust them. End of story.
Ror this organization, it's not my decision to make; I can only offer advice based on my professional experience. I lead horses to water...If they don't drink, I'm here to help if it blows up.
-Dave
-- Dave McGuire, AK4HZ New Kensington, PA
I'm not going to argue with anyone's points here, as they are all valid. I've also been in IT for 35+ years and have built and maintained days centers. The only thing I will contradict is the idea that cloud is just "someone else's computer." Yes, they belong to someone else. However, cloud (by definition) is not timesharing, it is not co-location. One of the benefits of cloud computing is to offer nearly instant elastic, on demand resources for variable workloads, such as software development, seasonal or other intermittent tasks. Traditionally, we would overbuild our data center to handle these things and as a result, 80% of our resources would be at 10% to 20% utilization for the majority of the year, wasting energy, space and the time of our staff to maintain them. To be sure, we keep core, business critical systems on prem (with HA and DR in co-lo) but that's ~5% of our infrastructure. After extensive risk analysis, we are able to put everything else in cloud, with the proper security and availability controls that meet our needs (we are a pharmaceutical company and most maintain GxP environments.) As a result, we only pay for the resources we actually utilize, can allocate and de-allocate resources on demand. As well, our lean IT staff can concentrate on higher value work. To be sure, cloud is not a magic bullet. Getting true value from it requires due diligence in knowing your compute environment, your business and security needs, and creating/maintaining proper governance and controls. It may not be cheaper, but done properly can be more efficient and result in a much more agile infrastructure. Again, YMMV. Tread lightly :-) On Fri, Nov 30, 2018 at 2:45 AM Dave Wade via vcf-midatlantic < vcf-midatlantic@lists.vcfed.org> wrote:
Just for info...
https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/11/29/microsoft_onedrive_down/
and
https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/06/01/aws_outage/
Dave
-----Original Message----- From: vcf-midatlantic <vcf-midatlantic-bounces@lists.vcfed.org> On Behalf Of W2HX via vcf-midatlantic Sent: 30 November 2018 04:40 To: vcf-midatlantic <vcf-midatlantic@lists.vcfed.org> Cc: W2HX <w2hx@w2hx.com> Subject: Re: [vcf-midatlantic] Snipe-It
I dunno, Dave. Some pretty damn big companies like Netflix, AirBNB, Atlassian, et. al., all seem to think its the right thing to use someone else's toothbrush. Fact is, thousands of companies use AWS. Almost 100% of start ups, my own included, with tens of millions of investment use cloud systems (aws and azure - another toothbrush, not our own) all seem to think it is a better idea to use someone else's toothbrush rather than using their own.
As a CTO myself with 39 years in IT, if I were to go on a job interview and insist that purchasing, depreciating, maintaining and staffing my own data center (24x7) was a better idea than using a cloud infrastructure (because that would be stupid), I don't think that would be a winning interview 9 times out of 10.
I dunno. Hard to swim against the tide on this one but YMMV.
________________________________________ From: vcf-midatlantic <vcf-midatlantic-bounces@lists.vcfed.org> on behalf of Dave McGuire via vcf-midatlantic <vcf-midatlantic@lists.vcfed.org> Sent: Thursday, November 29, 2018 9:56 PM To: vcf-midatlantic Cc: Dave McGuire Subject: Re: [vcf-midatlantic] Snipe-It
On 11/29/18 9:42 PM, Andrew Diller wrote:
Like a "cloud" server, for example.
I know it's your favorite pasttime to make fun of that idea,
Yes, because it's stupid. (sorry, no offense intended!)
https://www.ceos3c.com/cloud/how-to-install-snipeit-on-ubuntu-16-04- on -aws-free-tier/
AWS is not going anywhere- case in point, a huge portion of the companies I work for services are now run on AWS.
Same here. Don't make the mistake of assuming my opinion is based on a lack of experience with AWS.
I believe AWS is a perfectly acceptable choice for hosting something like this, esp in their free tier :)
What "these kids today" don't seem to get is that it's "someone else's computer". In my world, that's about as reasonable as using someone else's toothbrush. I've had to mop up the remains of too many companies who depended on outside services like that. Amazon or not, I won't trust them. End of story.
Ror this organization, it's not my decision to make; I can only offer advice based on my professional experience. I lead horses to water...If they don't drink, I'm here to help if it blows up.
-Dave
-- Dave McGuire, AK4HZ New Kensington, PA
On 11/30/18 7:09 AM, Dean Notarnicola via vcf-midatlantic wrote:
I'm not going to argue with anyone's points here, as they are all valid. I've also been in IT for 35+ years and have built and maintained days centers. The only thing I will contradict is the idea that cloud is just "someone else's computer." Yes, they belong to someone else.
Not to be argumentative, but I will emphasize that this was the point I was making. Those computers do, in fact, belong to someone else. They are sitting in a building(s) that belong to someone else. And someone else controls them, and someone else is responsible for their maintenance, in every respect.
However, cloud (by definition) is not timesharing, it is not co-location.
I agree that it's not co-location, but I'd ask you to tell me how, exactly, it isn't timesharing. Elastic, capacity-on-demand functionality is typically implemented using virtual machines, with behind-the-scenes migration of VMs from host to host, in response to hardware failures, reorganization, or just plain moment-to-moment operating conditions. We all know that...and I know YOU know that; I'm not "talking down" to you here. My point is, your VMs are sharing a machine, or a set of machines, and mass storage, in the larger sense. It's not likely that any (smaller) customer of such a service provider will have any visibility into exactly where their VM lives and what else is running on that processor core at any given time. This is, by definition, timesharing. If you disagree, I'd love to hear your point of view as to why. Now, if you are a big enough customer to have a "nobody else on this hardware" deal with the provider, that's great...and moves it a big step closer to being co-location. Admittedly though, not completely so, but I couldn't not point it out. ;)
One of the benefits of cloud computing is to offer nearly instant elastic, on demand resources for variable workloads, such as software development, seasonal or other intermittent tasks. Traditionally, we would overbuild our data center to handle these things and as a result, 80% of our resources would be at 10% to 20% utilization for the majority of the year, wasting energy, space and the time of our staff to maintain them. To be sure, we keep core, business critical systems on prem (with HA and DR in co-lo) but that's ~5% of our infrastructure. After extensive risk analysis, we are able to put everything else in cloud, with the proper security and availability controls that meet our needs (we are a pharmaceutical company and most maintain GxP environments.) As a result, we only pay for the resources we actually utilize, can allocate and de-allocate resources on demand. As well, our lean IT staff can concentrate on higher value work.
The benefits are huge, only a moron would dispute that. It's incredible, the things a modern VM-based hosting network can do, and the benefits to their customers are very real and absolutely huge. But those benefits do not come without a cost: Direct control over just about everything is lost. Some suitly types may say that this is a good thing, but I personally would never accept that. That is one of the reasons I left the business of "big I.T." Decisions are now being made exclusively for suitly reasons, not technical reasons. We all remember the beginnings of this, when suits in charge of I.T. started valuing contracts over OS source code licenses. They don't want ways to fix things quickly, they want someone to scream at when it breaks. I'm a technical person; I don't work that way. You said above that your core business-critical systems are kept in-house, and for you, that's about 5% of your infrastructure. In my case, my core business-critical systems are about 80% of my infrastructure. In other words, my mileage did, in fact, vary. For that other 20%, I'm envisioning of all the idiots I've interviewed and rejected in the past, who went on to work for Rackspace...I'll keep that 20% in-house, thanks. ;) Further, benefits or not, it's still "someone else's computer".
To be sure, cloud is not a magic bullet. Getting true value from it requires due diligence in knowing your compute environment, your business and security needs, and creating/maintaining proper governance and controls. It may not be cheaper, but done properly can be more efficient and result in a much more agile infrastructure. Again, YMMV.
Agreed on all points. But VCF is neither Netflix, AirBNB, Atlassian, nor a pharmaceutical company. The moment VCF's internal operations begin to depend on an agile infrastructure with capacity-on-demand etc, I'm sure things will be looked at a bit differently.
Tread lightly :-)
You've met me, right? ;) -Dave -- Dave McGuire, AK4HZ New Kensington, PA
Nicely put. I will point out however, that I did say it's someone else's computer, but that's not the only thing it is. That was the point of my diatribe. Anyone can create their own elastic cloud in-house, so you don't need to rely on someone else to realize the benefits. I would argue that, although akin to timesharing, there's an important distinction from "classic" timesharing by virtue of availability of elastic resources. Finally, I should have added that I would most certainly not recommend this for VCF, as it's not suitable to the task at hand. On Fri, Nov 30, 2018 at 1:21 PM Dave McGuire via vcf-midatlantic < vcf-midatlantic@lists.vcfed.org> wrote:
On 11/30/18 7:09 AM, Dean Notarnicola via vcf-midatlantic wrote:
I'm not going to argue with anyone's points here, as they are all valid. I've also been in IT for 35+ years and have built and maintained days centers. The only thing I will contradict is the idea that cloud is just "someone else's computer." Yes, they belong to someone else.
Not to be argumentative, but I will emphasize that this was the point I was making. Those computers do, in fact, belong to someone else. They are sitting in a building(s) that belong to someone else. And someone else controls them, and someone else is responsible for their maintenance, in every respect.
However, cloud (by definition) is not timesharing, it is not co-location.
I agree that it's not co-location, but I'd ask you to tell me how, exactly, it isn't timesharing. Elastic, capacity-on-demand functionality is typically implemented using virtual machines, with behind-the-scenes migration of VMs from host to host, in response to hardware failures, reorganization, or just plain moment-to-moment operating conditions. We all know that...and I know YOU know that; I'm not "talking down" to you here. My point is, your VMs are sharing a machine, or a set of machines, and mass storage, in the larger sense. It's not likely that any (smaller) customer of such a service provider will have any visibility into exactly where their VM lives and what else is running on that processor core at any given time.
This is, by definition, timesharing. If you disagree, I'd love to hear your point of view as to why.
Now, if you are a big enough customer to have a "nobody else on this hardware" deal with the provider, that's great...and moves it a big step closer to being co-location. Admittedly though, not completely so, but I couldn't not point it out. ;)
One of the benefits of cloud computing is to offer nearly instant elastic, on demand resources for variable workloads, such as software development, seasonal or other intermittent tasks. Traditionally, we would overbuild our data center to handle these things and as a result, 80% of our resources would be at 10% to 20% utilization for the majority of the year, wasting energy, space and the time of our staff to maintain them. To be sure, we keep core, business critical systems on prem (with HA and DR in co-lo) but that's ~5% of our infrastructure. After extensive risk analysis, we are able to put everything else in cloud, with the proper security and availability controls that meet our needs (we are a pharmaceutical company and most maintain GxP environments.) As a result, we only pay for the resources we actually utilize, can allocate and de-allocate resources on demand. As well, our lean IT staff can concentrate on higher value work.
The benefits are huge, only a moron would dispute that. It's incredible, the things a modern VM-based hosting network can do, and the benefits to their customers are very real and absolutely huge.
But those benefits do not come without a cost: Direct control over just about everything is lost. Some suitly types may say that this is a good thing, but I personally would never accept that. That is one of the reasons I left the business of "big I.T." Decisions are now being made exclusively for suitly reasons, not technical reasons. We all remember the beginnings of this, when suits in charge of I.T. started valuing contracts over OS source code licenses. They don't want ways to fix things quickly, they want someone to scream at when it breaks. I'm a technical person; I don't work that way.
You said above that your core business-critical systems are kept in-house, and for you, that's about 5% of your infrastructure. In my case, my core business-critical systems are about 80% of my infrastructure. In other words, my mileage did, in fact, vary.
For that other 20%, I'm envisioning of all the idiots I've interviewed and rejected in the past, who went on to work for Rackspace...I'll keep that 20% in-house, thanks. ;)
Further, benefits or not, it's still "someone else's computer".
To be sure, cloud is not a magic bullet. Getting true value from it requires due diligence in knowing your compute environment, your business and security needs, and creating/maintaining proper governance and controls. It may not be cheaper, but done properly can be more efficient and result in a much more agile infrastructure. Again, YMMV.
Agreed on all points. But VCF is neither Netflix, AirBNB, Atlassian, nor a pharmaceutical company. The moment VCF's internal operations begin to depend on an agile infrastructure with capacity-on-demand etc, I'm sure things will be looked at a bit differently.
Tread lightly :-)
You've met me, right? ;)
-Dave
-- Dave McGuire, AK4HZ New Kensington, PA
Ok ... Thanks for that word-picture. :D Bob On Thu, Nov 29, 2018 at 9:57 PM Dave McGuire via vcf-midatlantic < vcf-midatlantic@lists.vcfed.org> wrote:
On 11/29/18 9:42 PM, Andrew Diller wrote:
Like a "cloud" server, for example.
I know it's your favorite pasttime to make fun of that idea,
Yes, because it's stupid. (sorry, no offense intended!)
https://www.ceos3c.com/cloud/how-to-install-snipeit-on-ubuntu-16-04-on-aws-f...
AWS is not going anywhere- case in point, a huge portion of the
companies I work for services are now run on AWS.
Same here. Don't make the mistake of assuming my opinion is based on a lack of experience with AWS.
I believe AWS is a perfectly acceptable choice for hosting something like this, esp in their free tier :)
What "these kids today" don't seem to get is that it's "someone else's computer". In my world, that's about as reasonable as using someone else's toothbrush. I've had to mop up the remains of too many companies who depended on outside services like that. Amazon or not, I won't trust them. End of story.
Ror this organization, it's not my decision to make; I can only offer advice based on my professional experience. I lead horses to water...If they don't drink, I'm here to help if it blows up.
-Dave
-- Dave McGuire, AK4HZ New Kensington, PA
participants (11)
-
Andrew Diller -
Bob Flanders -
Dave McGuire -
Dave Wade -
Dean Notarnicola -
Ethan O'Toole -
Evan Koblentz -
Jason Howe -
Laura S. Reinhard -
Martin Flynn -
W2HX