Why Companies Are Ditching the Cloud: The Rise of Cloud Repatriation

Kjell's Law: the cost of a platform eventually exceeds the cost of the one it replaced. But each cost is in a different budget.

We seem to have replaced cooling and power and a grumpy sysadmin with storage and architects and unhappy developers.

I've never worked in a data center that did cooling and power correctly. Everyone thinks they're doing it right, and then street power gets cut - there's significant impact, ops teams scramble to contain, and finally there's the finger-pointing.

I have, and least power. I worked in a DC with 4 very large diesel generators, each backed up by a multi-ton flywheel that managed the transition between a power cut and the generators taking over.

Area wide power cut, winter afternoon so it was already getting dark. The two signs I knew there was something wrong were that all the lights went out outside, ie other businesses, street lighting etc. And my internet connection stopped working. Nothing else in the DC was affected. Even the elevator was working.

Amazing story, and now the flywheel is living rent free in a steampunk-inspired corner of my brain. What are these called so I can look them up on the net? Like this maybe?

https://www.torus.co/torus-flywheel

They're chonky devices which were not really off-the-shelf until the last decade, as far as I know. There's very few images of them, but a smaller one looks like this: https://www.pv-magazine.com/2018/03/14/pilot-project-for-fly...

Very cool. Somehow I missed the idea of flywheels used to store energy. I assumed one that small would peter out in seconds.

These were huge. In fact iirc the power that came into the building spun them, and the DC ran off the resultant generated electricity. So the risk at cutover is minimal, there is in fact no loss of electricity unless the wheel drops below the required revs.

One of these units blew at one point. We had 4 and only needed two running, so no big deal. The company who managed the whole thing (Swiss) came to replace it. Amazing job, they had to put it on small rollers, like industrial roller skates, then embed hooks in the walls at each corridor junction, and slowly winch the thing along, it was like watching the minute hand of a clock.

Then the whole process in reverse to bring in the new one. Was fascinating to watch. The guy in charge was a giant, built like a brick outhouse. They knew their stuff.