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Yep. I'm a novice at AWS. Last year I heard about RDS, and tried playing around with it. I thought I had shut it down because I clicked some button that looked

Yep. I'm a novice at AWS. Last year I heard about RDS, and tried playing around with it. I thought I had shut it down because I clicked some button that looked like it was the turn-off button. I let it go on for a few months, only to discover that I had been charged $1,500. The one thing that really pissed me off was how easy it was to set up vs how hard it was to take it back down. I can't remember the details, but basically you cannot simply turn off an RDS instance only in the UI (even though you can turn it on in the UI). You have to install the SDK and perform some (seemingly complex) commands. I tried explaining that I was a beginner, and that I made this mistake by accident, and that they could easily see that I had not actually used this instance at all or even put any data into the DB. But they wanted this huge list of things from me in order to refund it, like a super in-depth explanation of how it happened. Really shitty experience overall. So I canceled my AWS account and likely won't go back until I have a job that pays me to learn and use it.

scrose 5y ago
You can ‘Stop’ a DB and ‘Terminate’ a DB through the UI. If you have deletion protection turned on, you can only stop the DB until it’s turned off, which can also be done through the UI. You most likely stopped the DB, but the problem there is that AWS will automatically turn on the DB after 7 days. You also still get charged for storage for the time your DB is off. Sorry to hear that though. I know it’s a really sucky situation to be in.
- tenaciousDaniel 5y ago
  Ah yeah, I remember now. You could turn off the DB, but there was some other kind of scaffolding thing that I was still getting charged for. It seemed like an RDS-specific thing. They had to point me to a tutorial for turning that piece off.
  - geoduck14 5y ago
    >You could turn off the DB, but there was some other kind of scaffolding thing that I was still getting charged for. It is a feature! /s
Galanwe 5y ago
> I let it go on for a few months, only to discover that I had been charged $1,500. You get billed monthly, so really, letting it go for a few months is on you. > The one thing that really pissed me off was how easy it was to set up vs how hard it was to take it back down > You have to install the SDK and perform some (seemingly complex) commands. Hu, no it's not. Really it's litterally one click to shutdown an RDS instance, and always has been. > But they wanted this huge list of things from me in order to refund it, like a super in-depth explanation of how it happened. I mean that makes sense to me. They did reserve and partially used these resources for you, so it's only fair that you have to go through the trouble of explaining why they would let it go. If there's no downside everyone would just reserve a bunch of resources all the time. From your comment, it seems you didn't even bothered to answer their questions to get a refund, I would totally not hesitate to charge you if I was in AWS place.
- leeoniya 5y ago
  > You get billed monthly, so really, letting it go for a few months is on you. right? what a moron, that bill could have been a surprise of only $500! /s
  - tenaciousDaniel 5y ago
    lol exactly. I've discussed this incident before on HN and had the same kind of "well tough luck but you deserved it" responses. They seem not to understand how off-putting it is to newcomers or students, to basically say "hey well YOU made a mistake, the trillion-dollar corporation SHOULD take your money, idiot!"
    - geoduck14 5y ago
      >I've discussed this incident before on HN and had the same kind of "well tough luck but you deserved it" responses. Brush it off. I've worked with AWS pros who get lost in the billing. In my last job, we had a big "hackathon" where the objective was to reduce our AWS spend. Overall, we reduced our annual bill by a couple million dollars.
- 5y ago

scrose 5y ago

You can ‘Stop’ a DB and ‘Terminate’ a DB through the UI. If you have deletion protection turned on, you can only stop the DB until it’s turned off, which can also be done through the UI. You most likely stopped the DB, but the problem there is that AWS will automatically turn on the DB after 7 days. You also still get charged for storage for the time your DB is off. Sorry to hear that though. I know it’s a really sucky situation to be in.

tenaciousDaniel 5y ago
Ah yeah, I remember now. You could turn off the DB, but there was some other kind of scaffolding thing that I was still getting charged for. It seemed like an RDS-specific thing. They had to point me to a tutorial for turning that piece off.
- geoduck14 5y ago
  >You could turn off the DB, but there was some other kind of scaffolding thing that I was still getting charged for. It is a feature! /s

Galanwe 5y ago

> I let it go on for a few months, only to discover that I had been charged $1,500. You get billed monthly, so really, letting it go for a few months is on you. > The one thing that really pissed me off was how easy it was to set up vs how hard it was to take it back down > You have to install the SDK and perform some (seemingly complex) commands. Hu, no it's not. Really it's litterally one click to shutdown an RDS instance, and always has been. > But they wanted this huge list of things from me in order to refund it, like a super in-depth explanation of how it happened. I mean that makes sense to me. They did reserve and partially used these resources for you, so it's only fair that you have to go through the trouble of explaining why they would let it go. If there's no downside everyone would just reserve a bunch of resources all the time. From your comment, it seems you didn't even bothered to answer their questions to get a refund, I would totally not hesitate to charge you if I was in AWS place.

leeoniya 5y ago
> You get billed monthly, so really, letting it go for a few months is on you. right? what a moron, that bill could have been a surprise of only $500! /s
- tenaciousDaniel 5y ago
  lol exactly. I've discussed this incident before on HN and had the same kind of "well tough luck but you deserved it" responses. They seem not to understand how off-putting it is to newcomers or students, to basically say "hey well YOU made a mistake, the trillion-dollar corporation SHOULD take your money, idiot!"
  - geoduck14 5y ago
    >I've discussed this incident before on HN and had the same kind of "well tough luck but you deserved it" responses. Brush it off. I've worked with AWS pros who get lost in the billing. In my last job, we had a big "hackathon" where the objective was to reduce our AWS spend. Overall, we reduced our annual bill by a couple million dollars.
5y ago