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Have you had AWS tech advisers advise teams in your company to go with this stack? Because I haven't. AWS doesn't have an equally distributed interest in selli

Have you had AWS tech advisers advise teams in your company to go with this stack? Because I haven't. AWS doesn't have an equally distributed interest in selling all of its products. Some AWS products exist because customers need/demand them and others exist because they provide higher margins and tighter lock-in to Amazon: the first type of products are great for customer acquisition, the role of their sales folk is to then convince people using the former to migrate to the latter.

Paul-Craft 3y ago
> Some AWS products exist because customers need/demand them and others exist because they provide higher margins and tighter lock-in to Amazon I'm still trying to figure out which one Aurora and Cognito fall under.
- m_mueller 3y ago
  Aurora is I think pretty simple to move away from, since it's just fully compatible Postgres or Mysql. We even use a local postgres for development purposes against an Aurora solution.
  - Paul-Craft 3y ago
    Nope. AWS makes it dead simple to move from RDS to Aurora by clicking a button. There's no way to move data from Aurora to RDS short of doing a SQL dump and reloading everything that way. I found this out when my previous employer was looking at moving from RDS to Aurora.
    - kerkeslager 3y ago
      > > Aurora is I think pretty simple to move away from, since it's just fully compatible Postgres or Mysql. We even use a local postgres for development purposes against an Aurora solution. > Nope. AWS makes it dead simple to move from RDS to Aurora by clicking a button. There's no way to move data from Aurora to RDS short of doing a SQL dump and reloading everything that way. I found this out when my previous employer was looking at moving from RDS to Aurora. I got a bit of a chuckle out of this. There's no way to move from Aurora to RDS short of... 2 minutes of actual work and a lot of waiting around due to the limitations of the hardware? I get that it's not as easy as a literal button click, but this isn't vendor lock in.
      - tough 3y ago
        What if you have a really big database? Still 2minutes?
        manfre 3y ago
        I'm intentionally ignoring any of the sarcasm in your comment. The time needed for a db dump is always dependent upon the amount of data. This is true regardless of the db software or where it's running.
        Ensorceled 3y ago
        I can't think of any project I've worked on where the main data base could be backed up and restored to a different database in "2 minutes" The sarcasm was warranted.
        re-thc 3y ago
        With SSO multi-account and 2FA, it'd probably take longer than 2 minutes just to authenticate and configure AWS correctly to get started.
        emodendroket 3y ago
        Isn’t the suggestion that the “active work” is very little and most of the time you’re just waiting?
        Ensorceled 3y ago
        Well, the elapsed time is how long I need production to be offline so there are a few more people "just waiting"
        emodendroket 3y ago
        Sure, but you don’t really expect to swap databases with a huge data store without any downtime, do you? I’m not aware of any technology that makes that easy.
    - sverhagen 3y ago
      If you talk about no vendor lock in, and you'd want to take your database then to a competitor, like Google Cloud, Azure, or on-premises, wouldn't you exactly expect to do a SQL dump and reloading everything? To me, the one-click move from RDS to Aurora you describe is a nice shortcut, but it doesn't invalidate that you can still do the former if you wanted to move to the competitor. Vendor lock in seems more that you've architected your application against a system that only exists on AWS, like SQS or S3 (although, I guess, competitors offer compatible APIs for some of those, I'm not entirely read up on the state of things there).
      - tough 3y ago
        Seems a bit of a dark pattern to have shortcut to onboard and not offer the same shortcut to offboard. Just like easy subscribe-online publications that will have you call during 2 hours with a rep pushing you discounts or whatever to cancel such subscription. Just not cool
        chrisweekly 3y ago
        I'd characterize this asymmetry (convenient shortcut IN, standard export OUT) as a predictable, transparent, minor annoyance -- not a "dark pattern" representing deceptive or unethical practices.
        tough 3y ago
        OK. yeah maybe dark pattern was a too strong term for just the annoyance... Just I'd try to stay away from amazon if I could
    - CubsFan1060 3y ago
      This can be done with DMS. https://docs.aws.amazon.com/dms/latest/userguide/CHAP_Introduction.Sources.html https://docs.aws.amazon.com/dms/latest/userguide/CHAP_Introd...
      - Paul-Craft 3y ago
        Huh. I suppose you can. The pricing looks a little opaque though, and the fact that it took 3 hours after I wrote my comment for yours to show up kind of implies it's a bit of an obscure service. I will also mention that the AWS team we were working with on this didn't mention DMS, and, when directly asked, literally told me there was no easy way to do an Aurora -> RDS migration.
        CubsFan1060 3y ago
        Which is weird. This has been around for a few years, and, at least I thought, was a fairly popular service. Previously it wasn't great, but since they started using Logical Replication for Postgres, it's gotten far better than it was in the past.
  - TexanFeller 3y ago
    Aurora significantly modifies the internals of the DBs, particularly the storage layers. It also makes large changes to how memory is used for Postgres. Query plans can be quite different than with the vanilla version. Once you tune and create indexes based on Aurora's characteristics it's going to be a pain to retune for the unmodified version. Aurora also introduces nasty bugs that don't exist on the RDS version such as a memory leak I found was periodically restarting our master. The Postgres team produces highly reliable code, but I don't trust Aurora's hacks on top of it.
    - confiq 3y ago
      thank you! I needed to read this!
jon-wood 3y ago
I've never knowingly had an AWS solutions architect recommend something because it would make AWS more money in the short term. The most frequent advice I've seen from them has been on how to give AWS less money by making use of different features, or changing how particular services are being used.
- baobabKoodaa 3y ago
  You sound very confident in your estimation of other peoples' motivations and skills. Do you imagine AWS solution architects coming to you directly with "you should pay for this service because it makes more money for AWS"? I've done the AWS solutions architect associate level cert and I can tell you first-hand experience that in order to pass the exam you need to memorize a lot of AWS propaganda that was written primarily to optimize AWS profit, not to optimize customer satisfaction. How many of those solution architects take those materials with a grain of salt vs how many of them genuinely believe that crap, I don't know.
Ensorceled 3y ago
I guess it depends on what you mean by "AWS tech advisers" ... I've had two different AWS recommended partners advise us to go to this stack, one of the partners even tried to explain that despite more than doubling in costs we would "make it up in faster development".

Paul-Craft 3y ago

> Some AWS products exist because customers need/demand them and others exist because they provide higher margins and tighter lock-in to Amazon I'm still trying to figure out which one Aurora and Cognito fall under.

m_mueller 3y ago
Aurora is I think pretty simple to move away from, since it's just fully compatible Postgres or Mysql. We even use a local postgres for development purposes against an Aurora solution.
- Paul-Craft 3y ago
  Nope. AWS makes it dead simple to move from RDS to Aurora by clicking a button. There's no way to move data from Aurora to RDS short of doing a SQL dump and reloading everything that way. I found this out when my previous employer was looking at moving from RDS to Aurora.
  - kerkeslager 3y ago
    > > Aurora is I think pretty simple to move away from, since it's just fully compatible Postgres or Mysql. We even use a local postgres for development purposes against an Aurora solution. > Nope. AWS makes it dead simple to move from RDS to Aurora by clicking a button. There's no way to move data from Aurora to RDS short of doing a SQL dump and reloading everything that way. I found this out when my previous employer was looking at moving from RDS to Aurora. I got a bit of a chuckle out of this. There's no way to move from Aurora to RDS short of... 2 minutes of actual work and a lot of waiting around due to the limitations of the hardware? I get that it's not as easy as a literal button click, but this isn't vendor lock in.
    - tough 3y ago
      What if you have a really big database? Still 2minutes?
      - manfre 3y ago
        I'm intentionally ignoring any of the sarcasm in your comment. The time needed for a db dump is always dependent upon the amount of data. This is true regardless of the db software or where it's running.
        Ensorceled 3y ago
        I can't think of any project I've worked on where the main data base could be backed up and restored to a different database in "2 minutes" The sarcasm was warranted.
        re-thc 3y ago
        With SSO multi-account and 2FA, it'd probably take longer than 2 minutes just to authenticate and configure AWS correctly to get started.
        emodendroket 3y ago
        Isn’t the suggestion that the “active work” is very little and most of the time you’re just waiting?
        Ensorceled 3y ago
        Well, the elapsed time is how long I need production to be offline so there are a few more people "just waiting"
        emodendroket 3y ago
        Sure, but you don’t really expect to swap databases with a huge data store without any downtime, do you? I’m not aware of any technology that makes that easy.
  - sverhagen 3y ago
    If you talk about no vendor lock in, and you'd want to take your database then to a competitor, like Google Cloud, Azure, or on-premises, wouldn't you exactly expect to do a SQL dump and reloading everything? To me, the one-click move from RDS to Aurora you describe is a nice shortcut, but it doesn't invalidate that you can still do the former if you wanted to move to the competitor. Vendor lock in seems more that you've architected your application against a system that only exists on AWS, like SQS or S3 (although, I guess, competitors offer compatible APIs for some of those, I'm not entirely read up on the state of things there).
    - tough 3y ago
      Seems a bit of a dark pattern to have shortcut to onboard and not offer the same shortcut to offboard. Just like easy subscribe-online publications that will have you call during 2 hours with a rep pushing you discounts or whatever to cancel such subscription. Just not cool
      - chrisweekly 3y ago
        I'd characterize this asymmetry (convenient shortcut IN, standard export OUT) as a predictable, transparent, minor annoyance -- not a "dark pattern" representing deceptive or unethical practices.
        tough 3y ago
        OK. yeah maybe dark pattern was a too strong term for just the annoyance... Just I'd try to stay away from amazon if I could
  - CubsFan1060 3y ago
    This can be done with DMS. https://docs.aws.amazon.com/dms/latest/userguide/CHAP_Introduction.Sources.html https://docs.aws.amazon.com/dms/latest/userguide/CHAP_Introd...
    - Paul-Craft 3y ago
      Huh. I suppose you can. The pricing looks a little opaque though, and the fact that it took 3 hours after I wrote my comment for yours to show up kind of implies it's a bit of an obscure service. I will also mention that the AWS team we were working with on this didn't mention DMS, and, when directly asked, literally told me there was no easy way to do an Aurora -> RDS migration.
      - CubsFan1060 3y ago
        Which is weird. This has been around for a few years, and, at least I thought, was a fairly popular service. Previously it wasn't great, but since they started using Logical Replication for Postgres, it's gotten far better than it was in the past.
- TexanFeller 3y ago
  Aurora significantly modifies the internals of the DBs, particularly the storage layers. It also makes large changes to how memory is used for Postgres. Query plans can be quite different than with the vanilla version. Once you tune and create indexes based on Aurora's characteristics it's going to be a pain to retune for the unmodified version. Aurora also introduces nasty bugs that don't exist on the RDS version such as a memory leak I found was periodically restarting our master. The Postgres team produces highly reliable code, but I don't trust Aurora's hacks on top of it.
  - confiq 3y ago
    thank you! I needed to read this!

jon-wood 3y ago

I've never knowingly had an AWS solutions architect recommend something because it would make AWS more money in the short term. The most frequent advice I've seen from them has been on how to give AWS less money by making use of different features, or changing how particular services are being used.

baobabKoodaa 3y ago
You sound very confident in your estimation of other peoples' motivations and skills. Do you imagine AWS solution architects coming to you directly with "you should pay for this service because it makes more money for AWS"? I've done the AWS solutions architect associate level cert and I can tell you first-hand experience that in order to pass the exam you need to memorize a lot of AWS propaganda that was written primarily to optimize AWS profit, not to optimize customer satisfaction. How many of those solution architects take those materials with a grain of salt vs how many of them genuinely believe that crap, I don't know.

Ensorceled 3y ago

I guess it depends on what you mean by "AWS tech advisers" ... I've had two different AWS recommended partners advise us to go to this stack, one of the partners even tried to explain that despite more than doubling in costs we would "make it up in faster development".