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It's not bad faith. It's 'providing the resources you signed up for'. Does it mean you have to go into your planning with more consideration as to cost? Yeah.

It's not bad faith. It's 'providing the resources you signed up for'. Does it mean you have to go into your planning with more consideration as to cost? Yeah. But how would you feel if your start-up finally goes viral, you're having your best day ever, and then your app just stops working because someone forgot to remove a hard spend limit? Most people would rather see their app continue running. And what does turning off the lights look like? If your database hits your cost limit, do you stop serving requests? Delete the data? To what extent do you want 'cost protection' for resources you signed up for?

imwillofficial 5y ago
It’s not unreasonable to ask for a mechanism to not be billed thousands unexpectedly. Cloud billing is not easy to understand. I would know, I work for the part of AWS that calculates people’s bills.
- whoknew1122 5y ago
  It's not rocket science, either. I would know, I work for premium support. Every time I see an unexpected bill of thousands of dollars, it's because the customer poorly architected their infrastructure. People seemingly want the freedom of complete control without the responsibility that comes with having that much control.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
nlitened 5y ago
> If your database hits your cost limit, do you stop serving requests? Delete the data? To what extent do you want 'cost protection' for resources you signed up for? Sounds like a reasonable configurable option rather than “you shouldn’t be able to choose at all”.
- eropple 5y ago
  I am sympathetic to the concern about cost overages--I've hit them in AWS before--but given the way that developers and managers think about SaaS products (generally, not just cloud stuff), I tend to think that even if you required them to click three checkboxes and sign their name in blood, the first time you vaporized somebody's production database because they hit their overages and didn't think it would ever happen would be apocalyptic. And the second, and the third. And you're at fault, not the customer, in the public square. By comparison, chasing off "cost conscious" (read: relentlessly cheap--and I note that in my personal life I'm one of these, no shade being thrown here) users is probably better for them overall.
  - whoknew1122 5y ago
    Work in AWS Premium Support. This is 100% how it goes. Take KMS keys for example. You can't outright delete a KMS master key; you have to schedule it for deletion. The shortest period you can schedule for deletion is 7 days (default 30). Once the key is deleted, all encrypted data is orphaned. Guess who gets blamed for deleted keys? HINT: It's not the customer.
    - nlitened 5y ago
      I am sorry, I might be missing something, but I call bullshit. How much does it cost for Amazon to store several bytes that make a key? 5 cents per decade? “Yeah, so uhm, you hit zero, so we deleted all your keys in an irrecoverable way, sorry not sorry” — is not a circuit breaker. Make all services inaccessible to public and store the data safely until customer tops up their balance. That’s how VPSes have worked forever. I don’t argue that “cheapo” clients are worth retaining for AWS, clearly they are not. But this kind of hypocrisy really triggers me. Edit: a helpful person below suggested I misunderstood the parent, and I now I think I did.
      - supaslide 5y ago
        I'm pretty sure they meant that the customer schedules it for deletion and then blames AWS when they can't access their encrypted data.
user3939382 5y ago
Stop serving requests until the finances are rectified, delete the data 30 days after it stops. Final migration out/egress requires a small balance for that purpose. The engineers designing and building these systems are some of the best in the world, this is relatively trivial.
- Daishiman 5y ago
  There is absolutely nothing trivial about this.
  - user3939382 5y ago
    Relatively trivial. In other words compared to the rest of the infrastructure and billing system this is nothing.

imwillofficial 5y ago

It’s not unreasonable to ask for a mechanism to not be billed thousands unexpectedly. Cloud billing is not easy to understand. I would know, I work for the part of AWS that calculates people’s bills.

whoknew1122 5y ago
It's not rocket science, either. I would know, I work for premium support. Every time I see an unexpected bill of thousands of dollars, it's because the customer poorly architected their infrastructure. People seemingly want the freedom of complete control without the responsibility that comes with having that much control.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]

nlitened 5y ago

> If your database hits your cost limit, do you stop serving requests? Delete the data? To what extent do you want 'cost protection' for resources you signed up for? Sounds like a reasonable configurable option rather than “you shouldn’t be able to choose at all”.

eropple 5y ago
I am sympathetic to the concern about cost overages--I've hit them in AWS before--but given the way that developers and managers think about SaaS products (generally, not just cloud stuff), I tend to think that even if you required them to click three checkboxes and sign their name in blood, the first time you vaporized somebody's production database because they hit their overages and didn't think it would ever happen would be apocalyptic. And the second, and the third. And you're at fault, not the customer, in the public square. By comparison, chasing off "cost conscious" (read: relentlessly cheap--and I note that in my personal life I'm one of these, no shade being thrown here) users is probably better for them overall.
- whoknew1122 5y ago
  Work in AWS Premium Support. This is 100% how it goes. Take KMS keys for example. You can't outright delete a KMS master key; you have to schedule it for deletion. The shortest period you can schedule for deletion is 7 days (default 30). Once the key is deleted, all encrypted data is orphaned. Guess who gets blamed for deleted keys? HINT: It's not the customer.
  - nlitened 5y ago
    I am sorry, I might be missing something, but I call bullshit. How much does it cost for Amazon to store several bytes that make a key? 5 cents per decade? “Yeah, so uhm, you hit zero, so we deleted all your keys in an irrecoverable way, sorry not sorry” — is not a circuit breaker. Make all services inaccessible to public and store the data safely until customer tops up their balance. That’s how VPSes have worked forever. I don’t argue that “cheapo” clients are worth retaining for AWS, clearly they are not. But this kind of hypocrisy really triggers me. Edit: a helpful person below suggested I misunderstood the parent, and I now I think I did.
    - supaslide 5y ago
      I'm pretty sure they meant that the customer schedules it for deletion and then blames AWS when they can't access their encrypted data.

user3939382 5y ago

Stop serving requests until the finances are rectified, delete the data 30 days after it stops. Final migration out/egress requires a small balance for that purpose. The engineers designing and building these systems are some of the best in the world, this is relatively trivial.

Daishiman 5y ago
There is absolutely nothing trivial about this.
- user3939382 5y ago
  Relatively trivial. In other words compared to the rest of the infrastructure and billing system this is nothing.