> Sure, it’s a piece of cake for sysadmins or an AWS solutions architect, but it makes me wonder how many fragile instances there are out there that have grown

> Sure, it’s a piece of cake for sysadmins or an AWS solutions architect, but it makes me wonder how many fragile instances there are out there that have grown fast but could also fail fast. The way I read the post showcased how easy it was for the AWS SA to make insane billing mistakes with unneeded things like CloudWatch. They also hide the cost of EC2 because there's no charge for that instance type until 2023. This isn't a positive advertisement for AWS in my mind. This is in line with experience I've had with former AWS consumers I've converted over to DigitalOcean in 2022. I saved those conversions, on average, 70% of their prior AWS bill - with no loss of functionality. AWS has spun out of control with the nickel and dime aspect to billing. I can't say I'd recommend it to small or very large clients unless you have money to burn. At the end of the day "traditional" architectures on AWS are not cost effective without excessive oversight of choices.