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First of all, I agree there are gotchas. We have roadmap items that will eliminate this problem in the medium term. I do however disagree that this is any wors

First of all, I agree there are gotchas. We have roadmap items that will eliminate this problem in the medium term. I do however disagree that this is any worse than idle RDS hosts sitting around when you have no traffic, costing you huge sums for a service that is basically `apt-get install mysql-server` on top of EC2.

throwusawayus 5y ago
> RDS hosts sitting around when you have no traffic, costing you huge sums for a service that is basically `apt-get install mysql-server` on top of EC2. rds gives you automatic backups, automatic failover with DNS, easy upgrades, IAM authentication, an API for manipulating your database instances, and more. As ceo it damages your company's credibility when you say it's just `apt-get install mysql-server`. Please do better.
- rdhatt 5y ago
  Strongly agree. There is a huge amount of value in what RDS provides (over DIY EC2). Fellow HN user quinnypig described it succinctly: RDS is a huge win not because of anything intrinsic to what the platform actually is, but because we collectively suck at setting up and managing replication, backups, etc. https://twitter.com/QuinnyPig/status/1173377290815721473 https://twitter.com/QuinnyPig/status/1173377290815721473
vidarh 5y ago
I have built systems for deploying both Mysql and Postgres setups with backups and replication and failover, and while it's simple enough to do, describing RDS as "apt-get install mysql-server" is a gross oversimplification. I'd roll my own again for many reasons, not least because AWS is ridiculously overpriced, but if you're first using EC2 and so already taking the costs of being on AWS I'd recommend people use RDS over rolling their own any day unless they're very familiar with what proper redundancy and backup strategies entails .
btown 5y ago
One of the things about a $29/mo RDS instance, though, is that if you're doing full table scans over a million rows, it's going to grind to a crawl and immediately alert you (not explicitly, but via the performance hit) that you're doing something wrong with indexing. Effectively, it's a hard budget cap, and that's super useful for budget-conscious organizations and individuals. Does PlanetScale have functionality to provide budget alerts? Does it have the ability to speed-throttle calls that would require a budget increase to do effectively without further optimization, which effectively that CPU-capped RDS instance does de facto? In other words, can I tell PlanetScale to cap my usage and throttle query speed if I exceed row scan limits, rather than blocking me entirely or charging my credit card more? If it doesn't yet have those capabilities, then I think it's fair to say it can easily be worse than an idle RDS host sitting around.
pid-1 5y ago
A high but predictable cost is completely different from an unpredictable cost risk wise. Hopefully you are not running a company nor anything that involves risk taking.
- someelephant 5y ago
  he is the CEO lol
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
nhoughto 5y ago
That is wasteful too, but deterministically wasteful. You know exactly how wasteful you are being and how much it will cost.. no surprises.
dexterdog 5y ago
After that comment, I hope you have a CTO who keeps you away from the engineering decisions.
rastignack 5y ago
This limitation prohibits the use of joins until a session parameter like 'set max_logical_reads to xxx' is available.

throwusawayus 5y ago

> RDS hosts sitting around when you have no traffic, costing you huge sums for a service that is basically `apt-get install mysql-server` on top of EC2. rds gives you automatic backups, automatic failover with DNS, easy upgrades, IAM authentication, an API for manipulating your database instances, and more. As ceo it damages your company's credibility when you say it's just `apt-get install mysql-server`. Please do better.

rdhatt 5y ago
Strongly agree. There is a huge amount of value in what RDS provides (over DIY EC2). Fellow HN user quinnypig described it succinctly: RDS is a huge win not because of anything intrinsic to what the platform actually is, but because we collectively suck at setting up and managing replication, backups, etc. https://twitter.com/QuinnyPig/status/1173377290815721473 https://twitter.com/QuinnyPig/status/1173377290815721473

vidarh 5y ago

I have built systems for deploying both Mysql and Postgres setups with backups and replication and failover, and while it's simple enough to do, describing RDS as "apt-get install mysql-server" is a gross oversimplification. I'd roll my own again for many reasons, not least because AWS is ridiculously overpriced, but if you're first using EC2 and so already taking the costs of being on AWS I'd recommend people use RDS over rolling their own any day unless they're very familiar with what proper redundancy and backup strategies entails .

btown 5y ago

One of the things about a $29/mo RDS instance, though, is that if you're doing full table scans over a million rows, it's going to grind to a crawl and immediately alert you (not explicitly, but via the performance hit) that you're doing something wrong with indexing. Effectively, it's a hard budget cap, and that's super useful for budget-conscious organizations and individuals. Does PlanetScale have functionality to provide budget alerts? Does it have the ability to speed-throttle calls that would require a budget increase to do effectively without further optimization, which effectively that CPU-capped RDS instance does de facto? In other words, can I tell PlanetScale to cap my usage and throttle query speed if I exceed row scan limits, rather than blocking me entirely or charging my credit card more? If it doesn't yet have those capabilities, then I think it's fair to say it can easily be worse than an idle RDS host sitting around.

pid-1 5y ago

A high but predictable cost is completely different from an unpredictable cost risk wise. Hopefully you are not running a company nor anything that involves risk taking.

someelephant 5y ago
he is the CEO lol
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]

nhoughto 5y ago

That is wasteful too, but deterministically wasteful. You know exactly how wasteful you are being and how much it will cost.. no surprises.

dexterdog 5y ago

After that comment, I hope you have a CTO who keeps you away from the engineering decisions.

rastignack 5y ago

This limitation prohibits the use of joins until a session parameter like 'set max_logical_reads to xxx' is available.