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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)

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
- heavenlyblue 5y ago
  Hum, I don’t know think you understand what I am saying: If you are out of money, all of your services needs to be destroyed immediately: including all of your database hard disk drives, because every single piece of infrastructure yields some regular cost. It means that it is NOT going to be “a simple unplanned outage”, it’s going to be more akin to formatting your hard drive with all of your family photos on it. Pretty certain AWS just finds it easier to sometimes write off costs rather than implement something so radical that customers may be even less happy afterwards.

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
heavenlyblue 5y ago
Hum, I don’t know think you understand what I am saying: If you are out of money, all of your services needs to be destroyed immediately: including all of your database hard disk drives, because every single piece of infrastructure yields some regular cost. It means that it is NOT going to be “a simple unplanned outage”, it’s going to be more akin to formatting your hard drive with all of your family photos on it. Pretty certain AWS just finds it easier to sometimes write off costs rather than implement something so radical that customers may be even less happy afterwards.