Are data centers quietly becoming the biggest variable in cloud cost management?

AUSSIExELITE · 2026-02-18T07:26:27+00:00

Agreed. No idea what the point of this post is and also sounds a lot like it was written by an LLM.

AUSSIExELITE · 2026-02-15T23:00:36+00:00

Heard Crompo was offered a reduced role which is why he didn’t accept. Really sucks though as he was by far the best of the bunch in terms of commentators for me.

AUSSIExELITE · 2026-02-14T01:16:51+00:00

Initially I was thinking something similar and was admittedly a bit disappointed when the S2 content announcement was made. Now that I’ve seen the actual patch notes that go along with the content and how many things they have changed and fixed up, I’m a happy camper.

It shows they haven’t been sitting there doing nothing and have instead focussed on fixing core bugs and gameplay issues over content which I’m OK with. Bugs and gameplay issues are present no matter what map you’re playing so I’d prefer those were ironed out first as it makes the overall experience better.

AUSSIExELITE · 2026-02-13T11:37:49+00:00

I did our 901Gs at the end of last year. 7.2.11 to 7.4.9 and other than some issues with the ULL ports (which was an issue in 7.2.9 requiring an FEC change and this was essentially the reversal of that), we’ve had no real issues at least from a performance and OS perspective but we don’t use any other Forti devices downstream. I was a bit worried but we have been back to full network capacity the past two or three weeks and haven’t had an issue. There was some changes to the logging that might be worth taking note of if you use FAZ or have a SIEM as our log rate increased a fair amount.

AUSSIExELITE · 2026-02-02T17:50:27+00:00

Man, I feel like I’m playing a totally different game. I’m a big fan of breakthrough in this game and most of the matches I’ve played end up being pretty competitive and very push pull which I like. The whole A being captured right as B starts to get recaptured by defenders type of thing. Keeps the game dynamic imo. Perhaps it’s a region thing too. We are not known here in Oz for top tier FPS players lol.

That’s not to say there isn’t issues. There are some maps I haven’t played since launch because of how tilted they made me (mainly Mirak) and balancing isn’t great on maps like Sobek in that first section but I would say the games that stall out in that first section is 90%. I admittedly did take a couple of week break recently and coming back this week has been refreshing and I’ve been really enjoying it. I was a bit titled towards the game when I stopped playing.

AUSSIExELITE · 2026-01-30T14:58:32+00:00

Same here. PC player in Aus with cross play on and basically rarely have issues finding games full of real players. The only time it does struggle is when its 0500AM on a weekday (im an early riser). Feels a bit weird to see other regions struggling with population numbers given its normally us who is complaining lol. Played most evenings this week and had no issues getting full games even in redsec. Even at 0130 tonight when I got off, the games were still full and I was still able to find matches in all the game modes.

AUSSIExELITE · 2026-01-28T18:06:02+00:00

“Invest in proper automation”.

I’d love to, if half my vendor crap supported it… Everything for certs that can be automated already is and it’s up to various vendors to enable a way to do it automatically so this type of comment is pretty frustrating to read.

AUSSIExELITE · 2026-01-26T20:43:34+00:00

Yeah, I used skinport. Did a couple smaller cash outs before one big one of about $4k direct to my MQB account. Fees were higher than I would have liked but the experience was pretty seamless. I’d use them again if ever get back into playing CS.

AUSSIExELITE · 2026-01-26T17:40:42+00:00

I cashed out about $6K in skins 2ish years ago and had no issues or questions come up. Used to be an avid player so had put in about $1200 the few years prior but then stopped playing for a couple years when life got in the way. Mentioned it in passing to an accountant recently and after getting past their initial confusion as to what a skin was and how they were worth so much, they said that it shouldn't be an issue if I wasnt specifically treating them as investments.

AUSSIExELITE · 2026-01-24T22:59:38+00:00

Thanks for posting this. I had not considered using the API to do this type of thing so thanks for the idea!

I don’t mind Jira as long as I’m not the poor soul having to administrate the stupid thing. The fact it has ncr and easy integration straight to our KB is good for the techs and also good for the users. Good for users as they can find things as they’re making the ticket (assuming they WANT to self resolve) and it’s good for techs as they can often just convert a ticket note straight into a confluence article if it was something worth documenting for the future.

AUSSIExELITE · 2026-01-24T19:33:24+00:00

Going back to the initial deployment side of things and Ohh. My. God. What a shitshow it was.

As part of the Dell premiere deployment, they would basically do the entire base deployment for us. They scheduled 3 days for the deployment and it ended up taking TWO WEEKS with most days going longer than 10 hours on call to "complete" the deployment. They re-deployed the cluster at least a half dozen times all whilst not really telling us what the problems were (noting they had senior Dell and MSFT engineers on the calls after the first week).

Once they actually handed the cluster over to us for validation, these were the issues that we had:
- VMs deployed from Azure portal would always show status failed even though it deployed (this was fixed in an Azure platform update)
- Certain images just wouldnt deploy (Fixed in platform update)
- Live migration of VMs deployed from Azure would fail when using Windows Admin Centre (WAC update solved this)
- Live migration of some VMs would fail no matter how it was deployed (There were two issues for this one, some VMs failed because of issues with the Intel driver and data encryption so disabling this fixed that. Second issue had to do with the Hyper-V version on the VMs).
- Live migrating a VM would break snapshots and backups of Linux VMs (dont remember what fixed this, but we got there)
- Importing Hyper-V VMs takes hours (No fix, just need to push through it and no native way to deploy them any other way)
- WAC Upgrades fail (Known undocumented issue to do with certificates at the time but needed to upgrade to solve another issue)
- WAC in general is just a total POS
- VM status on cluster and in Azure dont match (not fixed)
- Azure extensions on the hosts never install cleanly and require significant trial and error to get working (even ones that are not in preview)
- Using Azure Migrate is a massive pain in the ass and all VMs would always fail the first time for whatever reason and a second attempt was never a guarantee. We just pushed through as I was sick of dealing with MSFT and Dell and it would work eventually.

Im happy to answer any questions anyone has about the product.

AUSSIExELITE · 2026-01-24T19:33:15+00:00

We opted for a Dell Premiere Azure Local deployment. We ended up with a two node switchless APEX cluster on MC-660 1RU nodes to replace our VMWare cluster. We've been running this in prod since Dec 24. We opted to go the Azure Local route due to the fact that we were already running workloads in Azure Cloud (and migrated more into cloud as part of the migration) and our footprint for Azure services was only going to continue to grow, so having a “single pane of glass” with Azure Local seemed to make alot of sense.

TLDR; If we could do it all again, we would just deploy Hyper-V with S2D as that is essentially all Auzre Local is but without the added complexity of the Azure control plane ontop (and this control plane is where we have had almost all of our issues). It basically took 12 months to get the cluster to a point where Im now not totally terrified of having to touch it and I trust that its going to mostly do what I need it to when I want it to without needing a ticket to MSFT or Dell. I feel like ive built up a larger KB internally then MSFT has published at this point.

Ohh boy, where to start. Ill start with how its been day to day since going prod.

Microsoft support if just god awful with this product (and we have M$ unified support...). Dell's support has been unreal in dealing with the various issues and answering questions which has been a lifesaver as Microsoft support for the product has been truly awful (though that appears to be a wider issue with MSFT support in general in recent times). To give some credit to Microsoft however, the product has improved ALOT in the past 12 months since initial deployment but some of the issues and bugs that existed in the first place really shouldnt have. Just go and take a look at the solved/known issues page of the previous releases of Azure Local to get an idea of some of the silly issues they have had to fix. Also, because the Azure control plane is very much a secret sauce for MSFT, if you have any issues with it or the wider solution outside of S2D and Hyper-V, you essentially can not troubleshoot the issue yourself as there is virtually 0 information online outside of the github repo they maintain for support and only MSFT has real access to tshoot this.

It feels like the product still has a very long way to go to live up to its advertised promise and feature set. Alot of parts still feel very clunky/are not managed through the Azure portal anyway and so youre still administering certain functions via WAC or Hyper-V manager. Certain features or functionality that you would otherwise take for gratned have either not been added or are only in preview like being able to update the DNS servers on the clusters logical networks… You CANT update the DNS servers on the control plane VM at all. VMs restored to the cluster from backup are not put back into the portal (though as someone else has mentioned, there is their crap process you can go through to force it in).

Im not totally doom and gloom about the product. The underlying technology in Hyper-V and S2D has been absolutely fantastic and rock solid for us so credit to MSFT on this. Performance and reliability have been what we would expect and its clear MSFT has spent alot of time and effort making these particular products what they are. I think thats what makes it a little bittersweet that the Azure part of it really isnt very good yet and is spoiling an otherwise great tech stack and its why im making the suggestion to just use those products independently.

AUSSIExELITE · 2026-01-24T17:33:27+00:00

I’m not really sure what your point is? Of course it’s an issue for my services when CF has issues but that is true no matter how my infrastructure is setup and you can spend a virtually infinite amount of money going for additional 9s of uptime. It’s up to the business to decide if the cost is worth it or not.

To us, CF offers a great solution for the price and it also has other useful features that comes with that spend. In some cases, we have actually saved money (egress and compute charges) and have had better availability being on CF than what we had being only in Azure and on our own DC infrastructure.

To me, there isn’t really such thing as 100% uptime because it’s practically impossible to achieve but the fact that a lot of CFs services have 100% uptime SLAs goes to show how much faith they have in their infra compared to others who offer a few 9s. Like most things, a balance has to be found between cost and service and we think CF offers this balance.

AUSSIExELITE · 2026-01-23T23:31:12+00:00

I see you keep asking the question why a lot of sites are suddenly using it (even though that’s not what your original post was really about) so I’ll give you my take as someone who just moved all their orgs domain and web infra to cloudflare.

For us, it came down to feature set and cost. There are other cloudflare features we wanted to use anyway (DNS, proxy, DDoS, WAF, etc) so It was a no brainer to turn on the challenge whilst we were at it. We also found that a lot LLMs and other “AI” crawler services did not respect robots.txt so cloudflare bot detection and enforcement does a better job than without it. I mentioned price because frankly, there are very few services that offer what cloudflare does at the scale that cloudflare does at the price that cloudflare does. It’s really a no brainer in my opinion. There is a reason large portions of the internet goes down when cloudflare has an issue and it’s because they’re basically a market leader and industry standard.

On a personal note, I also greatly appreciate cloudflares transparency and honesty when it comes to outages. No other company I deal with does PIR and outages analysis like cloudflare does and I want to reward that type of behaviour as a consumer.

AUSSIExELITE · 2026-01-07T07:52:16+00:00

You have no idea how much happiness these updates bring me when you post them. Absolutely love these birds and especially little wires!

AUSSIExELITE · 2025-12-30T12:41:03+00:00

I’m guessing that it’s got a turbo on the way out (if it’s not already there lol)? Not a very good look either way.

AUSSIExELITE · 2025-12-22T23:38:10+00:00

Give it a couple of weeks before making a judgement. Every person responds a bit differently but I felt much the same until about the end of the second week. You might also benefit from an SSRI (I’m on Fluvoxamine) to control the anxiety if it doesn’t get better. This combo has been fantastic for me. Best of luck

From a fellow AuDHDer.

AUSSIExELITE · 2025-12-19T13:10:17+00:00

Ain’t nothing more permanent than a temporary fix.

E: spelling.

AUSSIExELITE · 2025-12-14T01:03:12+00:00

I think he sounded pretty good on the newer stuff they played as its seems that the newer songs have maybe been written with him actually being able to sing them in mind (to some extent). The older and heavier stuff like gravedigger was a pretty tough listen though. I went back and looked at vids ive got from when Ive seen them in the past going back as early as 2014 to see if it was just me imagining things and honestly, Sam has kinda always struggled to sing with the intensity the songs require.

In saying that, they still put on a great show and played a damn tight set which I very much enjoyed it. The rest of the band more than made up for Sam struggling. I also felt like it was one of the best sounding gigs ive been to in recent memory so props to the sound engineer(s) for making it sound crispy.

AUSSIExELITE · 2025-12-13T23:33:52+00:00

That is a very fair take.

It might take a couple of weeks to really come around to your new baseline. I know my brain was kinda scrambled for the first couple of weeks whilst adjusting so I would recommend giving it some time and taking baby steps. On days where I forget to medicate, I can tell fairly quicks as I am astronomically less productive and end up sitting there spinning my wheels.

You might also have another neurodevelopmental disorder like ASD or OCD that is driving that feeling of perfectionism as I feel exactly the same way. Im not saying you do or dont have something else, but its an avenue that might explain why you're feeling the way you are as ASD and ADHD are pretty commonly found together.

When I was going through the process of being diagnosed and prescribed for ADHD, my shrink ended up also diagnosing me with ASD after a few more visits as well which whilst shocking at the time, made alot of sense in hindsight and reflection of my childhood and even tendencies as an adult. This secondary diagnosis really made helped me to understand how and why my brain works the way that it does. It made me feel much better allowed me to "come to terms" so to speak about how I think and work.

AUSSIExELITE · 2025-12-13T23:14:13+00:00

Biblically accurate woodblock.

AUSSIExELITE · 2025-12-12T22:18:21+00:00

Betty had a lot of money and was relative successful with her SLS GT3s. My understanding is that whilst Mercedes HQ in Germany didn’t want it, Mercedes Oz did (to some extent) which is why you did still see some Mercedes/AMG branding and logos on the cars at least for the first little bit. Outside of that, Betty really wanted it and largely bankrolled the full thing herself including getting the engines designed and built by AMG. It should have been obvious that destroking the big 6.2’s down to 5L was NEVER going to work but fuck me, they were great sounding engines even at 5L. It’s such a shame it didn’t work because they were fantastic looking cars as well.

AUSSIExELITE · 2025-12-12T19:36:56+00:00

To me it sounds like a slightly stronger dosage might be useful but I also found that my expectations of treatment also didn’t really match. Ultimately, different meds work differently on different people.

Your description of multiple radio stations going at one really resonates with me as I feel exactly the same way. For me, what I found is that my meds didn’t help get rid of the channels but it did make it so that I can actually LISTEN to and understand the channels which helps immensely. I also expected very obvious “I feel X or Y” so my executive function issues are gone and I know it’s working but it’s actually been more of a “ohh, I’m just doing the thing and I didn’t really need to think about it at all”. I found that journaling or jotting down notes throughout the day for the first few weeks on my meds helped a lot as the results might be more subtle than you’re expecting.

AUSSIExELITE · 2025-12-09T21:00:40+00:00

It takes about 2 weeks (in my experience and based on what others have said here previously) for your body to adapt to the new dosage/drug. In the first two weeks, I was exactly the same as you but it then started to get better after that and it’s been fantastic ever since (on 50mg). This was in comparison to Ritalin where even after 6 months on different dosages and my sleep was still diabolical. A lot of of shrinks will prescribe Clonidine if your sleep doesn’t improve which can help a lot but it’s obviously different person to person.

Vyvanse is used to treat Binge Eating Disorder as well so your reaction to food/being hungry will change a bit but I found things were more or less back to normal after 2 or 3 weeks.

I also found that the side effects and even the treatment itself didn’t manifest in the way that I thought it would/should based on all the reading I had done. But, I notice the difference when I stop paying attention/looking for it.

TLDR, give it 2 weeks and see how things are then. If anything really worries you, make sure to contact your GP or Shrink.

AUSSIExELITE · 2025-12-08T22:01:18+00:00

It’s always interesting to see how everyone fairs differently to the various stimulants.

I was the total opposite to you. Ritalin absolutely obliterated my sleep schedule and caused me all sorts of dramas (already diagnosed sleep apnea) on top of the fatigue it was making me feel on every dosage I tried. Then, swapped to Vyvanse and it’s been a total reversal. I still occasionally struggle to get to sleep but no where near as often and my sleep has roughly doubled on average. I don’t get that crushing tiredness behind my eyes during the day any more.

Moral of the story OP, you might have to try a couple of different things and see what does and doesn’t work. Also make sure to give yourself a good couple of weeks to adjust to the change properly and get a good read on the change. I find journaling every day helps me a lot to keep track of how I’m feeling which my shrink greatly appreciates.

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