8 ms·

I'd also add to the list - make sure that AWS is right for your workload. If you don't have an elastic workload and are keeping all of your servers online 24/7

by mbreese 13y ago

I'd also add to the list - make sure that AWS is right for your workload. If you don't have an elastic workload and are keeping all of your servers online 24/7, then you should investigate dedicated hardware from another provider. AWS really only makes sense ($$) when you can take advantage of the ability to spin up and spin down your instances as needed.

AaronBBrown 13y ago
AWS makes a lot of sense in a 24/7 environment, particularly when you are a new startup and don't have enough information (or capital!) to make educated server purchases.
- dangrossman 13y ago
  They don't have to make any purchasing decisions. They can rent servers from companies like Softlayer and Rackspace (#3 and #4 behind AWS for YC startups), or spin up much cheaper VPS's (Linode's #2). We're talking $120/month commitments, not buying hardware and driving to a data center to install it. Deploying to a freshly imaged physical server is the same as deploying to EC2, and they can be provisioned for you in an hour or two. Each of those servers gets you many times the performance of an EC2 instance in the same price class, which means much more time to figure out your capacity needs as you grow.
  - AaronBBrown 13y ago
    As someone who has worked w/ AWS (and Rackspace) for several years with multiple startups... Unless they have dramatically improved their offering in the last couple years, an hour or two from "I need a new server" to delivery is 1) not an accurate timeframe for physical servers from Rackspace and 2) even if it was realistic, that's an eternity when you are trying to iterate quickly. I can have a new server in 30 seconds with AWS and in the course of an hour could have tested my automation tools half a dozen times or more vs reimaging a server over and over again. I'm not saying it's always the right choice or that it's cheaper, but that flexibility combined with some of the pre-canned tools (ELB, RDS, CloudWatch, SQS, SNS) has tremendous value even when you aren't autoscaling.
    - dangrossman 13y ago
      You've completely moved the goalposts; "testing automation tools" where your servers live for a few minutes then get destroyed is not the same as "a 24/7 environment". I didn't suggest renting servers to do ephemeral testing. I only have experience renting physical hardware from Softlayer. They have built and imaged new servers for me in under 2 hours a dozen times, day and night. They also have a "xpress servers" line with guaranteed <2hr delivery. They also let you reimage your servers through their control panel or API; you don't need to have a new one built just to get a fresh disk image.
    - TillE 13y ago
      So use AWS or Linode for that specific use case. Great, that's its strength. Once it's clear that the new server will be needed long-term, transition to dedicated hardware to save money and get better performance.
    - bearbin 13y ago
      DigitalOcean - Same or better speed, 1/6 or less of the price of ECC.
      - AaronBBrown 13y ago
        DO has a very limited API, no ability to add additional storage without resizing your droplets, and has no firewall protection without iptables being enabled. DO has its uses (I'm migrating my personal server there presently), but it's not even close to being in the same market/caliber as EC2. For some businesses, the huge AWS feature set (RDS, EBS, ELB, security groups, VPC, ELB, EIPs, etc, etc, etc) is more valuable than the bottom $$ line. For others, those features aren't worth the added cost, but hand-wavey "just use DO" or "Just rent physical servers from SoftLayer/Rackspace" is disingenous. TL;DR AWS has value above and beyond simply hour-to-hour elasticity.
        mvleming 13y ago
        Hey, I've started to learn about devops and systems administration recently and I've learned a ton in this thread and this article, so thanks for that and thanks to everyone else. But do you know of any good resources to learn about those two things? And I'm taking about basic devops, before you even start worrying about automating, and the things you would actually automate–because I don't know what it is I should be doing in the first place. Things like what you should be doing right after you SSH into your server, how to make your server secure, how to use nginx, chmod'ing permissions of files correctly, and things I don't even know about. Is there a One Month Rails or Michael Hartl's RoR Tutorial for devops/sys admin? Regardless, thanks for taking the time to read this :)
- Wilya 13y ago
  I don't see how that makes sense. If all you need is a server that is up 24/7, rent it by the month. You don't need information to make an educated choice, since they are pretty much all cheaper than EC2.
- banachtarski 13y ago
  With the additional caveat that you have tons of money sure. With 24/7 load, you'd probably pay a 10x premium to use AWS.
  - AaronBBrown 13y ago
    Reserved Instances really drive the cost down quite a bit, but yes, it's expensive.
- _zen 13y ago
  > particularly when you are a new startup and don't have enough information (or capital!) to make educated server purchases. I doubt there are many founders who are technically informed enough to know about Amazon Web Services, but don't know about the other big 3 (Digital Ocean, Linode, Rackspace). If you truly don't, then you must not be a tech company, and I have a hard time believing a non-tech company without any technical founders would even know about AWS.
  - mbreese 13y ago
    I've seen places where they had an Amazon instance up 24/7 just sitting there idle, while they paid hundreds a month. Just because they occasionally needed a server for data processing. Someone told them that it was fast to spin up an AWS instance, so they did. But no one told them how to manage it, and the people doing the work were not very competent at system administration. So, they wasted thousands on idle time, just because no one told them how to snapshot their EBS volumes and terminate an instance. More people know about AWS than you may realize.
  - AaronBBrown 13y ago
    DO, Linode, and Rackspace have lower bottom line costs, but a (much) smaller feature set which means more operational work. Especially when kicking things off, developer and operational time is often far more valuable than the cost of the servers.
    - mbreese 13y ago
      Yeah, but it you start out using too much of the AWS tools, you're far more likely to get trapped in the AWS infrastructure and end up paying significantly more in the long term (which is what they want!). I'm not saying that AWS doesn't have useful features, but you need to appreciate the costs of these things before starting. If you need to spend a bit more time on devops in the beginning, then so be it. If you're starting a company, there had better be some good reasons behind using AWS, aside from "because faster iteration, developer time!". Specifically - what AWS features do you find to be useful at the beginning? You seem to have some specific use-cases in mind. I'm legitimately curious.
berkay 13y ago
AWS != EC2. Do not assume that AWS is only used as VMs. It's different for everyone but AWS provides massive savings for many companies. It makes sense for many use cases in addition to elastic workloads.
- mbreese 13y ago
  True, but outside of S3 and Route53, how much under the AWS umbrella is much use without using at least one EC2 instance? I can see a lot of benefit to using S3 without EC2, but after that, I'm not sure what else would be possible. Care to elaborate more? Can you use their queues and database tools w/o using EC2? (If you are using a VPC, maybe?)
  - micah_chatt 13y ago
    "Can you use their queues and database tools w/o using EC2?" Yes, you very easily can. RDS is a simple setup, and so is SQS (queuing). The same goes for Dynamo and Redshift.
    - jcampbell1 13y ago
      Are you really going tolerate 10+ ms of latency between a database, and an app server? I have never personally tried it, but it seems like it would be a disaster.
      - AznHisoka 13y ago
        Heh, heck my db and app live in the same data center, and the latency is more than 30-40 MS.
        mcpherrinm 13y ago
        Really? That seems enormously too slow. Even over the internet, I'm within 5-10ms of most things in the bay area. If you have a dozen slow (100us) switches, three slow (2ms) routers, and 500 kilometers of fibre (2ms), you should still be under 10ms each way. And that's enough gear to cross some countries. I'm curious how you can do much worse than this in a data center. Maybe some pokey "application firewall" or massive buffer bloat?
NathanKP 13y ago
The startup I'm working for has minimal scaling required but we still use AWS despite the higher cost for EC2 because the broad ecosystem of AWS products make it easier to develop interesting things quickly and efficiently. If we went with all of our own dedicated hardware, or cheaper instances from a different cloud provider then we'd miss out on ELB, have slower and more expensive communication to and from S3, not to mention that services like Elastic Beanstalk make deploying to EC2 instances very easy compared with rolling your own deployment system. And for those who don't want to bother with administrating databases and cache machines RDS and Elasticache are going to be cheapest and fastest if your instances are EC2. So yeah I agree that EC2 is expensive, but the benefits of living fully within the Amazon ecosystem are pretty large.
- osteele 13y ago
  I think of AWS as a tool for prototyping and early-stage outsourcing of your infrastructure. Use it when you're fighting past market and technology risk with a single-digit team; consider dropping it in order to optimize costs when you've got more people (including fractional people) to evaluate, configure, and operate alternatives.
- neverminder 13y ago
  Isn't relying so much on AWS like "putting all your eggs in one basket"?
richadams 13y ago
Absolutely, great point! AWS isn't for everyone, and there can be lots of cases where it's cheaper to use dedicated hardware. Shop around before jumping in. I've added this as a new tip at the end of the article (crediting you of course). Thanks!

by mbreese 13y ago

AaronBBrown 13y ago

AWS makes a lot of sense in a 24/7 environment, particularly when you are a new startup and don't have enough information (or capital!) to make educated server purchases.

dangrossman 13y ago
They don't have to make any purchasing decisions. They can rent servers from companies like Softlayer and Rackspace (#3 and #4 behind AWS for YC startups), or spin up much cheaper VPS's (Linode's #2). We're talking $120/month commitments, not buying hardware and driving to a data center to install it. Deploying to a freshly imaged physical server is the same as deploying to EC2, and they can be provisioned for you in an hour or two. Each of those servers gets you many times the performance of an EC2 instance in the same price class, which means much more time to figure out your capacity needs as you grow.
- AaronBBrown 13y ago
  As someone who has worked w/ AWS (and Rackspace) for several years with multiple startups... Unless they have dramatically improved their offering in the last couple years, an hour or two from "I need a new server" to delivery is 1) not an accurate timeframe for physical servers from Rackspace and 2) even if it was realistic, that's an eternity when you are trying to iterate quickly. I can have a new server in 30 seconds with AWS and in the course of an hour could have tested my automation tools half a dozen times or more vs reimaging a server over and over again. I'm not saying it's always the right choice or that it's cheaper, but that flexibility combined with some of the pre-canned tools (ELB, RDS, CloudWatch, SQS, SNS) has tremendous value even when you aren't autoscaling.
  - dangrossman 13y ago
    You've completely moved the goalposts; "testing automation tools" where your servers live for a few minutes then get destroyed is not the same as "a 24/7 environment". I didn't suggest renting servers to do ephemeral testing. I only have experience renting physical hardware from Softlayer. They have built and imaged new servers for me in under 2 hours a dozen times, day and night. They also have a "xpress servers" line with guaranteed <2hr delivery. They also let you reimage your servers through their control panel or API; you don't need to have a new one built just to get a fresh disk image.
  - TillE 13y ago
    So use AWS or Linode for that specific use case. Great, that's its strength. Once it's clear that the new server will be needed long-term, transition to dedicated hardware to save money and get better performance.
  - bearbin 13y ago
    DigitalOcean - Same or better speed, 1/6 or less of the price of ECC.
    - AaronBBrown 13y ago
      DO has a very limited API, no ability to add additional storage without resizing your droplets, and has no firewall protection without iptables being enabled. DO has its uses (I'm migrating my personal server there presently), but it's not even close to being in the same market/caliber as EC2. For some businesses, the huge AWS feature set (RDS, EBS, ELB, security groups, VPC, ELB, EIPs, etc, etc, etc) is more valuable than the bottom $$ line. For others, those features aren't worth the added cost, but hand-wavey "just use DO" or "Just rent physical servers from SoftLayer/Rackspace" is disingenous. TL;DR AWS has value above and beyond simply hour-to-hour elasticity.
      - mvleming 13y ago
        Hey, I've started to learn about devops and systems administration recently and I've learned a ton in this thread and this article, so thanks for that and thanks to everyone else. But do you know of any good resources to learn about those two things? And I'm taking about basic devops, before you even start worrying about automating, and the things you would actually automate–because I don't know what it is I should be doing in the first place. Things like what you should be doing right after you SSH into your server, how to make your server secure, how to use nginx, chmod'ing permissions of files correctly, and things I don't even know about. Is there a One Month Rails or Michael Hartl's RoR Tutorial for devops/sys admin? Regardless, thanks for taking the time to read this :)
Wilya 13y ago
I don't see how that makes sense. If all you need is a server that is up 24/7, rent it by the month. You don't need information to make an educated choice, since they are pretty much all cheaper than EC2.
banachtarski 13y ago
With the additional caveat that you have tons of money sure. With 24/7 load, you'd probably pay a 10x premium to use AWS.
- AaronBBrown 13y ago
  Reserved Instances really drive the cost down quite a bit, but yes, it's expensive.
_zen 13y ago
> particularly when you are a new startup and don't have enough information (or capital!) to make educated server purchases. I doubt there are many founders who are technically informed enough to know about Amazon Web Services, but don't know about the other big 3 (Digital Ocean, Linode, Rackspace). If you truly don't, then you must not be a tech company, and I have a hard time believing a non-tech company without any technical founders would even know about AWS.
- mbreese 13y ago
  I've seen places where they had an Amazon instance up 24/7 just sitting there idle, while they paid hundreds a month. Just because they occasionally needed a server for data processing. Someone told them that it was fast to spin up an AWS instance, so they did. But no one told them how to manage it, and the people doing the work were not very competent at system administration. So, they wasted thousands on idle time, just because no one told them how to snapshot their EBS volumes and terminate an instance. More people know about AWS than you may realize.
- AaronBBrown 13y ago
  DO, Linode, and Rackspace have lower bottom line costs, but a (much) smaller feature set which means more operational work. Especially when kicking things off, developer and operational time is often far more valuable than the cost of the servers.
  - mbreese 13y ago
    Yeah, but it you start out using too much of the AWS tools, you're far more likely to get trapped in the AWS infrastructure and end up paying significantly more in the long term (which is what they want!). I'm not saying that AWS doesn't have useful features, but you need to appreciate the costs of these things before starting. If you need to spend a bit more time on devops in the beginning, then so be it. If you're starting a company, there had better be some good reasons behind using AWS, aside from "because faster iteration, developer time!". Specifically - what AWS features do you find to be useful at the beginning? You seem to have some specific use-cases in mind. I'm legitimately curious.

berkay 13y ago

AWS != EC2. Do not assume that AWS is only used as VMs. It's different for everyone but AWS provides massive savings for many companies. It makes sense for many use cases in addition to elastic workloads.

mbreese 13y ago
True, but outside of S3 and Route53, how much under the AWS umbrella is much use without using at least one EC2 instance? I can see a lot of benefit to using S3 without EC2, but after that, I'm not sure what else would be possible. Care to elaborate more? Can you use their queues and database tools w/o using EC2? (If you are using a VPC, maybe?)
- micah_chatt 13y ago
  "Can you use their queues and database tools w/o using EC2?" Yes, you very easily can. RDS is a simple setup, and so is SQS (queuing). The same goes for Dynamo and Redshift.
  - jcampbell1 13y ago
    Are you really going tolerate 10+ ms of latency between a database, and an app server? I have never personally tried it, but it seems like it would be a disaster.
    - AznHisoka 13y ago
      Heh, heck my db and app live in the same data center, and the latency is more than 30-40 MS.
      - mcpherrinm 13y ago
        Really? That seems enormously too slow. Even over the internet, I'm within 5-10ms of most things in the bay area. If you have a dozen slow (100us) switches, three slow (2ms) routers, and 500 kilometers of fibre (2ms), you should still be under 10ms each way. And that's enough gear to cross some countries. I'm curious how you can do much worse than this in a data center. Maybe some pokey "application firewall" or massive buffer bloat?

NathanKP 13y ago

The startup I'm working for has minimal scaling required but we still use AWS despite the higher cost for EC2 because the broad ecosystem of AWS products make it easier to develop interesting things quickly and efficiently. If we went with all of our own dedicated hardware, or cheaper instances from a different cloud provider then we'd miss out on ELB, have slower and more expensive communication to and from S3, not to mention that services like Elastic Beanstalk make deploying to EC2 instances very easy compared with rolling your own deployment system. And for those who don't want to bother with administrating databases and cache machines RDS and Elasticache are going to be cheapest and fastest if your instances are EC2. So yeah I agree that EC2 is expensive, but the benefits of living fully within the Amazon ecosystem are pretty large.

osteele 13y ago
I think of AWS as a tool for prototyping and early-stage outsourcing of your infrastructure. Use it when you're fighting past market and technology risk with a single-digit team; consider dropping it in order to optimize costs when you've got more people (including fractional people) to evaluate, configure, and operate alternatives.
neverminder 13y ago
Isn't relying so much on AWS like "putting all your eggs in one basket"?

richadams 13y ago

Absolutely, great point! AWS isn't for everyone, and there can be lots of cases where it's cheaper to use dedicated hardware. Shop around before jumping in. I've added this as a new tip at the end of the article (crediting you of course). Thanks!