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Lately we've been struggling a lot to explain how things are in the hosting world.. The reason is simple, too much marketing is brainwashing a mass of users who let themselves be duped by big words like Cloud which in fact means everything and the exact opposite. If we asked all those who feel attracted by the word Cloud what a live migration or an orchestrator is we will find their face shocked without a real knowledge of the term, but now the salesman of the crap company has convinced you that this is the solution and you just have to sign the contract and pay.
A really huge effort because today the average user who uses hosting services is not clear about some technical / commercial concepts and tends to make an immense confusion that will backfire on him since the short / medium term, in poor performance, very high costs and therefore an inevitable disappointment of his expectations.
On the other hand, it also becomes difficult for a competitor like us to be credible because one always has the impression that it tends to bring water to its own mill, distorting the reality of the facts.
Amazon AWS makes billions of dollars a year, has prominent customers such as Spotify, Netflix, and many other BIG, and is able to scale thousands of instances per second, making it undoubtedly the best hosting on the market.
Unfortunately, this is the reasoning that the average user tends to make when they see someone recommending Amazon AWS for hosting a WordPress site, for example, or a Magento or Prestashop e-commerce site.
Would you recommend a Ferrari single-seater, or an F1 McLaren to a friend of yours who asks you what would be a good car to buy?
If you are not foolish and not joking obviously the answer will be no.
And a Lamborghini or a Porsche Carrera instead to who maybe looking for a car to go to mountainous territories? In the same way, let's just imagine not.
To a friend of yours who instead decides to go racing on the track, the initial suggestion of a single-seater Ferrari and a McLaren could also be adequate, but we are really sure that your friend has the driving skills and experience to be able to tame and master a racing car of that level ?
And what if it isn't up to par? Would you be really sure that at the first acceleration it would not go to the head of the queue? What if it isn't capable enough of downshifting when cornering at the end of a nice straight? Maybe it goes straight and destroys a few million euro car.
Are you still sure you want to recommend an F1 car to your friend?
In the world of hosting solutions, Amazon AWS is the exact equivalent of a Formula One racing car. Amazon AWS could be a Ferrari F1 car, Google Cloud a McLaren, Microsoft Azure a Williams., let's say that regardless of very similar (often equivalent) solutions, they have such power and complexity that they can be compared to these top-of-the-range single-seaters in the world of F1.
Therefore, it is correct to state with full knowledge of the facts that Amazon AWS is in fact the best hosting infrastructure currently available on the market.
But what does infrastructure mean? It means that in fact it is a MACHINE, which could give great satisfaction and infinite versatility provided that THE PILOT is up to the level of the infrastructure, that is, that he knows the machine, its potential and is able to dominate it.
The Spotify and Netflix systems analysts, for example, without knowing them, will certainly be excellent F1 drivers who certainly know the Amazon AWS infrastructure well and also know how to master all the possible facets that a system like AWS makes available.
But how many improvised and mediocre system administrators or developers think they can fill their ignorance by buying solutions on Amazon AWS as if they were the panacea for all ills?
VS Money specifications.
If you buy yourself a 1% Ferrari F99 tomorrow you'll crash within the first 10km of driving, assuming you know how to turn it on, assuming you can get into gear and avoid the spin at the first corner.
What if you really need to compete on the track and don't have the financial resources to buy an F1 car or a supercar like a Ferrari or a Porsche 911?
You would completely abandon the idea of your project or you would rely on a trainer in gambissima able to transform a Fiat 500 into a car capable of moving forward with extreme ease to a Ferrari or a Porsche, perhaps spending a quarter of the cost of a supercar?
What does this example mean? That the same dynamics that you can find in the world of engines can also be found in the world of hosting and that in all cases the difference is made by an expert in the sector able to advise you on the specific solution that best suits your needs.
Money is not always enough to finish first. Often you need to meet specifications that only a highly trained person can do.
So why do you insist on buying AWS if you then don't know how to use it?
Amazon AWS at the end of the game always (or almost always) gives you back a Linux command line shell on which you will have to go to install and configure your environment.
If you didn't know how to do it on the 10 euro per month VPS, or on the 50 euro per month dedicated server, why should you know how to do it on Amazon AWS if you are a mediocre systems administrator?
Do you really think your NGINX web server will handle those 10 users per minute just because your CentOS 7.5 Linux instance is virtualized on Amazon AWS rather than on Bare Metal?
Or maybe you believe that 16 virtualized cores on Amazon AWS perform better than 16 physical cores on a dedicated server?
The answer of course is no.
The difference is only in the fact that 16 cores on AWS you pay 1000 euros per month, against 100 euros for a dedicated server. So why burn budget unnecessarily?
Our systems service that we offer in managedserver.it is to drive your infrastructures, exactly as if we were F1 drivers able to drive your cars, whether they are on a virtualized economic environment (VPS), whether they are on Dedicated Servers physical (bare metal) be they on virtualized instances on Cloud services such as DigitalOcean, Linode, Amazon AWS, Google Cloud, Microsoft Azure and equivalents.
How are things?
La reality of the facts, which we have experienced in the last 5 years, it's clear: Of 100 users who choose Amazon AWS, at least 90% don't really need it.. The cause? Ineptitude of their system administrators, often improvised devops, unable to configure an efficient stack with Varnish o Memcached, technologies that would allow optimize hardware usage and reduce costs.
We followed several customers that they spent over €5000/month and we brought them to solutions from 500 € / month, getting best performances as well as costs decimated.
The point is to understand who are you, what do you need, and if Amazon AWS is really the most effective solution…or just a useless patch.
You are truly one of those who:
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must scale hundreds of instances per minute?
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ha traffic peaks from a few megabits to tens of gigabits in a few minutes?
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manages live events with unbalanced access on weekends?
Any needs that not even a bare metal server can satisfy?
If the answer is no, then AWS it's not for youYou have to resort to it only after having excluded every other solution, and only if supported by expert system administrators that they know contain costs with hybrid infrastructures (e.g. External CDNs, caching, distributed storage, etc.).
In all other cases, È necessario realize that:
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not all solutions are right for everyone
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if you need to host high traffic WordPress sites, AWS is almost always not the best choice
If you are among those who They want to use AWS just for fashion, and you're ready to spend 10 times more than necessary, know that we won't judge youWe will still follow you in the configuration, but with the awareness that you're doing it without any real need.
Amazon AWS it is not our competitor. It is a precious ally, when it's really needed. We are systems engineers, or professional drivers. AWS provides theautoA good driver does not compete with the car… but with other pilots.
Do you want to complete a project in the best possible way?
Don't just buy the car. Also buy a good driver and a good tuner. Only in this way will you be able to achieve the goal of operations research:
maximize profits while minimizing costs.