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neon.tech's offering looks good - the $69 offering. Any reviews?

by aantix 2y ago

brigadier132 2y ago
I've used it, it's one of the only dbs you can use for free. It's extremely easy to get started. The only thing I'm worried about is the bait and switch, the offering is so much better than the alternative that I'm certain there will be a squeeze eventually.
- lysace 2y ago
  I don't understand the business model. I guess the goal is to be acquired by AWS/GCP/Azure etc?
  - brigadier132 2y ago
    It's cheap to have a live db because the compute is detached from storage. This means they can spin up your compute on demand. While the compute is running it's around the same price as aws, gcp, azure, etc but you pay for more storage because it's replicated. One really nice thing about this is that you do not need to shut down the db to upgrade the machine and you get what are essentially free read replicas. I think the business model makes sense, I just think they will eventually raise prices because they can.
    - lysace 2y ago
      1) That's how e.g. RDS is already implemented, right? It's an AWS cash cow. 2) Who is going to use an external (from the perspective of your cloud or internal work load) RDBMS?
      - brigadier132 2y ago
        RDS isn't implemented like that and if you are on AWS you can get neon to be in the same datacenter and even pay via AWS. I don't work for neon, I've just gone pretty deep on all the managed db offerings.
        lysace 2y ago
        (As in "compute is detached from storage", not all of the specifics.) > if you are on AWS you can get neon to be in the same datacenter and even pay via AWS Nice.
      - the_duke 2y ago
        As the title says... Aurora is somewhat implemented like that. RDS just runs regular database servers and provides some nice management automation around it.
  - tristan957 2y ago
    The business model is to sell a Database as a Service, similar to Mongo, DataStax, etc.
ok_dad 2y ago
Isn't the storage kinda expensive? It's $15 per 10 GiB, which is ~10x more expensive than AWS SSD storage and ~100x more than bulk storage with an S3-like service. It's $1500 per TiB, which is a lot of money. I guess it might not be designed for time series data like I am used to collecting, which requires thinking on the TiB scale at the very least. I do appreciate it's Apache 2.0 licensed, so you can run it yourself. I can't complain too much about pricing for what looks to be my dream database that I have always wanted with branching and separated storage and compute.
- adwf 2y ago
  Yeah that storage pricing is a killer. Given Aurora is $0.1/GB, I just wouldn't even consider this.
  - tristan957 2y ago
    Neon is a lot more than just storage. It's branching, autoscaling, (cheap) read replicas, serverless computing, etc. If you only care about storage pricing, Neon is not the service for you. As you've said, storage pricing is cheaper elsewhere.
    - adwf 2y ago
      Sure, but I've got serverless computing with Aurora v2. I've got upto 15 read replicas, blue/green deployments, upto 128 cores per replica at a cheaper price... I'm just not really thinking that a bit of branching will make up for a 10x or more increase in cost. Those increased storage costs make the decoupled compute and the associated auto-scaling benefits almost irrelevant as far as the overall cost picture goes.
      - tristan957 2y ago
        We have former Aurora users come to Neon who tell us they saved money by switching. If someone like yourself were to migrate, they definitely would be an enterprise sale, which has different pricing than what is available in our current tiers.

neon.tech's offering looks good - the $69 offering. Any reviews?

by aantix 2y ago

neon.tech's offering looks good - the $69 offering. Any reviews?

I've used it, it's one of the only dbs you can use for free. It's extremely easy to get started. The only thing I'm worried about is the bait and switch, the offering is so much better than the alternative that I'm certain there will be a squeeze eventually.

lysace 2y ago
I don't understand the business model. I guess the goal is to be acquired by AWS/GCP/Azure etc?
- brigadier132 2y ago
  It's cheap to have a live db because the compute is detached from storage. This means they can spin up your compute on demand. While the compute is running it's around the same price as aws, gcp, azure, etc but you pay for more storage because it's replicated. One really nice thing about this is that you do not need to shut down the db to upgrade the machine and you get what are essentially free read replicas. I think the business model makes sense, I just think they will eventually raise prices because they can.
  - lysace 2y ago
    1) That's how e.g. RDS is already implemented, right? It's an AWS cash cow. 2) Who is going to use an external (from the perspective of your cloud or internal work load) RDBMS?
    - brigadier132 2y ago
      RDS isn't implemented like that and if you are on AWS you can get neon to be in the same datacenter and even pay via AWS. I don't work for neon, I've just gone pretty deep on all the managed db offerings.
      - lysace 2y ago
        (As in "compute is detached from storage", not all of the specifics.) > if you are on AWS you can get neon to be in the same datacenter and even pay via AWS Nice.
    - the_duke 2y ago
      As the title says... Aurora is somewhat implemented like that. RDS just runs regular database servers and provides some nice management automation around it.
- tristan957 2y ago
  The business model is to sell a Database as a Service, similar to Mongo, DataStax, etc.

ok_dad 2y ago

Isn't the storage kinda expensive? It's $15 per 10 GiB, which is ~10x more expensive than AWS SSD storage and ~100x more than bulk storage with an S3-like service. It's $1500 per TiB, which is a lot of money. I guess it might not be designed for time series data like I am used to collecting, which requires thinking on the TiB scale at the very least. I do appreciate it's Apache 2.0 licensed, so you can run it yourself. I can't complain too much about pricing for what looks to be my dream database that I have always wanted with branching and separated storage and compute.

adwf 2y ago
Yeah that storage pricing is a killer. Given Aurora is $0.1/GB, I just wouldn't even consider this.
- tristan957 2y ago
  Neon is a lot more than just storage. It's branching, autoscaling, (cheap) read replicas, serverless computing, etc. If you only care about storage pricing, Neon is not the service for you. As you've said, storage pricing is cheaper elsewhere.
  - adwf 2y ago
    Sure, but I've got serverless computing with Aurora v2. I've got upto 15 read replicas, blue/green deployments, upto 128 cores per replica at a cheaper price... I'm just not really thinking that a bit of branching will make up for a 10x or more increase in cost. Those increased storage costs make the decoupled compute and the associated auto-scaling benefits almost irrelevant as far as the overall cost picture goes.
    - tristan957 2y ago
      We have former Aurora users come to Neon who tell us they saved money by switching. If someone like yourself were to migrate, they definitely would be an enterprise sale, which has different pricing than what is available in our current tiers.