With less technical management, I've had repeated, and bewildered, conversations trying to get them to understand that our one "computer" sitting on my desk is many many times faster than the "server" our IT team provides. "But it's a server!".
I like to point out to people who haven’t worked it out for themselves, that the load balanced HA pair of EC2 instances with the multi AZ RDS that runs almost $200 a month at on demand rates, is somewhat less computing power and storage that the phone in my pocket.
Many times faster doesn't mean shit if it takes up 4-6x more space than it needs to in what is likely the most expensive commercial real estate the company owns/leases.
Many times faster doesn't mean shit if it can't be remotely lights-out managed and its hardware monitored using standardized tools (or at all.)
Many times faster doesn't mean shit if it doesn't have redundant PSUs.
Many times faster doesn't mean shit if failed drives can't be hotswapped.
Also, the computer sitting on your desk is not "many many times faster" than a current, or even few years old, server.
Etc.
If you want better hardware from IT, tell management to give them more money. IT is almost always viewed as a cost center and given a shoestring budget yet asked to do, and be responsible for, he world.
You know how you're experienced from all your years as a programmer? Imagine IT people are the same, instead of assuming they're all idiots who are too stupid to go out and buy desktop computers instead of servers like your genius self.
> Also, the computer sitting on your desk is not "many many times faster" than a current, or even few years old, server.
The server is a big pie. If you're buying a single slice, then yes, it's very very easy for a cheap old desktop to be way faster than a cheap VPS.
> Imagine IT people are the same, instead of assuming they're all idiots who are too stupid to go out and buy desktop computers instead of servers like your genius self.
It's the managers that are idiots. Not everything needs to run in a datacenter. Some things really are kittens and not cattle.
> Many times faster doesn't mean shit if it takes up 4-6x more space than it needs to in what is likely the most expensive commercial real estate the company owns/leases.
Unless you're hoping to monetize that spot on your desk, the real estate market means nothing in terms of cost.
> Many times faster doesn't mean shit if it can't be remotely lights-out managed and its hardware monitored using standardized tools (or at all.)
What stops you from "using standardized tools" on a box you own?
> Many times faster doesn't mean shit if it doesn't have redundant PSUs.
What leads you to believe that all those 9s are relevant or even not comparable with cloud alternatives? In fact, I'm not sure that the latest rounds of outages at AWS allow it to claim more than 3 9s during the past year.
> Also, the computer sitting on your desk is not "many many times faster" than a current, or even few years old, server.
So you are basically saying that 99% of the time it will work fine. Got it.
But seriously, they were comparing to the server they got, not the one you have or can provide.
It’s entirely reasonable for the IT team to provide a VPS that doesn’t have nearly the amount of power for a application that’s barely used. Doesn’t mean it’s easy to explain to management.
> Imagine IT people are the same, instead of assuming they're all idiots who are too stupid to go out and buy desktop computers instead of servers like your genius self.
Nearly all of your assumption here are incorrect or flawed, except the redundant PSU (we only had one). But, I do think they're just like me: working in a non-ideal environment with constraints outside of our direct control. The non-ideal constraint that they had, in that instance, at that time, was that they could only give us a VPS with 4 threads. It wasn't possible to do what we needed with their server. Or, to put it into your language, five nines doesn't mean shit if, in practicality, it makes a reliable space heater.
With less technical management, I've had repeated, and bewildered, conversations trying to get them to understand that our one "computer" sitting on my desk is many many times faster than the "server" our IT team provides. "But it's a server!".