5 ms·

Is it simple? So what happens when you hit the cap, does AWS delete the resources that are incurring the cost and destroy your app? Imagine the horror stories

by mlhpdx 1y ago

Is it simple? So what happens when you hit the cap, does AWS delete the resources that are incurring the cost and destroy your app? Imagine the horror stories on Hacker News that would generate.

ndsipa_pomu 1y ago
Surely that's the fault of the purchaser setting the cap too low. Maybe rather than completely stopping the service, it'd be better to rate limit the service when approaching/reaching the cap.
- mlhpdx 1y ago
  Using that logic, isn’t it the fault of the user to set up an app without rate limiting?
  - ndsipa_pomu 1y ago
    It's misleading to promote a free tier that can then incur huge charges without being able to specify a charge cap.
    - ninalanyon 1y ago
      If it can incur any charges at all then it isn't free.
zorked 1y ago
Stop accepting requests like has been the case since the beginning of time?
clvx 1y ago
Yes, that’s exactly the expected behavior. It can alert if it’s closed to threshold. Very straightforward from my point of view.
tannedNerd 1y ago
Or simply returns 503? Why would you go directly to destroying things??
- mlhpdx 1y ago
  Not everything on AWS is a Web app
  - vel0city 1y ago
    TCP session close? Don't reply back the UDP response? Stop scheduling time on the satellite transceiver for that account?
    - mlhpdx 1y ago
      Interesting that you mention UDP, because I'm in the process of adding hard-limits to my service that handles UDP. It's not trivial, but it is possible and while I'm unsympathetic to folks casting shade on AWS for not having it, I decided a while back it was worth adding to my service. My market is experimenters and early stage projects though, which is different than AWS (most revenue from huge users) so I can see why they are more on the "buyer beware" side.
  - Touche 1y ago
    Everything on AWS can deny a request no matter what the API happens to be
- sokoloff 1y ago
  Suppose you’re going over the billing cap based on your storage consumption, how would AWS stop the continued consumption without deleting storage?
  - Touche 1y ago
    Why would they need to delete storage, they could just not accept past the cap.
estimator7292 1y ago
I mean, would you rather have a $10k build or have your server forcefully shut down after you hit $1k in three days? One of those things is more important to different types of business. In some situations, any downtime at all is worth thousands per hour. In others, the service staying online is only worth hundreds of dollars a week. So yes, the solution is as simple as giving the user hard spend caps that they can configure. I'd also set the default limits low for new accounts with a giant, obnoxious, flashing red popover that you cannot dismiss until you configure your limits. However, this would generate less profit for Amazon et al. They have certainly run this calculation and decided they'd earn more money from careless businesses than they'd gain in goodwill. And we all know that goodwill has zero value to companies at FAANG scale. There's absolutely no chance that they haven't considered this. It's partially implemented and an incredibly obvious solution that everyone has been begging for since cloud computing became a thing. The only reason they haven't implemented this is purely greed and malice.
- mlhpdx 1y ago
  If you want hard caps, you can already do it. It’s not a checkbox in the UX, but the capability is there.
  - rgoulter 1y ago
    > Is it simple? So what happens when you hit the cap, does AWS delete the resources that are incurring the cost and destroy your app? Sounds like you're saying "there aren't caps because it's hard". > If you want hard caps, you can already do it. ... the capability is there. What technique are you thinking of?
wahnfrieden 1y ago
There are several satisfactory solutions available. Every other solution they offer was made with tradeoffs and ambiguous requirements they had to make a call on. It is obviously misaligned incentive rather than an impossibility. If they could make more money from it, they would be offering something. Product offering gaps are not merely technical impossibilities.
theamk 1y ago
While I can imagine having budget overload from storage, most (all?) of the "horrors" on the page are from compute or access. Set it up so that machines are deleted, but EBS volumes remain. S3 bucket is locked-out but data is safe.

by mlhpdx 1y ago

Is it simple? So what happens when you hit the cap, does AWS delete the resources that are incurring the cost and destroy your app? Imagine the horror stories on Hacker News that would generate.

ndsipa_pomu 1y ago

Surely that's the fault of the purchaser setting the cap too low. Maybe rather than completely stopping the service, it'd be better to rate limit the service when approaching/reaching the cap.

mlhpdx 1y ago
Using that logic, isn’t it the fault of the user to set up an app without rate limiting?
- ndsipa_pomu 1y ago
  It's misleading to promote a free tier that can then incur huge charges without being able to specify a charge cap.
  - ninalanyon 1y ago
    If it can incur any charges at all then it isn't free.

zorked 1y ago

Stop accepting requests like has been the case since the beginning of time?

clvx 1y ago

Yes, that’s exactly the expected behavior. It can alert if it’s closed to threshold. Very straightforward from my point of view.

tannedNerd 1y ago

Or simply returns 503? Why would you go directly to destroying things??

mlhpdx 1y ago
Not everything on AWS is a Web app
- vel0city 1y ago
  TCP session close? Don't reply back the UDP response? Stop scheduling time on the satellite transceiver for that account?
  - mlhpdx 1y ago
    Interesting that you mention UDP, because I'm in the process of adding hard-limits to my service that handles UDP. It's not trivial, but it is possible and while I'm unsympathetic to folks casting shade on AWS for not having it, I decided a while back it was worth adding to my service. My market is experimenters and early stage projects though, which is different than AWS (most revenue from huge users) so I can see why they are more on the "buyer beware" side.
- Touche 1y ago
  Everything on AWS can deny a request no matter what the API happens to be
sokoloff 1y ago
Suppose you’re going over the billing cap based on your storage consumption, how would AWS stop the continued consumption without deleting storage?
- Touche 1y ago
  Why would they need to delete storage, they could just not accept past the cap.

estimator7292 1y ago

I mean, would you rather have a $10k build or have your server forcefully shut down after you hit $1k in three days? One of those things is more important to different types of business. In some situations, any downtime at all is worth thousands per hour. In others, the service staying online is only worth hundreds of dollars a week. So yes, the solution is as simple as giving the user hard spend caps that they can configure. I'd also set the default limits low for new accounts with a giant, obnoxious, flashing red popover that you cannot dismiss until you configure your limits. However, this would generate less profit for Amazon et al. They have certainly run this calculation and decided they'd earn more money from careless businesses than they'd gain in goodwill. And we all know that goodwill has zero value to companies at FAANG scale. There's absolutely no chance that they haven't considered this. It's partially implemented and an incredibly obvious solution that everyone has been begging for since cloud computing became a thing. The only reason they haven't implemented this is purely greed and malice.

mlhpdx 1y ago
If you want hard caps, you can already do it. It’s not a checkbox in the UX, but the capability is there.
- rgoulter 1y ago
  > Is it simple? So what happens when you hit the cap, does AWS delete the resources that are incurring the cost and destroy your app? Sounds like you're saying "there aren't caps because it's hard". > If you want hard caps, you can already do it. ... the capability is there. What technique are you thinking of?

wahnfrieden 1y ago

There are several satisfactory solutions available. Every other solution they offer was made with tradeoffs and ambiguous requirements they had to make a call on. It is obviously misaligned incentive rather than an impossibility. If they could make more money from it, they would be offering something. Product offering gaps are not merely technical impossibilities.

theamk 1y ago

While I can imagine having budget overload from storage, most (all?) of the "horrors" on the page are from compute or access. Set it up so that machines are deleted, but EBS volumes remain. S3 bucket is locked-out but data is safe.