Source URL: https://www.fastmail.com/blog/why-we-use-our-own-hardware/
Source: Hacker News
Title: We use our own hardware at Fastmail
Feedly Summary: Comments
AI Summary and Description: Yes
**Summary:**
The provided text elaborates on Fastmail’s strategic choice of leveraging their own hardware instead of opting for cloud solutions, highlighting various considerations regarding cost optimization, system performance, and reliability. This approach focuses on building and managing on-premises infrastructure with a strong emphasis on hardware longevity and effective resource utilization, which could provide valuable insights for security and infrastructure professionals.
**Detailed Description:**
The text outlines Fastmail’s historical and current hardware strategies, emphasizing their commitment to using in-house systems instead of cloud services. Below are the key points discussed in the content:
– **Cloud Repatriation:**
– There’s a growing trend of companies moving from cloud solutions back to on-premises infrastructure due to performance and cost concerns. Fastmail positions itself ahead of this trend by using its own hardware for over 20 years.
– **Cost Optimization:**
– Fastmail has honed its understanding of usage patterns and requirements over time, allowing for precise hardware acquisitions and eliminating the need for frequent dynamic scaling.
– The company depreciates hardware costs over long periods (5-10 years), leading to better financial management compared to transient cloud arrangements.
– **Operational Expertise:**
– The firm has built robust expertise in operating and maintaining its systems, which fuels its ability to keep infrastructure running optimally with reduced dependency on external cloud services.
– **Evolution of Hardware:**
– Fastmail’s historical hardware included traditional spinning disks and RAID setups, showcasing a notable evolution toward NVMe SSDs for enhanced speed and reliability.
– They adopted ZFS for storage management, deriving benefits from features like built-in encryption, concerning data security, and ease of implementing redundancy compared to previous solutions.
– **ZFS Benefits:**
– The introduction of ZFS improved performance and provided efficient data storage through compression (up to 42.4% savings observed), which can significantly free up space.
– Fastmail successfully transitioned all its storage needs to ZFS, leading to high data performance and reliability for their email services.
– **Hardware Reliability:**
– Insights into the longevity of SSDs versus traditional HDDs indicate that SSDs have resulted in fewer failures, promoting a more stable infrastructure.
– **Cost Calculation for Storage:**
– A detailed analysis diverges into three potential backup solutions: transitioning to cloud storage, upgrading HDDs, or investing in new SSD technology. Each solution is weighed against pros and cons, leading to a strategic decision to choose more reliable SSD infrastructure.
– **Final Decision and Conclusion:**
– Fastmail opted for the new 2U AMD NVMe platform, primarily due to efficiency, reliability, and the existing knowledge and infrastructure. This choice appears to be yielding substantial operational benefits.
In conclusion, the knowledge and long-term operational experience that Fastmail has, coupled with their strategic decision to maintain on-premises infrastructure, highlights potential advantages like cost savings, data integrity, and security. This serves as a notable case study for professionals in security and infrastructure management, particularly in the sectors wrestling with cloud versus on-prem solutions.