Ahrefs Saved US$400M in 3 Years by Not Going to the Cloud
It looks clear to me that given the hardware they need, and the scale they operate at, buying their own metal makes sense. Also them sticking to similar servers is a good idea imho.<p>What I am missing though in the monthly cost is the personnel cost. I would assume that a decently qualified system and network administrator in Singapore, capable of operating and servicing this setup, will cost upward of $10,000 per month. And only having one is probably not enough, due to SPOF and other considerations. To be honest, even for the cloud you probably need someone to administer the setup, but chances are high that there is much less to do.<p>Paying for, and finding qualified staff is from my experience the main driver for small and mid-size companies to go to the cloud. And for many this actually makes sense financially. Even though many create unnecessary complex setups or get trapped in vendor lock-ins.