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There are consultancies whose entire expertise and premise are advising on AWS billing to companies who already know AWS, so the idea that a newbie should be aw

by danjac 5y ago

There are consultancies whose entire expertise and premise are advising on AWS billing to companies who already know AWS, so the idea that a newbie should be aware of whatever magical incantation to limit their spend is ludicrous.

laumars 5y ago
That’s not entirely fair. While I’m not going to defend the complexity of billing in enterprise cloud services it’s also not really that hard to set an billing alert in CloudWatch and track spend in Cost Explorer. Sure it requires a little bit of AWS knowledge but you shouldn’t really be using enterprise services like AWS (over other more accessible services like Digital Oceans) if you’re not willing to spend the time learning it; and at an individual level it’s very manageable. The reason those consultancy firms exist is because billing scales terribly. Once you’re a business using AWS you’d likely have a multitude of projects running across a multitude of departments which need to be billed to a multitude of different customers and internet cost centres. This all needs to be processed by an internal 3rd party financial system managed by non-technical people who wont even know what AWS stands for let alone what it does and how it works. In those situations the problem of billing becomes exponentially more difficult than a one person hobby project.
- danjac 5y ago
  > and at an individual level it’s very manageable And yet, we have horror stories of students and even experts being hit by surprise AWS bills. Although I agree about usage - I never go anywhere near AWS unless someone else is paying for it.
  - laumars 5y ago
    > > and at an individual level it’s very manageable > And yet, we have horror stories of students and even experts being hit by surprise AWS bills. They obviously didn’t bother to manage it. But that doesn’t mean it’s not manageable. It takes all of 5 minutes to set up a budget alarm on CloudWatch. It was one of the first things I looked into doing when I set up my own AWS account years ago specifically because I didn’t know what I was doing back then and thus didn’t want any surprises. If I managed it then, then I find it hard to believe others cannot too.
- a5aAqU 5y ago
  > it’s also not really that hard to set an billing alert in CloudWatch and track spend in Cost Explorer Billing alerts aren't good enough. Consider a scenario where you're consulting on someone else's small- or medium-sized project and your bug costs the client a huge amount of money in the middle of the night. Now who pays? Say goodbye to your paycheck or reputation, even though it should have been preventable. Another scenario: you launch a startup, and a bug empties the bank account and kills the company. If the solution is to just not use things like AWS and GCP (including Firebase, which has no billing cap) when you're getting started, why are they advertised that way?
  - heavenlyblue 5y ago
    I think the issue with billing is the same issue you get with OOMs - which services should go down first if we’re out of money? In practice “OOM” (Out Of Money) is even worse than OOM because with Out Of Memory you are just above the available memory threshold, but with Out Of Money you are literally at 0 capacity which means every single service needs to be killed.
    - Spooky23 5y ago
      The customer should be able to decide. I’ve built solutions for customers who would prefer an unplanned outage over an unplanned $250k expenditure. Many customers think that I’m a dinosaur for saying it, but if there’s a 2-5 year expected lifetime for something, it’s almost always more cost efficient to use traditional colo or VPS. Also, operationally it’s possible to have something more than all or nothing. Big companies usually have “Tier-0” services that must be up all costs. AWS is no stranger to complexity - this type of function doesn’t exist because it would cost them money. They probably make 9-figure money from obviously idle services.
      - laumars 5y ago
        If you want your spend to be capped then there’s nothing stopping you from setting a CloudWatch alarm at a budgeted threshold that then scales down your infra. AWS is like Lego. You’re supposed to build on it to create the behaviour you want

by danjac 5y ago

laumars 5y ago

That’s not entirely fair. While I’m not going to defend the complexity of billing in enterprise cloud services it’s also not really that hard to set an billing alert in CloudWatch and track spend in Cost Explorer. Sure it requires a little bit of AWS knowledge but you shouldn’t really be using enterprise services like AWS (over other more accessible services like Digital Oceans) if you’re not willing to spend the time learning it; and at an individual level it’s very manageable. The reason those consultancy firms exist is because billing scales terribly. Once you’re a business using AWS you’d likely have a multitude of projects running across a multitude of departments which need to be billed to a multitude of different customers and internet cost centres. This all needs to be processed by an internal 3rd party financial system managed by non-technical people who wont even know what AWS stands for let alone what it does and how it works. In those situations the problem of billing becomes exponentially more difficult than a one person hobby project.

danjac 5y ago
> and at an individual level it’s very manageable And yet, we have horror stories of students and even experts being hit by surprise AWS bills. Although I agree about usage - I never go anywhere near AWS unless someone else is paying for it.
- laumars 5y ago
  > > and at an individual level it’s very manageable > And yet, we have horror stories of students and even experts being hit by surprise AWS bills. They obviously didn’t bother to manage it. But that doesn’t mean it’s not manageable. It takes all of 5 minutes to set up a budget alarm on CloudWatch. It was one of the first things I looked into doing when I set up my own AWS account years ago specifically because I didn’t know what I was doing back then and thus didn’t want any surprises. If I managed it then, then I find it hard to believe others cannot too.
a5aAqU 5y ago
> it’s also not really that hard to set an billing alert in CloudWatch and track spend in Cost Explorer Billing alerts aren't good enough. Consider a scenario where you're consulting on someone else's small- or medium-sized project and your bug costs the client a huge amount of money in the middle of the night. Now who pays? Say goodbye to your paycheck or reputation, even though it should have been preventable. Another scenario: you launch a startup, and a bug empties the bank account and kills the company. If the solution is to just not use things like AWS and GCP (including Firebase, which has no billing cap) when you're getting started, why are they advertised that way?
- heavenlyblue 5y ago
  I think the issue with billing is the same issue you get with OOMs - which services should go down first if we’re out of money? In practice “OOM” (Out Of Money) is even worse than OOM because with Out Of Memory you are just above the available memory threshold, but with Out Of Money you are literally at 0 capacity which means every single service needs to be killed.
  - Spooky23 5y ago
    The customer should be able to decide. I’ve built solutions for customers who would prefer an unplanned outage over an unplanned $250k expenditure. Many customers think that I’m a dinosaur for saying it, but if there’s a 2-5 year expected lifetime for something, it’s almost always more cost efficient to use traditional colo or VPS. Also, operationally it’s possible to have something more than all or nothing. Big companies usually have “Tier-0” services that must be up all costs. AWS is no stranger to complexity - this type of function doesn’t exist because it would cost them money. They probably make 9-figure money from obviously idle services.
    - laumars 5y ago
      If you want your spend to be capped then there’s nothing stopping you from setting a CloudWatch alarm at a budgeted threshold that then scales down your infra. AWS is like Lego. You’re supposed to build on it to create the behaviour you want