These days we have more meta-software than software. Instead of Apache with virtualhosts, we have a VM running Docker instances, each with an nginx of its own, all connected by a separate Docker of nginx acting as a proxy.

How much waste is there from all this meta-software?

In reality, I host more on Raspberry Pis with USB SSDs than some people host on hundred-plus watt Dells.

At the same time, people constantly compare colo and hardware costs with the cost per month of cloud and say cloud is "cheaper". I don't even bother to point out the broken thinking that leads to that. In reality, we can ignore gatekeepers and run things out of our homes, using VPSes for public IPs when our home ISPs won't allow certain services, and we can still have excellent uptimes, often better than cloud uptimes.

Yes, we can consolidate many, many services in to one machine because most services aren't resource heavy constantly.

Two machines on two different home ISP networks backing each other up can offer greater aggregate uptime than a single "enterprise" (a misnomer, if you ask me, if you're talking about most x86 vendors) server in colo. A single five minute reboot of a Dell a year drops uptime from 100% to 99.999%.

Cloud is such bullshit that it's exhausting even just engaging with people who "but what if" everything, showing they've never even thought about it for more than a minute themselves.