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The author brings up the point, but I have always found surprising how much more expensive managed databases are than a comparable VPS. I would expect a little

by donatj 10mo ago

The author brings up the point, but I have always found surprising how much more expensive managed databases are than a comparable VPS. I would expect a little bit more as a cost of the convenience, but in my experience it's generally multiple times the expense. It's wild. This has kept me away from managed databases in all but my largest projects.

orev 10mo ago
Once they convince you that you can’t do it yourself, you end up relying on them, but didn’t develop the skills you would need to migrate to another provider when they start raising prices. And they keep raising prices because by then you have no choice.
- zbentley 10mo ago
  There is plenty of provider markup, to be sure. But it is also very much not a given that the hosted version of a database is running software/configs that are equivalent to what you could do yourself. Many hosted databases are extremely different behind the scenes when it comes to durability, monitoring, failover, storage provisioning, compute provisioning, and more. Just because it acts like a connection hanging off a postmaster service running on a server doesn’t mean that’s what your “psql” is connected to on RDS Aurora (or many of the other cloud-Postgres offerings).
  - aranelsurion 10mo ago
    > Just because it acts like a connection hanging off If anything that’s a feature for ease of use and compatibility.
- citizenpaul 10mo ago
  I have not tested this in real life yet but it seems like all the argument about vendor lock in can be solved, if you bite the bullet and learn basic Kubernetes administration. Kubernetes is FOSS and there are countless Kubernetes as a service providers. I know there are other issues with Kubernetes but at least its transferable knowledge.
- ch2026 10mo ago
  Wait, are you talking about cloud providers or LLMs?
nrhrjrjrjtntbt 10mo ago
Yes if the DB is 5x the VM and the the VM is 10x the dedicated server from say OVH etc. then you are payng 50x.

by donatj 10mo ago

orev 10mo ago

Once they convince you that you can’t do it yourself, you end up relying on them, but didn’t develop the skills you would need to migrate to another provider when they start raising prices. And they keep raising prices because by then you have no choice.

zbentley 10mo ago
There is plenty of provider markup, to be sure. But it is also very much not a given that the hosted version of a database is running software/configs that are equivalent to what you could do yourself. Many hosted databases are extremely different behind the scenes when it comes to durability, monitoring, failover, storage provisioning, compute provisioning, and more. Just because it acts like a connection hanging off a postmaster service running on a server doesn’t mean that’s what your “psql” is connected to on RDS Aurora (or many of the other cloud-Postgres offerings).
- aranelsurion 10mo ago
  > Just because it acts like a connection hanging off If anything that’s a feature for ease of use and compatibility.
citizenpaul 10mo ago
I have not tested this in real life yet but it seems like all the argument about vendor lock in can be solved, if you bite the bullet and learn basic Kubernetes administration. Kubernetes is FOSS and there are countless Kubernetes as a service providers. I know there are other issues with Kubernetes but at least its transferable knowledge.
ch2026 10mo ago
Wait, are you talking about cloud providers or LLMs?

nrhrjrjrjtntbt 10mo ago

Yes if the DB is 5x the VM and the the VM is 10x the dedicated server from say OVH etc. then you are payng 50x.