5 ms·

Lambda concurrency wasn't actually increased to 800,000 concurrents. It's a stupid idea that someone would think up after fighting attacks all day.

cperciva 6y ago
Regardless of what you set Lambda concurrency to: Are you seriously invoking Lambdas for every page view?
- JackWritesCode 6y ago
  We are indeed. Neither of us enjoy DevOps so we pay a premium to not have to manage servers. It brings a huge mental health benefit (we are a two person company), we're profitable and our monthly Lambda cost isn't that significant. Honestly, the biggest inefficiency (in terms of cost) is our use of SQS/RDS, which we are ditching soon.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - cperciva 6y ago
    Well, it's your money... I'd be happy to help make this more efficient though (at no charge of course). Offhand I'd say "web server which accumulates data and uploads it to S3 every N requests or M seconds" would probably get you what you need at a tiny fraction of the cost of "lambda which posts to SQS". Create an AMI and toss it at an autoscaling group and you really won't need to worry about scaling issues either.
    - not_kurt_godel 6y ago
      If you were charging, how much would you charge to set up a server that you literally never have to bounce to get it back up?
      - cperciva 6y ago
        That's the wrong approach -- you're going to want to be able to reboot (or replace) servers for security patches if nothing else. But if you're regularly rebooting servers because they stop responding, something has gone very wrong.
    - JackWritesCode 6y ago
      I bet you could set up something way cheaper. And I'm certain you know 10x more than me regarding servers, hardening, configuration, etc. And I'm certain you enjoy servers! For us, the cost works and we have appropriate margin for it. The cost savings aren't worth the extra "we have to monitor these servers" thoughts. Our approach is 100% emotional.
      - cperciva 6y ago
        Whatever works for you. :-) The offer is open if you ever change your mind (e.g. if the cost becomes annoyingly large when you scale up further).
      - iampims 6y ago
        ApiGateway -> kinesis stream -> lambda consumes batch of N page views. You keep the serverless approach you like, and it will cost you a fraction of what you currently spend.
        JackWritesCode 6y ago
        I saw Kinesis stream today with DynamoDB and I will have to review it :)
      - xupybd 6y ago
        I would say this goes beyond emotional. You only have finite resources. You have chosen to spend some money to avoid spending time and effort. That's a very reasonable call. Businesses do this all the time when they hire more staff.
      - gavinray 6y ago
        Hey, in the most non-antagonistic way possible -- do you know who "cperciva" (Colin "Did you win a Putnam? Yes, I did." Percival) is? You might want to take them up on the offer, you don't get an opportunity like that everyday. Absolute legend.
        cperciva 6y ago
    - petercooper 6y ago
      Respect your work and the kind offer you made on this thread, and I broadly agree with your suggestion, but I was intrigued as to what the Lambda costs would be in relation to their account charges and if under normal circumstances using Lambda would be a bad fit here. Fathom has a $34/month plan which handles up to 400k pageviews per month. 400k Lambda invocations is 16 cents, if they're doing it efficiently. Transfer pricing seems negligible also at only ~2KB a request. I'm pleasantly surprised, actually, but of course when someone throws millions of improper requests at you every second.. I guess that's when the game changes ;-)

cperciva 6y ago

Regardless of what you set Lambda concurrency to: Are you seriously invoking Lambdas for every page view?

JackWritesCode 6y ago
We are indeed. Neither of us enjoy DevOps so we pay a premium to not have to manage servers. It brings a huge mental health benefit (we are a two person company), we're profitable and our monthly Lambda cost isn't that significant. Honestly, the biggest inefficiency (in terms of cost) is our use of SQS/RDS, which we are ditching soon.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- cperciva 6y ago
  Well, it's your money... I'd be happy to help make this more efficient though (at no charge of course). Offhand I'd say "web server which accumulates data and uploads it to S3 every N requests or M seconds" would probably get you what you need at a tiny fraction of the cost of "lambda which posts to SQS". Create an AMI and toss it at an autoscaling group and you really won't need to worry about scaling issues either.
  - not_kurt_godel 6y ago
    If you were charging, how much would you charge to set up a server that you literally never have to bounce to get it back up?
    - cperciva 6y ago
      That's the wrong approach -- you're going to want to be able to reboot (or replace) servers for security patches if nothing else. But if you're regularly rebooting servers because they stop responding, something has gone very wrong.
  - JackWritesCode 6y ago
    I bet you could set up something way cheaper. And I'm certain you know 10x more than me regarding servers, hardening, configuration, etc. And I'm certain you enjoy servers! For us, the cost works and we have appropriate margin for it. The cost savings aren't worth the extra "we have to monitor these servers" thoughts. Our approach is 100% emotional.
    - cperciva 6y ago
      Whatever works for you. :-) The offer is open if you ever change your mind (e.g. if the cost becomes annoyingly large when you scale up further).
    - iampims 6y ago
      ApiGateway -> kinesis stream -> lambda consumes batch of N page views. You keep the serverless approach you like, and it will cost you a fraction of what you currently spend.
      - JackWritesCode 6y ago
        I saw Kinesis stream today with DynamoDB and I will have to review it :)
    - xupybd 6y ago
      I would say this goes beyond emotional. You only have finite resources. You have chosen to spend some money to avoid spending time and effort. That's a very reasonable call. Businesses do this all the time when they hire more staff.
    - gavinray 6y ago
      Hey, in the most non-antagonistic way possible -- do you know who "cperciva" (Colin "Did you win a Putnam? Yes, I did." Percival) is? You might want to take them up on the offer, you don't get an opportunity like that everyday. Absolute legend.
      - cperciva 6y ago
  - petercooper 6y ago
    Respect your work and the kind offer you made on this thread, and I broadly agree with your suggestion, but I was intrigued as to what the Lambda costs would be in relation to their account charges and if under normal circumstances using Lambda would be a bad fit here. Fathom has a $34/month plan which handles up to 400k pageviews per month. 400k Lambda invocations is 16 cents, if they're doing it efficiently. Transfer pricing seems negligible also at only ~2KB a request. I'm pleasantly surprised, actually, but of course when someone throws millions of improper requests at you every second.. I guess that's when the game changes ;-)