5 ms·

Maybe they should let you bypass the quota system if you pay in advance via bank transfer then?

by Negitivefrags 3y ago

andrewstuart 3y ago
You'd think my > 10 year old AWS account with usage history would be enough, but apparently not.
- ecnahc515 3y ago
  Devil's advocate: 10 year old accounts are probably just as likely as any to get hacked into and used for crypto mining, and honestly I bet a majority of their customers don't even use GPU instances.
  - ericpauley 3y ago
    Yep, Amazon's threat model has less to do with how reputable a given account is, since credential theft is rampant. Even at massive institutional customers on POs I've had to apply for quotas.
  - angus-prune 3y ago
    One could argue that older accounts are even more likely to get hacked, as they are more likely to have older passwords that are weaker that may have been leaked along the way, along with various other accumulated security issues (leaked API keys, out of date 2FA choices etc).
derefr 3y ago
There are a lot of systems and features that are hard (impossible?) to design in a way where you can predict (every dimension of) spend; you can only react to spend events. For example, a theoretical "prepaid AWS" might allow you to put a hold on a vCPU-month of account credits to start a 1vCPU instance. But what about the bandwidth egress fees when someone makes requests to said instance? Those are going to be completely variable, depending on how much traffic the instance receives.
- 0cf8612b2e1e 3y ago
  Yeah, but there are plenty of organizations which have very modest or predictable loads that would be significantly well served by knowing that the monthly spend was capped at $X prepaid. As a nobody, I want to use AWS, but I refuse to have the unlimited liability in case I screw up something and wake up to a $30k bill. Hell, they could even over-charge me on the credits, and I would gladly take that deal if I knew that once the kitty ran dry, services would stop. Would there be edge cases and complications to resolve (eg what about storage?). Sure, but AWS pays some smart people a lot of money to figure out tricky things.
  - scarface74 3y ago
    I work at AWS in Professional Services of course all opinions are my own. The answer for you is LightSail. LightSail is a standard VPS. But if you want to upgrade to “real AWS” later on, you can. The only thing that I’m aware of that could cause bills to go up is egress over your allowance. To be honest with you, I would be slightly afraid of screwing up and having an unexpected bill from AWS if I were doing a personal project and I do this for a living. There have been plenty of times where I left something expensive running or provisioned an expensive service (Kendra) and forgot to shut it down until I ended up on a list of “people with the highest spend” on our internal system on one of my non production accounts.
    - usr1106 3y ago
      If AWS truly cared about customers they would implement spending limits. Note the plural: Customers don't want their S3 data deleted because some GPU stuff went crazy. But AWS prefers profit.
      - scarface74 3y ago
        How would that actually work? When you reach your spending limit, delete your data from S3 that you’re being charged for? Stop allowing egress traffic? Stop allowing any API calls that cost money? Stop your EC2 instance? AWS has over 200 services. How would you implement that conceptually? I know it’s a real concern when learning AWS for most people. I first learned AWS technologies at a 60 person company where I had admin access from day one to the AWS account and then went to AWS where I can open as many accounts as I want for learning. So I haven’t had to deal with that issue. But what better way would you suggest than LightSail where you have known costs up front?

Maybe they should let you bypass the quota system if you pay in advance via bank transfer then?

andrewstuart 3y ago

You'd think my > 10 year old AWS account with usage history would be enough, but apparently not.

ecnahc515 3y ago
Devil's advocate: 10 year old accounts are probably just as likely as any to get hacked into and used for crypto mining, and honestly I bet a majority of their customers don't even use GPU instances.
- ericpauley 3y ago
  Yep, Amazon's threat model has less to do with how reputable a given account is, since credential theft is rampant. Even at massive institutional customers on POs I've had to apply for quotas.
- angus-prune 3y ago
  One could argue that older accounts are even more likely to get hacked, as they are more likely to have older passwords that are weaker that may have been leaked along the way, along with various other accumulated security issues (leaked API keys, out of date 2FA choices etc).

derefr 3y ago

There are a lot of systems and features that are hard (impossible?) to design in a way where you can predict (every dimension of) spend; you can only react to spend events. For example, a theoretical "prepaid AWS" might allow you to put a hold on a vCPU-month of account credits to start a 1vCPU instance. But what about the bandwidth egress fees when someone makes requests to said instance? Those are going to be completely variable, depending on how much traffic the instance receives.

0cf8612b2e1e 3y ago
Yeah, but there are plenty of organizations which have very modest or predictable loads that would be significantly well served by knowing that the monthly spend was capped at $X prepaid. As a nobody, I want to use AWS, but I refuse to have the unlimited liability in case I screw up something and wake up to a $30k bill. Hell, they could even over-charge me on the credits, and I would gladly take that deal if I knew that once the kitty ran dry, services would stop. Would there be edge cases and complications to resolve (eg what about storage?). Sure, but AWS pays some smart people a lot of money to figure out tricky things.
- scarface74 3y ago
  I work at AWS in Professional Services of course all opinions are my own. The answer for you is LightSail. LightSail is a standard VPS. But if you want to upgrade to “real AWS” later on, you can. The only thing that I’m aware of that could cause bills to go up is egress over your allowance. To be honest with you, I would be slightly afraid of screwing up and having an unexpected bill from AWS if I were doing a personal project and I do this for a living. There have been plenty of times where I left something expensive running or provisioned an expensive service (Kendra) and forgot to shut it down until I ended up on a list of “people with the highest spend” on our internal system on one of my non production accounts.
  - usr1106 3y ago
    If AWS truly cared about customers they would implement spending limits. Note the plural: Customers don't want their S3 data deleted because some GPU stuff went crazy. But AWS prefers profit.
    - scarface74 3y ago
      How would that actually work? When you reach your spending limit, delete your data from S3 that you’re being charged for? Stop allowing egress traffic? Stop allowing any API calls that cost money? Stop your EC2 instance? AWS has over 200 services. How would you implement that conceptually? I know it’s a real concern when learning AWS for most people. I first learned AWS technologies at a 60 person company where I had admin access from day one to the AWS account and then went to AWS where I can open as many accounts as I want for learning. So I haven’t had to deal with that issue. But what better way would you suggest than LightSail where you have known costs up front?