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I find all of AWS frustrating. Their interfaces feel like they were designed by an 80s IBM analyst.

tdfirth 6y ago
This made me laugh, thanks. If I'm honest, I do find AWS in general fairly high friction at times but it's way better than renting servers directly I think. It's the only cloud provider I've really worked with to be honest though (other than a few experiments), maybe some others are much better in this regard?
- mattmanser 6y ago
  For me the Azure management portal is frustratingly slow, AWS is at least moderately responsive in comparison. I've not tried the Google stuff for years, but in my experience everything they do is ridiculously overcomplicated. I don't really get where you're coming from on renting servers directly, using AWS is far more expensive if you actually need a server for a while. Though I do admit being able to fire up a server for a couple of hours and then delete it is pretty awesome.
  - tdfirth 6y ago
    I wasn't referring to cost as, yes, it's definitely cheaper to just rent some servers. The operational overhead of provisioning them, configuring them (and so on) is really difficult for a lot of teams though.
StratusBen 6y ago
Time to check out https://vantage.sh/ https://vantage.sh/ :)
- majewsky 6y ago
  It is considered impolite to plug your own stuff without disclosing your relation to it within the same post.
  - StratusBen 6y ago
    ...didn't know that - thanks for the heads up.
    - irgeek 6y ago
      I was just looking at your pricing page and the greyed-out-but-still-ticked items in the comparison lists are very confusing. Being greyed out makes it look like their not included, but there's still a tick, so maybe they're still included but less capable? Or available as an add-on? I can't tell what, exactly, you're trying to convey to potential customers.
ufmace 6y ago
I use them heavily for work. IMO, they're pretty well designed for managing large numbers of servers with sophisticated coordination and management systems. If you just wanna run a single server, it's kind of ridiculously over-complex. IMO, Digital Ocean, Linode, etc have much better workflows for just spin up a single Linux server attached to this DNS and let me set everything up on it.
- teitoklien 6y ago
  Aws also offers that in terms of aws Lightsail It comes with the servers , DNS system , ip management under one interface. I find it more simplistic that Digital Ocean , tbh
cpach 6y ago
Haha! Funny, and there is probably a kernel of truth in there. I’ve been thinking a lot about AWS lately and it definitely seems to me like a modern take on what IBM did in the 80’s.
bamboozled 6y ago
Ultra slow too, logging into the console is one of my least favourite things to do.
dragonwriter 6y ago
> Their interfaces feel like they were designed by an 80s IBM analyst. The purpose of the AWS Console, AFAICT, is: (1) To be used by semi-technical ops and management types, and people doing tutorials, and (2) To drive everyone else as quickly as possible to the APIs/CLIs/SDKs.
- tryauuum 6y ago
  I wonder if that is internal motivation for design as well
vangelis 6y ago
I'm amazed that people use the console for anything other than discovery. Any heavy lifting you want the AWS CLI or CloudFormation.
- EE84M3i 6y ago
  For one offs, it's... Usable. But also it's not really the user's fault because AWS pushes it.
picardo 6y ago
There is some truth to that. They are designed to serve a number of personas in an organization, so if you just need to do one thing or another, they will seem overly complex, but I think you could say the same thing about a cockpit or any interface for a complex system.

This made me laugh, thanks. If I'm honest, I do find AWS in general fairly high friction at times but it's way better than renting servers directly I think. It's the only cloud provider I've really worked with to be honest though (other than a few experiments), maybe some others are much better in this regard?

mattmanser 6y ago
For me the Azure management portal is frustratingly slow, AWS is at least moderately responsive in comparison. I've not tried the Google stuff for years, but in my experience everything they do is ridiculously overcomplicated. I don't really get where you're coming from on renting servers directly, using AWS is far more expensive if you actually need a server for a while. Though I do admit being able to fire up a server for a couple of hours and then delete it is pretty awesome.
- tdfirth 6y ago
  I wasn't referring to cost as, yes, it's definitely cheaper to just rent some servers. The operational overhead of provisioning them, configuring them (and so on) is really difficult for a lot of teams though.

StratusBen 6y ago

Time to check out https://vantage.sh/ https://vantage.sh/ :)

majewsky 6y ago
It is considered impolite to plug your own stuff without disclosing your relation to it within the same post.
- StratusBen 6y ago
  ...didn't know that - thanks for the heads up.
  - irgeek 6y ago
    I was just looking at your pricing page and the greyed-out-but-still-ticked items in the comparison lists are very confusing. Being greyed out makes it look like their not included, but there's still a tick, so maybe they're still included but less capable? Or available as an add-on? I can't tell what, exactly, you're trying to convey to potential customers.

ufmace 6y ago

I use them heavily for work. IMO, they're pretty well designed for managing large numbers of servers with sophisticated coordination and management systems. If you just wanna run a single server, it's kind of ridiculously over-complex. IMO, Digital Ocean, Linode, etc have much better workflows for just spin up a single Linux server attached to this DNS and let me set everything up on it.

teitoklien 6y ago
Aws also offers that in terms of aws Lightsail It comes with the servers , DNS system , ip management under one interface. I find it more simplistic that Digital Ocean , tbh

cpach 6y ago

Haha! Funny, and there is probably a kernel of truth in there. I’ve been thinking a lot about AWS lately and it definitely seems to me like a modern take on what IBM did in the 80’s.

bamboozled 6y ago

Ultra slow too, logging into the console is one of my least favourite things to do.

dragonwriter 6y ago

> Their interfaces feel like they were designed by an 80s IBM analyst. The purpose of the AWS Console, AFAICT, is: (1) To be used by semi-technical ops and management types, and people doing tutorials, and (2) To drive everyone else as quickly as possible to the APIs/CLIs/SDKs.

tryauuum 6y ago
I wonder if that is internal motivation for design as well

vangelis 6y ago

I'm amazed that people use the console for anything other than discovery. Any heavy lifting you want the AWS CLI or CloudFormation.

EE84M3i 6y ago
For one offs, it's... Usable. But also it's not really the user's fault because AWS pushes it.

picardo 6y ago

There is some truth to that. They are designed to serve a number of personas in an organization, so if you just need to do one thing or another, they will seem overly complex, but I think you could say the same thing about a cockpit or any interface for a complex system.