When Hungry, Compare Apples and Oranges
Sometimes different things are still applicable to the same question
Often when I bring up BareMetalSavings, which allows one to compare cloud prices to bare-metal prices, I get this response:
“You’re comparing apples and oranges”
On its face, it is indeed true. Cloud and bare-metal are different beasts. However, the implied part of that response is incorrect.
Here is the same response, with the implied part spelled out:
“You’re comparing apples and oranges, which makes the comparison meaningless”
To the contrary. When you’re hungry, apples and oranges should be compared.
The cloud and bare-metal both fulfill a basic ask: “Run servers”. The fact that they do it differently from one another, with a wide variety of operational and monetary costs should be an even stronger motivation to compare them.
Having many options with different tradeoffs is better than having few options with the same tradeoffs.
Did you know cloud SSDs can be ~24x more expensive than the bare-metal equivalent?
Yes, the cloud has better redundancy1 and is managed, but remember being hungry? Now that you know the price difference, you can decide whether to pay extra for that juicy orange. It’s not like the apple has nothing going for it except for price, either. Bare-metal is usually much faster.
Be daring — compare the incomparable. Constantly reevaluate your costs. You may surprised.
Sometimes.
