7 ms·

What alternatives to AWS could save a non trivial amount of money? Especially for RDS? I think we're getting to the point where servers cost quite a bit

ComputerGuru 8y ago
Azure is both comparable to and cheaper than (and subjectively better) AWS.
- chopin 8y ago
  But that's trading lock-in to AWS for lock-in to Microsoft.
  - roman030 8y ago
    Still kind of diversifying
- nostrebored 8y ago
  I've literally never heard this from anyone who's used both at an enterprise level. Personally I recommended azure a few years ago rather than aws for a docker based microservice app but the biggest drawback was the cost. What exactly are you running that's cheaper?
ksec 8y ago
I am hoping DO will up the game in that. [1] I am not sure how big the market is for a only VM + DBaaS, because from my limited scope that is like 90% of what I need. The other 10% I am happy to have DNS, Transitional Emails, Register, CDN all under different companies to avoid putting all eggs in one basket. I do wish there is an UI to integrate all of it though. ( Yes I know that is exactly like Heroku, but I am cheap, Heroku is already much more expensive than AWS, I often wonder what if Heroku runs on top of DO ) [1] https://try.digitalocean.com/dbaas-beta/ https://try.digitalocean.com/dbaas-beta/
snaky 8y ago
https://www.hetzner.com/dedicated-rootserver/px61-nvme https://www.hetzner.com/dedicated-rootserver/px61-nvme Substract VAT from the price, add HDD for WAL, and setup PostgreSQL on a couple of them.
- m_mueller 8y ago
  Don't understand why you're being downvoted. Install Kubernetes and make your own cloud. It really depends on your workload whether that's better than managed cloud services with elastic scaling: * your software has a startup time that takes too long - cannot scale down easily * you have a constant base load with only moderate peaks * you'd rather run other background tasks at times with low load than scaling down - this way you get a bunch of "free" compute power you can use for other things
  - tasubotadas 8y ago
    Installing kunernetes is something you can only suggest if you haven't done yourself. Getting it right is extremely non trivial
    - lmilcin 8y ago
      Having set up couple of clusters myself, professionally, I can say setup is extremely easy relative to the functionality you are getting if you wanted to get it by traditional means (traditional = pre-cloud tech). What is complicated is that this absolutely does not absolve you from having to understand everything that is happening under the hood. If you feel Kubernetes replaces that requirement you are doomed first time a non-trivial issue happens.
    - m_mueller 8y ago
      Could you share some insights on what you think is "extremely non trivial"? In what way is Kubernetes harder than what's to be expected of a technology that orchestrates serverside software? Doesn't this rather depend on the actual services you want to run rather than Kubernetes itself? Obviously it won't reduce complexity of what you want to run, but it makes deployments of it pretty straight forward as far as I can tell.
rbanffy 8y ago
The Google cloud solutions are very competitive in price with the AWS ones.
- mijamo 8y ago
  The lock in is the same though. We are having A LOT of troubles due to lock in with Google Cloud (particularly GAE and Datastore, but also Pub/Sub) and it is really not fun at all...
  - rbanffy 8y ago
    You can always design around that. I know I'm mostly locked in when I deploy a classic GAE application or when I use the datastore (there is AppScale, if you need). If what you are running is a virtualized version of your physical DC infrastructure, you can probably deploy it anywhere with very little trouble.
- agopaul 8y ago
  Google doesn't seem to be serious with their managed DBMS solutions. The PostgreSQL version is still 9.6 even though 11 has been released, whereas AWS already has pg 11 available.
ori_b 8y ago
> Especially for RDS? Run your own servers, instead of paying Amazon to do your system administration. At small sizes, Amazon is a cheap sysadmin. At scale, paying them as sysadmins is expensive.
- mjlee 8y ago
  Even at quite large sizes, RDS is a fantastic product. I think I'd opt to use it even with full time Database Administrators on staff.
- StreamBright 8y ago
  I just moved one of the largest (5+PB) data warehouses of Europe to AWS and we saved 35% of a huge (1M+ / year) budget while increased reliability, availability and security. I am not sure why people think that AWS is expensive. Running on a traditional hosting was a nightmare with constant downtimes because of issues outside of our control. Cooling, networking, security you name it. AWS makes these non-existent or very easy to tackle. For example of networking, there are several teams of network engineers oncall for AWS the handle routing issues etc. and you just get an email about it. With the previous vendor we found about the issue, tried to reach the vendor and we had to convince them that there is an issue and it took them 2 days to recover. I am planning to move to AWS more entreprise clients for saving significant money on IT. AWS is most definitely a competitive option for this.
  - pritambaral 8y ago
    You seem to be talking about EC2, or at least services available with EC2. You parent was talking about RDS and sysadmins who manage Postgres on RDS.
ernsheong 8y ago
Consider if most data in RDS should be in a data warehouse instead. Google’s BigQuery can help offset costs. Not to mention GCP is now a strong contender to AWS’s offerings.

ComputerGuru 8y ago

Azure is both comparable to and cheaper than (and subjectively better) AWS.

chopin 8y ago
But that's trading lock-in to AWS for lock-in to Microsoft.
- roman030 8y ago
  Still kind of diversifying
nostrebored 8y ago
I've literally never heard this from anyone who's used both at an enterprise level. Personally I recommended azure a few years ago rather than aws for a docker based microservice app but the biggest drawback was the cost. What exactly are you running that's cheaper?

ksec 8y ago

I am hoping DO will up the game in that. [1] I am not sure how big the market is for a only VM + DBaaS, because from my limited scope that is like 90% of what I need. The other 10% I am happy to have DNS, Transitional Emails, Register, CDN all under different companies to avoid putting all eggs in one basket. I do wish there is an UI to integrate all of it though. ( Yes I know that is exactly like Heroku, but I am cheap, Heroku is already much more expensive than AWS, I often wonder what if Heroku runs on top of DO ) [1] https://try.digitalocean.com/dbaas-beta/ https://try.digitalocean.com/dbaas-beta/

snaky 8y ago

https://www.hetzner.com/dedicated-rootserver/px61-nvme https://www.hetzner.com/dedicated-rootserver/px61-nvme Substract VAT from the price, add HDD for WAL, and setup PostgreSQL on a couple of them.

m_mueller 8y ago
Don't understand why you're being downvoted. Install Kubernetes and make your own cloud. It really depends on your workload whether that's better than managed cloud services with elastic scaling: * your software has a startup time that takes too long - cannot scale down easily * you have a constant base load with only moderate peaks * you'd rather run other background tasks at times with low load than scaling down - this way you get a bunch of "free" compute power you can use for other things
- tasubotadas 8y ago
  Installing kunernetes is something you can only suggest if you haven't done yourself. Getting it right is extremely non trivial
  - lmilcin 8y ago
    Having set up couple of clusters myself, professionally, I can say setup is extremely easy relative to the functionality you are getting if you wanted to get it by traditional means (traditional = pre-cloud tech). What is complicated is that this absolutely does not absolve you from having to understand everything that is happening under the hood. If you feel Kubernetes replaces that requirement you are doomed first time a non-trivial issue happens.
  - m_mueller 8y ago
    Could you share some insights on what you think is "extremely non trivial"? In what way is Kubernetes harder than what's to be expected of a technology that orchestrates serverside software? Doesn't this rather depend on the actual services you want to run rather than Kubernetes itself? Obviously it won't reduce complexity of what you want to run, but it makes deployments of it pretty straight forward as far as I can tell.

rbanffy 8y ago

The Google cloud solutions are very competitive in price with the AWS ones.

mijamo 8y ago
The lock in is the same though. We are having A LOT of troubles due to lock in with Google Cloud (particularly GAE and Datastore, but also Pub/Sub) and it is really not fun at all...
- rbanffy 8y ago
  You can always design around that. I know I'm mostly locked in when I deploy a classic GAE application or when I use the datastore (there is AppScale, if you need). If what you are running is a virtualized version of your physical DC infrastructure, you can probably deploy it anywhere with very little trouble.
agopaul 8y ago
Google doesn't seem to be serious with their managed DBMS solutions. The PostgreSQL version is still 9.6 even though 11 has been released, whereas AWS already has pg 11 available.

ori_b 8y ago

> Especially for RDS? Run your own servers, instead of paying Amazon to do your system administration. At small sizes, Amazon is a cheap sysadmin. At scale, paying them as sysadmins is expensive.

mjlee 8y ago
Even at quite large sizes, RDS is a fantastic product. I think I'd opt to use it even with full time Database Administrators on staff.
StreamBright 8y ago
I just moved one of the largest (5+PB) data warehouses of Europe to AWS and we saved 35% of a huge (1M+ / year) budget while increased reliability, availability and security. I am not sure why people think that AWS is expensive. Running on a traditional hosting was a nightmare with constant downtimes because of issues outside of our control. Cooling, networking, security you name it. AWS makes these non-existent or very easy to tackle. For example of networking, there are several teams of network engineers oncall for AWS the handle routing issues etc. and you just get an email about it. With the previous vendor we found about the issue, tried to reach the vendor and we had to convince them that there is an issue and it took them 2 days to recover. I am planning to move to AWS more entreprise clients for saving significant money on IT. AWS is most definitely a competitive option for this.
- pritambaral 8y ago
  You seem to be talking about EC2, or at least services available with EC2. You parent was talking about RDS and sysadmins who manage Postgres on RDS.

ernsheong 8y ago

Consider if most data in RDS should be in a data warehouse instead. Google’s BigQuery can help offset costs. Not to mention GCP is now a strong contender to AWS’s offerings.