I've configured Cisco routers, F5s, LOMs, PDCs, NAS boxes, built servers from parts. And I'd never do it again.
That shit has literally no value, and it's quite difficult to configure, manage, and maintain. And no matter how good your process, you (or your team member) inevitably will forget to go into the BIOS and turn off power saving...or forget to turn off (or on) proxy arp. Or you'll reboot a box and it won't come back.
All costs can be negotiated with up-front commitments. We are small, but we pay .01/GB for egress bandwidth. And we got that price from akamai, fastly, and AWS by asking. I don't remember how much real colo places charge anymore, but it was a whole lot more than that.
Enterprise SSDs, redundant hardware, etc cost money. Does your startup qualify for a lease?
And really, why spend money on something that has no value to your business? Does having 5 data centers add any real value or competitive advantage? Does having that F5 expert on staff make your end-users happier?
If you answer yes, then go for it. But really, it's a total waste of time and money. You might as well make your own pencils and paper for the amount of value it delivers.
I do 2.9 PB a month for less than 1000$. And this is for rented servers so even includes the hardware. That would be more than 30k$ at your rate. Not going to argue about the rest but the cloud is charging horrendous rates for egress even with negotiated discounts.
At massive scale, sure, it might make sense to run your own infrastructure and data centres. Some may even run their own private cloud and get the benefits we see from the public cloud today from their own IT depts.
The vast majority of us however had nothing in common with the above. Like you we ran the hardware, and to the business, we were never more than a cost centre and anything pitched to the broader business to "improve" outcomes for the development teams were seen as a cost without benefit.
I find a lot of people who are proponents for getting rid of the cloud never had to manage their own infrastructure, and have very rose tinted glasses for a reality that never existed for most.
Admittedly I've not worked in many environments that could ever be described as being anything less than 'enterprise', and within orders of magnitude larger than medium/large businesses.
If you had a niche market and only needed a small footprint. I can see a handful of VPS' or similar being suitable.
But once you get to the 200+ people mark, it gets messy. And gets much worse at 2,000 head. And worse yet at 20,000.
That shit has literally no value, and it's quite difficult to configure, manage, and maintain. And no matter how good your process, you (or your team member) inevitably will forget to go into the BIOS and turn off power saving...or forget to turn off (or on) proxy arp. Or you'll reboot a box and it won't come back.
All costs can be negotiated with up-front commitments. We are small, but we pay .01/GB for egress bandwidth. And we got that price from akamai, fastly, and AWS by asking. I don't remember how much real colo places charge anymore, but it was a whole lot more than that.
Enterprise SSDs, redundant hardware, etc cost money. Does your startup qualify for a lease?
And really, why spend money on something that has no value to your business? Does having 5 data centers add any real value or competitive advantage? Does having that F5 expert on staff make your end-users happier?
If you answer yes, then go for it. But really, it's a total waste of time and money. You might as well make your own pencils and paper for the amount of value it delivers.