It’s not uncommon these days to find development teams building an internal developer platform (IDP), usually with an open-sourced platform like Backstage. You’ve probably done it yourself. Most users would deploy it on a virtual machine with Azure Virtual Machines or Amazon EC2. Those with less demanding applications or lower budgets might opt for a virtual private server instead like Amazon Lightsail.
These two options represent two ends of the cloud spectrum. EC2 is an enterprise-grade cloud solution with complex pricing models to match. Lightsail is a simplified, managed service with monthly pricing. Azure does not provide a Lightsail equivalent.
But there is a third option in the middle that offers the best of both worlds—all the power and control for a monthly flat fee. This third option is what we’re building here at Qumulus, a private cloud for platform engineering.
So why is a private cloud the best place for an IDP? Consider what an IDP needs to do for the team. It needs to empower developers with self-service access to resources, meaning they have to be able to spin up and shut down environments independently. It needs to provide a standardised set of tools and services to reduce inconsistencies and errors. And it needs to scale with the organisation quickly without breaking the bank.
Let’s see how a Qumulus private cloud would compare to an AWS public cloud on these fronts:
1. Cost
With Qumulus, you get all the resources you need for a predictable monthly fee. This means you’d be able to give your team the freedom to all the resources they need to experiment and be productive without worrying about costs. With AWS, you’ll have to put tight controls and monitoring in place for fear of a developer forgetting to shut down an environment. And as we’ve seen previously, there is no remedy to bill shock.
2. Flexibility and control
Qumulus gives you complete control over your infrastructure, which allows for extensive customisation. This is perfect for IDPs as they can be tailored to support your unique workflows, tools, and integrations specific to your team’s development practices. With AWS, this level of customisation won’t even be possible due to shared resources and standardised offerings.
3. Performance and reliability
Private clouds offer more performance and reliability because they’re not shared with other customers. At Qumulus, we’ve gone a step further to let you choose your components (e.g., AMD Ryzen 7 PRO CPU) so you know exactly what you’re getting. This is particularly important for IDPs that need to support CI/CD processes without interruptions. With a public cloud on AWS, you risk some interference due to the noisy neighbour problem inherent to public cloud.
4. Security and compliance
Although public clouds can be relatively secure if set up properly, nothing beats having your own private cloud to yourself. The physical isolation simply reduces the risk of data breaches and unauthorised access, which is a pretty important factor for IDPs as you’ll be handling arguably your most sensitive data.
As platform engineering gains momentum and IDPs become the norm, it’s beginning to look like IDPs are a killer use case for private clouds. This is true for almost all factors including control, performance, security—and especially cost. Think of all the engineers who have had to shelve their IDP plans simply because the cost was untenable.
If you’d like to try deploying your IDP on Qumulus, please request a trial today.
