> 2-5x pipeline performance at 1/2 cost just by using self-hosted runners on bare metal rented machines like Hetzner
This is absolutely the case. Its a combination of having dedicated CPU cores, dedicated memory bandwidth, and (perhaps most of all) dedicated local NVMe drives. We see a 2x speed up running _within VMs_ on bare metal.
> And knowing how to deal with bare metal/utilize this kind of compute sounds generally useful skill - but I rarely encounter people enthusiastic about making this kind of move
We started our current company for this reason [0]. A lot of people know this makes sense on some level, but not many people want to do it. So we say we'll do it for you, give you the engineering time needed to support it, and you'll still save money.
> I just don't see why going bare metal is always such a taboo topic even for simple stuff like builds.
It is decreasingly so from what I see. Enough people have been variously burned by public cloud providers to know they are not a panacea. But they just need a little assistance in making the jump.
This is absolutely the case. Its a combination of having dedicated CPU cores, dedicated memory bandwidth, and (perhaps most of all) dedicated local NVMe drives. We see a 2x speed up running _within VMs_ on bare metal.
> And knowing how to deal with bare metal/utilize this kind of compute sounds generally useful skill - but I rarely encounter people enthusiastic about making this kind of move
We started our current company for this reason [0]. A lot of people know this makes sense on some level, but not many people want to do it. So we say we'll do it for you, give you the engineering time needed to support it, and you'll still save money.
> I just don't see why going bare metal is always such a taboo topic even for simple stuff like builds.
It is decreasingly so from what I see. Enough people have been variously burned by public cloud providers to know they are not a panacea. But they just need a little assistance in making the jump.
[0] - https://lithus.eu