System design and the cost of architectural complexity (2013)
In the late 90s I travelled the world with a couple of CD-ROMs installing NT 4.0 on individual physical servers. I understood the entire stack. I was the only engineer and I was often very remote.<p>In the mid 2000s we installed Server 2003&#x2F;8 on a whole bunch of physical servers in a data centre. This was for one of Australia’s ‘big four’ banks. Me and a team of less than ten, most of whom I still know, managed the entire thing. We were the ‘3rd level infrastructure’ team. Most of us understood most of the stack end-to-end, although there were some specialities.<p>In 2023 I work for an IT integrator. These days we use Azure, because Microsoft has fooled us in to thinking that it’s cheaper.<p>My current project is, essentially, a website migration. Not even a big or complex website. The project has been running for 6 months. I only joined recently so I can’t be sure but we’ve probably burned AU$2m. The schedule I’m managing has us doing the cutover in June. That is optimistic.<p>The architects are currently trying to work out how Azure [details] connect to Azure [details] while still [security] and being able to [complex integration].<p>Every day some new issue appears that the architects have to figure out how to work around.<p>No single person has a goddamned clue how the end-to-end thing fits together. Not one, not a clue. That scares me.<p>‘Architectural complexity’ has crept down to the level of infrastructure. It’s painful to see. I hope it stops soon but I am not hope<i>ful.</i>