workers vs self-host
is it more worth it to use workers then just using my already-owned server with 64gb ddr4 and 16 vcpus?
3 Replies
like what are benefits between cloudflare's compute services
vs just self-hosting on my linux machine
Cloudflare is cheap, and scaling easier and for cheaper than you'd be able to do on your own. Edge performance, built in caching, security, and scaling... lots of major benefits. Tad more configuration involved if you want to use CF than your own metal, but well worth the time
I also have a very a very similar local server, here's the points, but basically depends:
Pros:
1- easier to build and maintain,
it's basically much better version of lambda/functions since it's world wide distributed/cached, and, you have access to very useful tools such as r2, queue, key value dbs (both best of its type since it also runs worldwide)
2- it's very cheap and extremely easy to mantain(try hono js), só you can prototype and validate fast, with performance and extreme low latency
Cons:
- you got vender lock-in, (personally, I don't care about host point since it's very cheap)
2- you don't have so many flexibility, you're limited to cloudflare runtime(v8 isolates), but cloudflare are working very well on node/sdks adapters
3- If you work on top of js/TS, you gonna have a very good time, but fort other language's, it's not so already (but you still can run python, go, rust and other)
There's no better choice, if will depends your application scope.
Use case:
I'm building tracking application with timescaledb, so,
,In cloudflare workers(distributed): I run the data collector apis, and low usage endpoints, since workers is distributed to severs next to he client location, the client gonna have the shortest e latency possible, got the data into cf queues and processing in batch's of 10 to the CRUD API
- at server(centralized):
I run the CRUD API and timescale inside my server, since it's built on python, and scale cloudflare containers connecting directly to the database from different sides of the world doesn't make much sense
Again, there are pros and cons, evaluating which is better for you and, cloudflare is definitely worth a try