throwaway98158

Happy you, I was in the same situation but I was in the server room daily. Practically every day something went wrong.

Can you explain how can physical hardware concerns be handwaved away?

It's not just about the hardware itself, that's the easiest part.

It's about building and maintaining the electrical/cooling/network infrastructure the servers require. It's about having multiple locations of that in case your building's power or network goes down/there's a flood/somebody steals all your stuff/whatever else.

Or you rent a rack in a colo (or five)... But that's just a step away from going full cloud, you just do a lot of work yourself and get no guarantees and no flexibility. At that point, why not just go full cloud?