[vcf-midatlantic] Snipe-It

[Dean Notarnicola]

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 at 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 at lists.vcfed.org> On
> Behalf
> > Of W2HX via vcf-midatlantic
> > Sent: 30 November 2018 04:40
> > To: vcf-midatlantic <vcf-midatlantic at lists.vcfed.org>
> > Cc: W2HX <w2hx at 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 at lists.vcfed.org> on
> behalf
> of
> > Dave McGuire via vcf-midatlantic <vcf-midatlantic at 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
>
>