I don't get any money from programming, and I would like to learn to use AWS but I am a very risk averse kind of people and I don't want to be overcharge in case I do some silly thing in the web. I would like a service that guarantees that no matter what happens you don't pay more than a small amount for learning, I don't mind if my code disappear from the server or the application is no longer working when the money is over. I imagine that working in the cloud is about being at risk but, just in the learning phase I would like to have the minimum risk when learning. Any ideas?
Ask HN: How do you learn to use AWS when you are terrified to being overcharged?
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Re: Ask HN: How do you learn to use AWS when you are terrified to being overcharged?
#2There are free micro instances, last I knew.
Re: Ask HN: How do you learn to use AWS when you are terrified to being overcharged?
#3They have a "billing alerts" feature that should help. It will send you email if your charges exceed the amount you've set.
Re: Ask HN: How do you learn to use AWS when you are terrified to being overcharged?
#4They have a "billing alerts" feature that should help. It will send you email if your charges exceed the amount you've set.
If you are hacked the first thing the bad guys do is to disable your billing alerts.
Re: Ask HN: How do you learn to use AWS when you are terrified to being overcharged?
#5There are free micro instances, last I knew.
Unfortunately the word free is a little ambiguous since it can be free (as in beer) but suddenly you are charged because you make something stupid (or someone hacked your account and created a zillion services)
Re: Ask HN: How do you learn to use AWS when you are terrified to being overcharged?
#6Open your account with a $100 Visa gift card.
Re: Ask HN: How do you learn to use AWS when you are terrified to being overcharged?
#7Open your account with a $100 Visa gift card.
Can I use an anonymous user?, that is I don't want to disclose my name, address, email or any other personal information
Re: Ask HN: How do you learn to use AWS when you are terrified to being overcharged?
#8They have a "billing alerts" feature that should help. It will send you email if your charges exceed the amount you've set.
If you are hacked the first thing the bad guys do is to disable your billing alerts.
Has that been a common problem for AWS users? I'm not asking to be snide, I honestly don't know. I just haven't heard a lot about that happening.
Something else to keep in mind... Amazon have a reputation for being pretty good about issuing refunds in situations where people rack up large bills due to various kinds of accidents. There are a number of such stories in old HN posts, and my own experience was very favorable: I setup a couple of big instances for a demo at a conference, and then a week or two later had a heart attack, and didn't get around to shutting down the instances until about 3 months later. I wound up getting billed several thousand dollars, but Amazon had no problem issuing me a refund. YMMV, of course.
Re: Ask HN: How do you learn to use AWS when you are terrified to being overcharged?
#9One thing AWS doesn't have, is a feature to let you forcibly terminate instances based on a billing limit or a time schedule. But, micro instances are so cheap (and even free for a time), that you can probably afford to set up a single micro instance, and put a watchdog process on there that will use the API to monitor your instances and terminate them if you forget and leave ones running or something.
Re: Ask HN: How do you learn to use AWS when you are terrified to being overcharged?
#10Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you are hacked the first thing the bad guys do is to disable your billing alerts.
Has that been a common problem for AWS users? I'm not asking to be snide, I honestly don't know. I just haven't heard a lot about that happening. Something else to keep in mind... Amazon have a reputation for being pretty good about issuing refunds in situations where people rack up large bills due to various kinds of accidents. There are a number of such stories in old HN posts, and my own experience was very favora…
API key theft is a common problem with AWS users.
The problem people have is that when they generate an API key they grant that key "everything" even account management stuff. Instead of giving it the least privilege needed to accomplish whatever it is that it does.
Then they'll inadvertently upload it to e.g. GitHub or similar in some source code and bad guys have bots which will steal it then make use of your account for all kinds of evil purposes.
Having things like 2F on your main account (which you should) won't save you from this. And if you go to bed, by the time you wake up the account charges could be in the tens of thousands even with billing alerts.