The cost of running a search cluster varies significantly depending on its deployment method. For cloud-based clusters, for example, expenses are incurred through usage of a vendor’s services. Conversely, on-premise clusters require investment in both hardware and software infrastructure for operation. This blog compares the various considerations of self-hosting a search cluster with using a managed service or self managed cloud deployment. Additionally, it offers insights into Lucenia’s hybrid approach designed to decrease cloud expenditures without amplifying the level of effort or maintenance required.

Cost of a cloud deployed search cluster

Operating a search cluster in a cloud environment entails significant cost considerations that extend beyond the primary expenses associated with cloud services. While the basic charges cover virtual machines, storage, and networking services required for cluster operation, it is essential to recognize additional cost factors. Data transfer expenses, often underestimated, can accumulate if extensive data I/O is used. Moreover, obtaining support for cluster management may involve supplementary fees for support services from the cloud provider. Additionally, ensuring effective cluster oversight may require investing in monitoring and management services offered by the cloud provider. Understanding these various costs is crucial for optimizing the financial aspect of operating a search cluster in the cloud.

Unexpected Expenditures from Managed Services

One way organizations expect to reduce the cost of running a search cluster in the cloud is to use managed services. Managed services are services provided by a cloud provider designed to take care of many of the tasks required to set up and maintain a search cluster. For example, some cloud providers offer services that include features like horizontal scaling, resource monitoring, and cluster and index management. An organization may expect to mitigate expenses associated with operating a search cluster in the cloud by leveraging specific features offered through a managed service. However, the majority of those features offered by cloud vendors are designed as general-purpose services and typically do not align with an organization’s requirements. Consequently, organizations frequently discover that substantial manual intervention and ongoing fine-tuning is necessary, resulting in ballooning expenses paid to the cloud vendor.

Self deploying to a cloud service

An alternative to a managed service is to self deploy and maintain a cluster on a cloud vendor’s infrastructure. In this configuration, the cluster management responsibilities fall on the organization, potentially resulting in additional operation and maintenance cost beyond the cloud hosted virtual machines, storage, and networking services. For example, unforeseen expenses often arise associated with monitoring and management services necessary to maintain the cluster. Similarly, support services from the cloud provider often become necessary when additional assistance is needed to operate and sustain the cloud infrastructure, further accumulating unexpected expenses. Data transfer charges also frequently occur, particularly in scenarios involving substantial data movement between the cloud and external sources, even when moving data to the cloud simply to make it searchable doesn’t make sense.

Despite these considerations many organizations opt for this approach. The most common reason for this revolves around upfront cost savings and budget expectations along with concerns surrounding data expertise and unique requirements. However, past experience and modern trends show that current cloud offerings can be significantly more expensive than self hosting or managing a cloud deployment; and costs are continuing to rise as a result of current vendors revenue expectations. Additionally, there are concerns about whether the cloud provider possesses the necessary knowledge to handle the data effectively or provide adequate support. Most managed offerings treat all data uniformly, requiring customization to suit specific requirements. Consequently, users often find themselves frequently engaged in educational sessions with support staff, aiming to familiarize them with the intricacies of the data. Similarly, the 72% rise in security incidents in cloud infrastructure proves to be a legitimate concern for nearly every organization faced with choosing whether to use a cloud infrastructure or self host.

Self-Hosting Benefits and Cost Considerations

Self-hosting software offers organizations greater control and flexibility over their infrastructure, enabling customization and tailoring to specific needs. With self-hosting, companies can optimize performance and security measures according to their requirements, mitigating potential risks associated with relying on third-party providers. While it often requires a larger upfront investment, organizations are rediscovering that self-hosting can be a more sustainable alternative to cloud hosting if an organization understands both the apparent and less apparent hidden costs associated with self-hosting.

The most apparent up-front cost is the hardware and software required to run the cluster. This includes the cost of the servers, storage, and networking equipment, as well as the cost of the search software itself. With the emergence of Kubernetes, self-hosting a search cluster on-premises has become more accessible, but there are less apparent costs to consider. One that is not always apparent is the cost of Investing in monitoring and management software to track system performance, identify issues proactively, and automate routine tasks. Investing in comprehensive monitoring software and management platforms for ensuring optimal performance, detecting issues proactively, and efficiently managing resources, is a frequent cost oversight for organizations, adding to the overall unexpected expenses for self-hosted search infrastructure.

A different approach with Lucenia

What is really needed is a “better together” solution. One that is designed to leverage the benefits of both cloud and self-hosted environments providing a cost-effective approach for operating a search cluster that reduces unforeseen expenses with built in tooling to reduce the added burden of monitoring and managing self hosted hardware. This is the goal set out by Lucenia, to enable organizations the flexibility to dynamically choose the best solution for their requirements thereby fostering organizational growth through expense reduction and revenue enhancement.

Hybrid Cloud with Self-Hosted as a first-class-citizen

With Lucenia, gone are the days of organizations operating steady state search clusters in a single environment. In Lucenia’s hybrid cloud framework, search clusters are dynamically distributed across both cloud-based and self-hosted environments, enabling organizations the ability to leverage the advantages of each approach and fully realize a “better together” solution where each environment makes sense. For instance, cloud-based deployments facilitate compute and storage scalability when performance requirements exceed local hardware limitations, while on-premise deployments significantly reduce cost while simultaneously providing increased security and performance through local processing. SImilarly, if data is created locally at an edge node, moving it to a cloud deployment just to make the data searchable almost never makes technical sense and further inflates the unexpected cloud costs due to additional data transfer and storage. With Lucenia, organizations can effortlessly search and analyze their data within a self-hosted footprint, eliminating the need to transfer it to the cloud. Enabling efficient and secure data exploration empowers organizations to derive valuable insights quickly and make informed decisions without requiring superfluous data migration or reliance on external cloud services. Additionally, running search and analyzing data locally not only saves time and cost but provides a more secure environment for personally identifiable information and sensitive data. By embracing a hybrid approach, organizations can effectively reduce the operational expenses associated with running the cluster, thereby contributing to the overall growth objectives of the company.

Auto-scaling for cost reduction

Lucenia’s unique microlithic auto-scaling capabilities dynamically adjusts the cluster’s size based on workload fluctuations with built-in monitoring and management utilities to clearly track and control provisioning behaviors. For instance, during periods of heavy load, auto-scaling can augment the cluster with additional nodes to accommodate the demand up to threshold requirements defined by the organization through the management console. Conversely, during lower demand periods, Lucenia’s auto-scaling service automatically scales down the cluster to eliminate unnecessary compute and further minimize expenses. Leveraging auto-scaling features enable the organization to optimize operational infrastructure costs associated with running a search cluster, thereby contributing to the company’s growth objectives. Built in monitoring and management enables organizations to efficiently orchestrate and track self-hosted and cloud deployed operations through an easy to use control plane without requiring costly third-party utilities.

Additionally, automatic and dynamic cluster sizing precision facilitated by auto-scaling is particularly beneficial for platform engineers, as it helps alleviate operational uncertainties related to factors such as user volume, data volume, and query frequency. Lucenia’s unique auto-provisioning capabilities within its separated read and write micro-function design not only significantly improves organizational operations, but further eliminates the hidden cost associated with ongoing support engineering services, whether provided by the organization itself or through a cloud vendor support subscription. Similarly, implementation of auto-scaling for ingest nodes in a search cluster, for instance, enables support engineering teams to execute data back-fills without concerns about cluster capacity. This is a substantial improvement over self scaling and management, enabling support teams to focus on data management without being encumbered by cluster maintenance tasks. Without auto-scaling, infrastructure teams need to ensure cluster readiness in collaboration with data teams prior to initiating data back-fills. With Lucenia’s auto-scaling, organizations realize additional cost savings through the use of spot ingest instances designed to enhance the efficiency of the ingestion process while reducing operational downtime during periods of high use.

The future with Lucenia

In summary, effectively managing a search cluster involves careful cost considerations. Whether operating in a cloud or on-premises environment, understanding hidden expenses and trade-offs is crucial for aligning cloud expenditures with organizational expectations. Lucenia’s  serverless hybrid cloud solution provides modern strategies to mitigate operational deployment and infrastructure expenses associated with search clusters, empowering organizations to optimize and realize their full growth potential. This one-of-a-kind approach, combining a serverless hybrid model with auto-scaling from self-hosted to cloud provider, proves to be the most efficient method for managing search clusters, enabling engineers to maintain workflow continuity, align feature development with the company’s roadmap, and ensure operational effectiveness.