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I don't see the benefits over a 5$ VPS. Even admitting I'll save a few cents over a VPS (which is absolutely not guaranteed), the cost saving is so minimal I wo

I don't see the benefits over a 5$ VPS. Even admitting I'll save a few cents over a VPS (which is absolutely not guaranteed), the cost saving is so minimal I won't bother rewriting everything under the serverless paradigm just for it. Of course if your cloud doesn't cost an eye and an arm. I can understand people excited to save on expensive Aws instances but maybe you should just consider dumping Aws. Scale doesn't matter for mini applications and scaling vertically (=throw money for a bigger server) will work for 99% of the companies. The 1% who need horizontal scaling will have custom everything regardless and will need to hire experts, not a good niche to release a product.

jeroenhd 4y ago
I do. There are real benefits to using a hosted server for large projects (think hundreds of gigabytes to terabytes of data) because getting sharding, fallbacks, and downtimeless maintenance right is difficult, risky, and expensive. These are reasons why one might go for a hosted database at AWS/GCE/Azure. There are tons of good servers out there for small to medium projects and I don't think this service is right for those, unless they can make do with the free tier. The real benefit is in the larger cloud application space. A system that does this type of scaling automatically while also reducing the dependency on a single cloud provider's service can be a gamechanger for some companies with huge database servers that risk getting locked in. I think using this service for most existing applications will introduce a performance drop, a rise in expenses, and a complicated migration path, but on the other hand I think that developing against this system for new projects that are very likely to grow in scale will end up with some major data control benefits. The open source nature also allows for competitors in markets like the EU to start serving databases that don't break privacy laws (although most companies don't care until they receive a fine). I'm not sure how this company will become profitable while giving away its special sauce that can be modified to run at competing companies relatively easily, but that's a whole different story.

jeroenhd 4y ago

I do. There are real benefits to using a hosted server for large projects (think hundreds of gigabytes to terabytes of data) because getting sharding, fallbacks, and downtimeless maintenance right is difficult, risky, and expensive. These are reasons why one might go for a hosted database at AWS/GCE/Azure. There are tons of good servers out there for small to medium projects and I don't think this service is right for those, unless they can make do with the free tier. The real benefit is in the larger cloud application space. A system that does this type of scaling automatically while also reducing the dependency on a single cloud provider's service can be a gamechanger for some companies with huge database servers that risk getting locked in. I think using this service for most existing applications will introduce a performance drop, a rise in expenses, and a complicated migration path, but on the other hand I think that developing against this system for new projects that are very likely to grow in scale will end up with some major data control benefits. The open source nature also allows for competitors in markets like the EU to start serving databases that don't break privacy laws (although most companies don't care until they receive a fine). I'm not sure how this company will become profitable while giving away its special sauce that can be modified to run at competing companies relatively easily, but that's a whole different story.