For the benefit of the masses: Microsoft, like other “cloud” providers, allows you to create or “spin up” virtual computers, typically servers, in the cloud with nothing more than a few mouse clicks. It’s easy to do and can be done in a matter of minutes. This ease in accessibility tends to have customers spinning up servers as they please, which is a Good Thing for Microsoft, or Amazon, or whomever the cloud provider is. Why? Because they charge you for it - monthly.
Think about this - with a few clicks of a mouse I can have a full blown production server provisioned however I like - your choice of operating system, RAM, number of processors, drive storage, network interfaces, etc., etc. These are the virtual equivalent of 100s of thousands of dollars of physical hardware. The providers charge accordingly. So it’s easy to see how someone can get out of control with this stuff and really go to town. My data scientist geeks are cranking up some very powerful virtual machines because they’re crunching data, and lots of it. Not only that, they’re installing Microsoft software like SQL (database) whose licenses are in the 10s of thousands of dollars a year, if not more. This just started, so I’m waiting for the accounting folks to go ballistic when our next monthly Microsoft invoice comes in for payment. -D On Jun 19, 2021, at 10:43 AM, Curt Raymond <curtlud...@yahoo.com<mailto:curtlud...@yahoo.com>> wrote: The first time I hit $2,000 somebody in accounting freaked out. That was the first quarter and that was when I realized I needed more compute power for my VMs. I'd been using 8GB of RAM but the machines were very unhappy. I find it interesting that in my VMWare systems 8GB is adequate, something about Azure appears to be less efficient running the same software. I should note that $2,000/mo is just for my classes, the guy who teaches the editing software uses way more, 16 processor cores and 128GB/RAM will do that. -Curt On Saturday, June 19, 2021, 7:52:47 AM EDT, Dan Penoff via Mercedes <mercedes@okiebenz.com<mailto:mercedes@okiebenz.com>> wrote: We currently run an Azure environment. I’ve got a bunch of data scientists running their own environment in our tenant and they’re spinning stuff up daily. I’ve pointed out that every time they spin up a new instance of something the meter is running, but they don’t seem to care. Not sure who’s handling the accounting side of their stuff, but this just started a month or two ago, so I’m guessing they haven’t gotten the first invoice from Microsoft yet. -D On Jun 18, 2021, at 10:43 PM, Curt Raymond via Mercedes <mercedes@okiebenz.com<mailto:mercedes@okiebenz.com>> wrote: Cap-ex vs Op-ex. When I first got out of college everything was supposed to be cap-ex. Buy hardware so we didn't have to spend people time on stuff. Now you're supposed to turn everything into op-ex. I've got a whole bunch of VM servers that would be great to train on but rather than getting me a $200/mo dedicated internet line we spend $2,000/mo in Microsoft Azure... -Curt On Friday, June 18, 2021, 8:24:46 PM EDT, Jim Cathey via Mercedes <mercedes@okiebenz.com<mailto:mercedes@okiebenz.com>> wrote: But eventually someone has to buy the cars, which is less likely if they are overpriced. I'm sure it's some variant of the shit where they will pay more in operating costs, often many times over, rather than do a better job up front, because it would involve a slightly higher capital cost. "Hey, not MY budget." Even if one corporate entity is who is paying ALL costs in the end. So, how you rig the game will result in how successful it is overall, over time. Ultimately I'm sure it's why big companies die, and small ones are formed. They get ossified and inefficient, and the new small sharks swoop in and eat the lunch, and eventually the carcass, of the big fish. Ad infinitum. -- Jim _______________________________________ http://www.okiebenz.com To search list archives http://www.okiebenz.com/archive/ To Unsubscribe or change delivery options go to: http://mail.okiebenz.com/mailman/listinfo/mercedes_okiebenz.com _______________________________________ http://www.okiebenz.com To search list archives http://www.okiebenz.com/archive/ To Unsubscribe or change delivery options go to: http://mail.okiebenz.com/mailman/listinfo/mercedes_okiebenz.com _______________________________________ http://www.okiebenz.com<http://www.okiebenz.com/> To search list archives http://www.okiebenz.com/archive/ To Unsubscribe or change delivery options go to: http://mail.okiebenz.com/mailman/listinfo/mercedes_okiebenz.com _______________________________________ http://www.okiebenz.com To search list archives http://www.okiebenz.com/archive/ To Unsubscribe or change delivery options go to: http://mail.okiebenz.com/mailman/listinfo/mercedes_okiebenz.com
