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By not using AWS I have saved thousands. This one simple trick.

by boba7 5y ago

elforce002 5y ago
Preach! AWS is overrated.
cpncrunch 5y ago
Me too. The data transfer costs would be the killer for me (video conferencing).
hughrr 5y ago
Ah yes you're at the fifth level of AWS cost management consciousness. You may have skipped the first four levels. First is the simple test case using something random like Lambda and S3 after dragging through the Whizlabs course. This costs you $5 a month. Second is the migration of something not particularly complicated but a bit meatier which works out cheaper than your capital expenditure coming up so you can write it off without having to fill in a purchase order and argue with accounts again. Third is the overconfident architectural approach of multi-account, multi-AZ with peering all over the shop as recommended in the best practices, certification and architecture documentation. Approving nods all around on delivering this, despite the operational expenditure being slightly higher than predicted on your hacked up and not totally complete Excel spreadsheet for cost management. Fourth is the first bill. This immediately points out your inter-VPC, inter-AZ transit and shitty shared tenancy CPU provision you had to crank up quickly at the last minute, costs more a month than your entire infrastructure capex for 3 years did before you got AWS resulting in sad kitty faces all around and a scramble for a cheaper option while trying not to get fired. This is all while Bezos dances on the flames coming from the dollar bills he's burning in a giant bonfire cackling loudly. Fifth is several months later after being on the job market, eating ramen and searching for a company which "doesn't do any of that cloud stuff". You eventually find a position herding a couple of 1U supermicro boxes with CentOS on them which require the odd disk replacing here and there and some PHP updating without going near Terraform, Jenkins or any of that shit. Your entire infrastructure upgrade is automating your entire job into a few ansible playbooks and spending 6 hours a day inspecting the insides of your eyelids.
- tacker2000 5y ago
  Hilariously true. Yes, AWS has some services that are cheap and not really replaceable, like S3, but once you come near high performance EC2 and RDS and add multi-region in, you’ll really have a bad time. Believe me, Ive been there and in the end had to migrate most of the applications to another provider or host on prem.
  - christophilus 5y ago
    Eh. S3 is easily replaced by Wasabi. And less easily by minio.
    - hughrr 5y ago
      Damn that’s cheap on wasabi. No egress fees! Thanks for pointing this one out.
      - snuxoll 5y ago
        Do note that wasabi is aimed for long-term retention of cold data. There's no egress, but there is a fair usage policy (2x data stored IIRC).
        christophilus 5y ago
        I use it for live data, but I put it behind BunnyCDN. I serve a few terabytes per month using that setup, no problem. Most real world uses that I’m aware of follow the 80/20 rule, meaning you’ll store much more than you serve. And your hot paths are quickly cached by a CDN.
    - GormanFletcher 5y ago
      Wasabi has an important 'gotcha': they charge you for a minimum of 90 days of retention, even if you delete an object seconds after creating it. https://wasabi.com/paygo-pricing-faq/#minimum-storage-duration https://wasabi.com/paygo-pricing-faq/#minimum-storage-durati... That detail isn't mentioned anywhere on their pricing page or cost comparison calculator: https://wasabi.com/cloud-storage-pricing/ https://wasabi.com/cloud-storage-pricing/ I don't find that pricing objectionable on its own, but I'm wary of shopping with a vendor that advertises price as their main selling point, but buries such a potentially costly pricing detail.
tomc1985 5y ago
It's fucking ironic how AWS selling point was how it was more cost-effective than managing your own infra. Yet another classic SV-style rugpull.
- mrweasel 5y ago
  There’s a very subtle difference between “managing” and “operating”. There’s also a rather large jump from paying AWS to manage and hiring a complete operations team. But you are right, running on AWS isn’t cheaper. It can be, but you have to design your software to take advantage of the platform.

By not using AWS I have saved thousands. This one simple trick.

by boba7 5y ago

By not using AWS I have saved thousands. This one simple trick.

elforce002 5y ago

Preach! AWS is overrated.

cpncrunch 5y ago

Me too. The data transfer costs would be the killer for me (video conferencing).

hughrr 5y ago

Ah yes you're at the fifth level of AWS cost management consciousness. You may have skipped the first four levels. First is the simple test case using something random like Lambda and S3 after dragging through the Whizlabs course. This costs you $5 a month. Second is the migration of something not particularly complicated but a bit meatier which works out cheaper than your capital expenditure coming up so you can write it off without having to fill in a purchase order and argue with accounts again. Third is the overconfident architectural approach of multi-account, multi-AZ with peering all over the shop as recommended in the best practices, certification and architecture documentation. Approving nods all around on delivering this, despite the operational expenditure being slightly higher than predicted on your hacked up and not totally complete Excel spreadsheet for cost management. Fourth is the first bill. This immediately points out your inter-VPC, inter-AZ transit and shitty shared tenancy CPU provision you had to crank up quickly at the last minute, costs more a month than your entire infrastructure capex for 3 years did before you got AWS resulting in sad kitty faces all around and a scramble for a cheaper option while trying not to get fired. This is all while Bezos dances on the flames coming from the dollar bills he's burning in a giant bonfire cackling loudly. Fifth is several months later after being on the job market, eating ramen and searching for a company which "doesn't do any of that cloud stuff". You eventually find a position herding a couple of 1U supermicro boxes with CentOS on them which require the odd disk replacing here and there and some PHP updating without going near Terraform, Jenkins or any of that shit. Your entire infrastructure upgrade is automating your entire job into a few ansible playbooks and spending 6 hours a day inspecting the insides of your eyelids.

tacker2000 5y ago
Hilariously true. Yes, AWS has some services that are cheap and not really replaceable, like S3, but once you come near high performance EC2 and RDS and add multi-region in, you’ll really have a bad time. Believe me, Ive been there and in the end had to migrate most of the applications to another provider or host on prem.
- christophilus 5y ago
  Eh. S3 is easily replaced by Wasabi. And less easily by minio.
  - hughrr 5y ago
    Damn that’s cheap on wasabi. No egress fees! Thanks for pointing this one out.
    - snuxoll 5y ago
      Do note that wasabi is aimed for long-term retention of cold data. There's no egress, but there is a fair usage policy (2x data stored IIRC).
      - christophilus 5y ago
        I use it for live data, but I put it behind BunnyCDN. I serve a few terabytes per month using that setup, no problem. Most real world uses that I’m aware of follow the 80/20 rule, meaning you’ll store much more than you serve. And your hot paths are quickly cached by a CDN.
  - GormanFletcher 5y ago
    Wasabi has an important 'gotcha': they charge you for a minimum of 90 days of retention, even if you delete an object seconds after creating it. https://wasabi.com/paygo-pricing-faq/#minimum-storage-duration https://wasabi.com/paygo-pricing-faq/#minimum-storage-durati... That detail isn't mentioned anywhere on their pricing page or cost comparison calculator: https://wasabi.com/cloud-storage-pricing/ https://wasabi.com/cloud-storage-pricing/ I don't find that pricing objectionable on its own, but I'm wary of shopping with a vendor that advertises price as their main selling point, but buries such a potentially costly pricing detail.

tomc1985 5y ago

It's fucking ironic how AWS selling point was how it was more cost-effective than managing your own infra. Yet another classic SV-style rugpull.

mrweasel 5y ago
There’s a very subtle difference between “managing” and “operating”. There’s also a rather large jump from paying AWS to manage and hiring a complete operations team. But you are right, running on AWS isn’t cheaper. It can be, but you have to design your software to take advantage of the platform.