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That sounds to my self-hoster ears as an expensive way to do self hosting. Isn't at least half the point of AWS to use their SaaS thingies that all integrate wi

by lucb1e 2y ago

That sounds to my self-hoster ears as an expensive way to do self hosting. Isn't at least half the point of AWS to use their SaaS thingies that all integrate with each other, I think people now call it "cloud native software"? Not that most of our customers whose AWS environment we audit do much of this, at least not beyond some basics like creating a vlan ("virtual private cloud"), three layers of proxies to "load balance" a traffic volume that my old laptop could handle without moving the load average above 0.2, and some super complex authentication/IAM rules for a handful of roles and service accounts iirc (The other half of the point is infinite scale, so that you can get infinite customers signing up and using the system at once (which hopefully pay before your infinite AWS bill is due), but you can still do that with VPSes and managed databases/storage.)

tsimionescu 2y ago
The point of moving to AWS is often to benefit from their data centers and reliability promises. So VPC, EC2, IAM, maybe S3 have a clear point. And one small note: apart from S3, virtually all AWS services are tied to a VPC, any kind of deployment starts with "ok, in what VPC do you want this resource?".
- immibis 2y ago
  You can get 95% of the reliability for 10% of the price at any dedicated hoster. AWS just figured out the magic word "cloud" means they can charge you 10 times the price. At Azure or GCP you pay a similar price but you don't even get the reliability so literally why would you use them? The only reason I see is that "cloud" means you can start instances at any time without a setup fee or contract duration. But with the amount of cost difference, you could have three times your baseline "cloud" load running all the time at a non-cloud hoster, and still save money!
notpushkin 2y ago
It is an expensive way to do self hosting, yeah! I guess one reason is, sometimes it’s easier to just use one of big N clouds – e.g. if you’re in a regulated industry and your auditors will raise brows if they see a random VPS provider instead. (Or maybe not? If you’re doing that kind of audits I’d love to hear your thoughts!) > Isn't at least half the point of AWS to use their SaaS thingies It is. (That’s how they lock you in!) I think it’s okay to use some AWS stuff once in a while, but I’d be wary of building your whole app architecture around AWS. I’m in the self-hosters camp myself :-) I’m building a Docker dashboard to make it easier to build, ship, and monitor applications on any server: https://lunni.dev/ https://lunni.dev/
- amluto 2y ago
  The is sort of petty, but… your web page does the horrible scroll-and-watch-the-content-fade-in thing. This is annoying and makes me want to stop reading. It also makes me wonder if your product does the same thing, which would be a complete nonstarter. Seriously, if I’m debugging some container issue, I do not want some completely unnecessary animation to prevent me from seeing the dashboard.
  - notpushkin 2y ago
    Thanks for the feedback! No, the product’s UI is definitely on the pragmatic side: I think the only blocking animation we have right now is dialog windows sliding in (and we try to avoid these altogether!) Both the landing page and the app disable animations when prefers-reduced-motion is enabled. I’ll rethink the landing page animations a bit later! (I was thinking about redoing it from scratch again, anyway :^)
- 9dev 2y ago
  I’ve just dropped you a note in the chat. We’re also on Swarm, and dealing with most of the stuff you address, and some more. Would love to contribute to Lunni, if you’re open to that :)
  - notpushkin 2y ago
    Got the note, thanks! I’ll get back to you later today – would love to chat sometime :-)
- lucb1e 2y ago
  > I’d be wary of building your whole app architecture around AWS. Yep yep, we're on the same page here, just that it sounded a bit like you recommend people to use EC2, managed Postgres, and S3, when that seems a bit like that defeats the purpose of using a big cloud vendor in the first place since those products can be gotten much cheaper elsewhere Just clicked the link to your website: your hero statement I sorta have on a t-shirt (there is no cloud, just someone else's computer). The footer statement "To improve your browsing experience we don’t use cookies" I have nearly literally on one of my websites. We are definitely on the same page xD. The website seems to think I'm from Talinn btw, maybe a reverse proxy issue (that it looks up the IP address' location of a proxy instead of that of my German IP address)? I do second the remark posted in a sibling comment about fading in content, but (maybe you adjusted it already) it fades fast enough that it doesn't bother me as much as on some other websites. Could still be faster though imo Good luck with the product!

by lucb1e 2y ago

tsimionescu 2y ago

The point of moving to AWS is often to benefit from their data centers and reliability promises. So VPC, EC2, IAM, maybe S3 have a clear point. And one small note: apart from S3, virtually all AWS services are tied to a VPC, any kind of deployment starts with "ok, in what VPC do you want this resource?".

immibis 2y ago
You can get 95% of the reliability for 10% of the price at any dedicated hoster. AWS just figured out the magic word "cloud" means they can charge you 10 times the price. At Azure or GCP you pay a similar price but you don't even get the reliability so literally why would you use them? The only reason I see is that "cloud" means you can start instances at any time without a setup fee or contract duration. But with the amount of cost difference, you could have three times your baseline "cloud" load running all the time at a non-cloud hoster, and still save money!

notpushkin 2y ago

It is an expensive way to do self hosting, yeah! I guess one reason is, sometimes it’s easier to just use one of big N clouds – e.g. if you’re in a regulated industry and your auditors will raise brows if they see a random VPS provider instead. (Or maybe not? If you’re doing that kind of audits I’d love to hear your thoughts!) > Isn't at least half the point of AWS to use their SaaS thingies It is. (That’s how they lock you in!) I think it’s okay to use some AWS stuff once in a while, but I’d be wary of building your whole app architecture around AWS. I’m in the self-hosters camp myself :-) I’m building a Docker dashboard to make it easier to build, ship, and monitor applications on any server: https://lunni.dev/ https://lunni.dev/

amluto 2y ago
The is sort of petty, but… your web page does the horrible scroll-and-watch-the-content-fade-in thing. This is annoying and makes me want to stop reading. It also makes me wonder if your product does the same thing, which would be a complete nonstarter. Seriously, if I’m debugging some container issue, I do not want some completely unnecessary animation to prevent me from seeing the dashboard.
- notpushkin 2y ago
  Thanks for the feedback! No, the product’s UI is definitely on the pragmatic side: I think the only blocking animation we have right now is dialog windows sliding in (and we try to avoid these altogether!) Both the landing page and the app disable animations when prefers-reduced-motion is enabled. I’ll rethink the landing page animations a bit later! (I was thinking about redoing it from scratch again, anyway :^)
9dev 2y ago
I’ve just dropped you a note in the chat. We’re also on Swarm, and dealing with most of the stuff you address, and some more. Would love to contribute to Lunni, if you’re open to that :)
- notpushkin 2y ago
  Got the note, thanks! I’ll get back to you later today – would love to chat sometime :-)
lucb1e 2y ago
> I’d be wary of building your whole app architecture around AWS. Yep yep, we're on the same page here, just that it sounded a bit like you recommend people to use EC2, managed Postgres, and S3, when that seems a bit like that defeats the purpose of using a big cloud vendor in the first place since those products can be gotten much cheaper elsewhere Just clicked the link to your website: your hero statement I sorta have on a t-shirt (there is no cloud, just someone else's computer). The footer statement "To improve your browsing experience we don’t use cookies" I have nearly literally on one of my websites. We are definitely on the same page xD. The website seems to think I'm from Talinn btw, maybe a reverse proxy issue (that it looks up the IP address' location of a proxy instead of that of my German IP address)? I do second the remark posted in a sibling comment about fading in content, but (maybe you adjusted it already) it fades fast enough that it doesn't bother me as much as on some other websites. Could still be faster though imo Good luck with the product!