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Is using Digital Ocean and administering your own box simpler than using the off the shelf DB/storage options provide db AWS? Surely the AWS options save you d

Is using Digital Ocean and administering your own box simpler than using the off the shelf DB/storage options provide db AWS? Surely the AWS options save you doing all the DBA / Server admin / security work. Albeit for more money but time = money.

lukeschlather 10y ago
I don't think AWS is really simpler unless you have lots of hosts to manage. Maybe if you have 3 hosts AWS might be simpler, for some workloads. Most workloads, probably more like 10, and only if you're scaling out, not maintaining 10 totally different fiddly low-traffic apps.
chimeracoder 10y ago
> Surely the AWS options save you doing all the DBA / Server admin / security work. Albeit for more money but time = money. They do, but you need to invest enough to understand AWS's offerings, and how they fit together. Amazon's documentation is very extensive, I'll give it that - but it takes a while to build enough of a mental model to know how to fit everything together. Generally, managing your own server is closer to the skillset people already have when starting out (unless your training was platform-specific), so starting off with a raw VPS may in fact be quicker, even if in the long term AWS/Google/etc. would save time for someone who's equally experienced in both.
tracker1 10y ago
It would be interesting to see how well the AWS/Azure SaaS offerings for db and other storage work from DO/Linode at various locations... I've thought about running an app or two on DO, but keeping the data in Azure Storage Tables, and possible Azure SQL... or similar AWS services.
- boulos 10y ago
  You would pay a lot for the egress ($.08/GB or so) and it'd be painfully far away. MySQL ends up caching queries quite well for many web apps, so you quickly get into sub-ms territory for it to just return the cached answer. This all goes out the window, even if you're 5ms away (say DO in San Francisco to AWS in Northern California). tl;dr: Don't do it.

lukeschlather 10y ago

I don't think AWS is really simpler unless you have lots of hosts to manage. Maybe if you have 3 hosts AWS might be simpler, for some workloads. Most workloads, probably more like 10, and only if you're scaling out, not maintaining 10 totally different fiddly low-traffic apps.

chimeracoder 10y ago

> Surely the AWS options save you doing all the DBA / Server admin / security work. Albeit for more money but time = money. They do, but you need to invest enough to understand AWS's offerings, and how they fit together. Amazon's documentation is very extensive, I'll give it that - but it takes a while to build enough of a mental model to know how to fit everything together. Generally, managing your own server is closer to the skillset people already have when starting out (unless your training was platform-specific), so starting off with a raw VPS may in fact be quicker, even if in the long term AWS/Google/etc. would save time for someone who's equally experienced in both.

tracker1 10y ago

It would be interesting to see how well the AWS/Azure SaaS offerings for db and other storage work from DO/Linode at various locations... I've thought about running an app or two on DO, but keeping the data in Azure Storage Tables, and possible Azure SQL... or similar AWS services.

boulos 10y ago
You would pay a lot for the egress ($.08/GB or so) and it'd be painfully far away. MySQL ends up caching queries quite well for many web apps, so you quickly get into sub-ms territory for it to just return the cached answer. This all goes out the window, even if you're 5ms away (say DO in San Francisco to AWS in Northern California). tl;dr: Don't do it.