6 ms·

For personal stuff or business? I'm extremely familiar with AWS at the corporate level but I refuse to use it for personal stuff. Not only are the pricing schem

For personal stuff or business? I'm extremely familiar with AWS at the corporate level but I refuse to use it for personal stuff. Not only are the pricing schemes suspect, the results can be surprising. A single front page feature on HN, for example, could suddenly cost you $150,000 because you didn't wade through enough labyrinthine configuration pages to set the right budgets.

movedx 4y ago
So you're saying that if someone buys access to a kitchen, doesn't learn to cook or operate it safely, burns the place down trying to serve 100,000 people, they'll get a big insurance claim made against them and have a $150k bill? You're kidding me? Are you telling me people have to learn to USE these tools if they don't want a nasty surprise? :-P (I'm being tongue-in-cheek cheeky here.) I know you're mostly pushing boundaries with your $150k figure, although at this point it wouldn't surprise me, but AWS is a professional tool aimed at professional engineers. They created Lightsail for "personal stuff." Right tool for the right job, I guess? Although tyou can actually combine the two on a network level (Lightsail and AWS, that is.)
- Dave3of5 4y ago
  Eek what a hot take. He's talking about the pricing model not the way to operate it. AWS bills for egress data. You can't operate it in any different way to stop that.
  - movedx 4y ago
    Sure about that? So if I have static images going through an ALB to the requesting client, I can't operate in another way to reduce those costs? ... you're sure?
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    - ifore 4y ago
      Sure you can front static assets with the free Cloudflare tier... [a] which is fine if you're happy with the inflexibility that free Cloudflare offers. And you live in a country where the free tier doesn't have horrible routing (eg use the Sydney AWS region, put Cloudflare in front of it and then watch your traffic to/from Sydney take a round trip via the US or Singapore) [b] every single AWS service charges egress fees (ie Cloudfront doesn't help at all) [c] this does nothing for non-static assets Am I missing something?
      - movedx 4y ago
        > Am I missing something? No, but you're not the OP above my comment, so my question still stands. > (eg use the Sydney AWS region, put Cloudflare in front of it and then watch your traffic to/from Sydney take a round trip via the US or Singapore) I don't understand? I don't have this issue (I'm in Brisbane; I use ap-southeast-2) > [c] this does nothing for non-static assets Non-static assets are going to be very tiny in most cases, and the problem then becomes about volume. If you've got volume and your business model doesn't suck, then you can afford the rate (my understanding is AWS' network egress charges are gross compared to other vendors.)
    - Dave3of5 4y ago
      Nice strawman. I never said you can't operate more efficiently. Every service on AWS charges egress fees that's my comment. There are other cloud operators that do not. I can safely run some static compute / storage / network at a fixed cost, you can't do this on AWS. If too many people come to my website it won't wipe out my credit card. The site might go offline but I'd rather take that than a huge bill.
      - movedx 4y ago
        > I can safely run some static compute / storage / network at a fixed cost, you can't do this on AWS. No provider on the planet gives you truly unlimited, fixed cost networking throughput. None. AWS provides Lightsail for a fixed cost, static compute, storage, and networking solution. It's a not strawman argument just because you don't understand it.
- sleepyhead 4y ago
  I ended up with a $700 bill for a month with Route 53 due to bogus DNS requests (a normal month would be like $5 or something). And there is nothing a professional engineer could do anything about it - except pay $3000/month for AWS Shield Advanced.
  - movedx 4y ago
    Can you share the gory details so we can learn more about this? It would be interesting to study what happened, in detail. Perhaps there was a misconfiguration?
    - sleepyhead 4y ago
      I made a video about it but it is not published yet. I hope to publish it soon here: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCkc8xf5A7qCQydN6tG0BmmQ https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCkc8xf5A7qCQydN6tG0BmmQ There was no misconfiguration, just millions of DNS requests but not millions of actual users. I was in contact with AWS support multiple times. The only solution was so use AWS Shield Advanced. They did refund most of the charges but it was too risky for me. Even after I moved DNS provider there was DNS requests to the R53 zones. I can highly recommend https://dnsimple.com https://dnsimple.com though.
      - movedx 4y ago
        Yeah, the problem is, dnsimple.com isn't going to NOT charge you for the same thing. They have T&Cs too. I'm guessing AWS refunded close to 100% of fees associated with provable bad DNS requests.
        sleepyhead 4y ago
        Why is it a problem that dnsimple is not going to charge for bogus DNS requests? (or any DNS requests for that matter). AWS did do a refund but it requires me to monitor usage and do some investigation. I really don't want to spend time monitoring DNS requests.
INTPenis 4y ago
I use AWS for personal stuff and it's not labyrinthine at all, I found it very simple to set a budget alert. But more important than that is of course to have a CloudFront cache infront of anything that exposes S3 storage.
- laundermaf 4y ago
  I hope you don't wake up 7 hours after a budget alert because you're in the wrong timezone. Please stop justifying the huge risks AWS knowingly carries. It would be easy to place a hard cap, but they refuse to do so.
  - INTPenis 4y ago
    AWS gives you all the tools you need to shoot your foot off, they also give you all the tools you need to avoid this. I can easily hook up a budget alert to a pushover alert on my phone that is just as likely to wake me up as any alert duty would.
    - laundermaf 4y ago
      Most people don't have alert duty. I don't want alert duty. I want safety and it's extremely easy to provide it.
      - INTPenis 4y ago
        You just said that there's a danger of not waking up to a budget alert, and then you say you don't want alert duty. Make up your mind.

movedx 4y ago

So you're saying that if someone buys access to a kitchen, doesn't learn to cook or operate it safely, burns the place down trying to serve 100,000 people, they'll get a big insurance claim made against them and have a $150k bill? You're kidding me? Are you telling me people have to learn to USE these tools if they don't want a nasty surprise? :-P (I'm being tongue-in-cheek cheeky here.) I know you're mostly pushing boundaries with your $150k figure, although at this point it wouldn't surprise me, but AWS is a professional tool aimed at professional engineers. They created Lightsail for "personal stuff." Right tool for the right job, I guess? Although tyou can actually combine the two on a network level (Lightsail and AWS, that is.)

Dave3of5 4y ago
Eek what a hot take. He's talking about the pricing model not the way to operate it. AWS bills for egress data. You can't operate it in any different way to stop that.
- movedx 4y ago
  Sure about that? So if I have static images going through an ALB to the requesting client, I can't operate in another way to reduce those costs? ... you're sure?
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - ifore 4y ago
    Sure you can front static assets with the free Cloudflare tier... [a] which is fine if you're happy with the inflexibility that free Cloudflare offers. And you live in a country where the free tier doesn't have horrible routing (eg use the Sydney AWS region, put Cloudflare in front of it and then watch your traffic to/from Sydney take a round trip via the US or Singapore) [b] every single AWS service charges egress fees (ie Cloudfront doesn't help at all) [c] this does nothing for non-static assets Am I missing something?
    - movedx 4y ago
      > Am I missing something? No, but you're not the OP above my comment, so my question still stands. > (eg use the Sydney AWS region, put Cloudflare in front of it and then watch your traffic to/from Sydney take a round trip via the US or Singapore) I don't understand? I don't have this issue (I'm in Brisbane; I use ap-southeast-2) > [c] this does nothing for non-static assets Non-static assets are going to be very tiny in most cases, and the problem then becomes about volume. If you've got volume and your business model doesn't suck, then you can afford the rate (my understanding is AWS' network egress charges are gross compared to other vendors.)
  - Dave3of5 4y ago
    Nice strawman. I never said you can't operate more efficiently. Every service on AWS charges egress fees that's my comment. There are other cloud operators that do not. I can safely run some static compute / storage / network at a fixed cost, you can't do this on AWS. If too many people come to my website it won't wipe out my credit card. The site might go offline but I'd rather take that than a huge bill.
    - movedx 4y ago
      > I can safely run some static compute / storage / network at a fixed cost, you can't do this on AWS. No provider on the planet gives you truly unlimited, fixed cost networking throughput. None. AWS provides Lightsail for a fixed cost, static compute, storage, and networking solution. It's a not strawman argument just because you don't understand it.
sleepyhead 4y ago
I ended up with a $700 bill for a month with Route 53 due to bogus DNS requests (a normal month would be like $5 or something). And there is nothing a professional engineer could do anything about it - except pay $3000/month for AWS Shield Advanced.
- movedx 4y ago
  Can you share the gory details so we can learn more about this? It would be interesting to study what happened, in detail. Perhaps there was a misconfiguration?
  - sleepyhead 4y ago
    I made a video about it but it is not published yet. I hope to publish it soon here: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCkc8xf5A7qCQydN6tG0BmmQ https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCkc8xf5A7qCQydN6tG0BmmQ There was no misconfiguration, just millions of DNS requests but not millions of actual users. I was in contact with AWS support multiple times. The only solution was so use AWS Shield Advanced. They did refund most of the charges but it was too risky for me. Even after I moved DNS provider there was DNS requests to the R53 zones. I can highly recommend https://dnsimple.com https://dnsimple.com though.
    - movedx 4y ago
      Yeah, the problem is, dnsimple.com isn't going to NOT charge you for the same thing. They have T&Cs too. I'm guessing AWS refunded close to 100% of fees associated with provable bad DNS requests.
      - sleepyhead 4y ago
        Why is it a problem that dnsimple is not going to charge for bogus DNS requests? (or any DNS requests for that matter). AWS did do a refund but it requires me to monitor usage and do some investigation. I really don't want to spend time monitoring DNS requests.

INTPenis 4y ago

I use AWS for personal stuff and it's not labyrinthine at all, I found it very simple to set a budget alert. But more important than that is of course to have a CloudFront cache infront of anything that exposes S3 storage.

laundermaf 4y ago
I hope you don't wake up 7 hours after a budget alert because you're in the wrong timezone. Please stop justifying the huge risks AWS knowingly carries. It would be easy to place a hard cap, but they refuse to do so.
- INTPenis 4y ago
  AWS gives you all the tools you need to shoot your foot off, they also give you all the tools you need to avoid this. I can easily hook up a budget alert to a pushover alert on my phone that is just as likely to wake me up as any alert duty would.
  - laundermaf 4y ago
    Most people don't have alert duty. I don't want alert duty. I want safety and it's extremely easy to provide it.
    - INTPenis 4y ago
      You just said that there's a danger of not waking up to a budget alert, and then you say you don't want alert duty. Make up your mind.