I don't get all the complaints about AWS prices. I just spun up a 60 node Spark cluster with over 5TB of memory, processed 100B data records, and spent $5.50!
AWS mistakes to avoid
251–260 of 276 posts
Re: AWS mistakes to avoid
#252Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm really not trying to compare Linode to AWS here. I just felt that it was necessary to mention that I work for Linode because there _is_ some overlap. I'm really also not trying to sell anyone on Linode in particular. I'm pointing out that from my own personal experience, AWS is grossly overpriced and worse than the alternatives for a large number of use-cases.
AWS is insanely overpriced. It's weird to me that everyone jumping on AWS and some of their customers never come close to attracting the internet traffic required to set up CloudFormation. I think if you're starting a webapp out of your own pocket and not millions of dollars of investors, it makes sense to save where you can. Using locust.io, I've seen that my current site on two $10/month Linodes can scale up to app…
You're right, but I know of a few startup teams that chose Linode, Rackspace etc. at start to account for future 'scalability' concerns. Well the number of users never came and they spent a lot of time just configuring stuff. Of course I have also seen teams that couldn't build a decent business on AWS.
I think the net cost of an extra personnel (a server admin) in a startup team, is more than the cost of the server.
Re: AWS mistakes to avoid
#253Earlier quoted context omitted.
I've found Google Compute Engine decent, but with App Engine I ran into difficulties with vendor lock-in. I had to first modify my code to get the app run on my local computer. After that I never got it deployed because GAE requires me to bind their own TCP context for outbound connections. This was a shame because I would have wanted to have my app on GAE and database on Heroku. Just saying that calling 90% of Googl…
Google Cloud is not just App Engine now. Its pretty much the equivalent to aws in features. Let me also say I have PhD in Cloud and big data (graduated in 2013), worked for Amazon aws, worked for an rackspace for year and half, I was a core contributor to OpenStqck for the products OpenStack Poppy and OpenStack Zaqar. I hope you his puts se more weight behind my statements. If you are interested to know the details a…
stud!
Re: AWS mistakes to avoid
#254Earlier quoted context omitted.
I've found Google Compute Engine decent, but with App Engine I ran into difficulties with vendor lock-in. I had to first modify my code to get the app run on my local computer. After that I never got it deployed because GAE requires me to bind their own TCP context for outbound connections. This was a shame because I would have wanted to have my app on GAE and database on Heroku. Just saying that calling 90% of Googl…
Google Cloud is not just App Engine now. Its pretty much the equivalent to aws in features. Let me also say I have PhD in Cloud and big data (graduated in 2013), worked for Amazon aws, worked for an rackspace for year and half, I was a core contributor to OpenStqck for the products OpenStack Poppy and OpenStack Zaqar. I hope you his puts se more weight behind my statements. If you are interested to know the details a…
They aren't even close to each other in featuers. All the various additional Services AWS supports go way beyond what Google has at the moment. Numerous Database offerings, Queueing, transcoder, ... Go way beyond what Google has in place.
And no the ability to run it yourself on Google is not the same.
Re: AWS mistakes to avoid
#255Also, dont use Dynamo unless you have a really good reason. "It scales better than MySQL" is not a good reason. Have fun migrating data and re-indexing constantly!
I use Dynamo because I'm lazy. Need some JSON fast? 3 lines and no worries.
DynamoDB db = new DynamoDB(new AmazonDynamoDBClient());
Table myTable = db.getTable("table");
Item myItem = myTable.getItem("id", id);
Re: AWS mistakes to avoid
#256Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm really not trying to compare Linode to AWS here. I just felt that it was necessary to mention that I work for Linode because there _is_ some overlap. I'm really also not trying to sell anyone on Linode in particular. I'm pointing out that from my own personal experience, AWS is grossly overpriced and worse than the alternatives for a large number of use-cases.
AWS is insanely overpriced. It's weird to me that everyone jumping on AWS and some of their customers never come close to attracting the internet traffic required to set up CloudFormation. I think if you're starting a webapp out of your own pocket and not millions of dollars of investors, it makes sense to save where you can. Using locust.io, I've seen that my current site on two $10/month Linodes can scale up to app…
Your 300k people/day metric conveys little information if we don't get an idea of the workload each user entails?
Re: AWS mistakes to avoid
#257Full disclosure: I work for Linode and I am super biased. This is my own opinion etc etc Perhaps the first AWS mistake you might make is... using AWS? Even before I started at Linode, I thought it was terrible. It's extremely, unreasonably pricey. The UI is terrible. Their offerings are availble elsewhere. I started MediaCrush, a now-defunct media hosting website, on AWS. After a while, we switched to dedicated hosti…
Most of the reasons to go with AWS as a major strategic decision are to avoid paying for 3-4 (or perhaps... 40+) ops engineers to run and manage so many things that really don't add much business value in themselves and that you could hold to some form of an SLA (especially with enterprise support accounts) and recoup some costs if things came down to it. Furthermore, engineering a lot of AWS services would cost you…
"I've seen executives file AWS support requests to reboot VMs at 3 am"
Isn't this falls outside amazon's responsibly area?
Atleast the documentation I read and a few aws promotional talks I attended seems to suggest the contrary.
Or I have understood completely wrong and amazon is now also providing managed IT services?
Re: AWS mistakes to avoid
#258Nice article, I am working in a small company (Beintoo) dice september 2015 and we use AWS here. I think is a very interesting set if products and you can build any kind of business. For sure the advices given in the article are really useful, in fact I will apply them at my job place.
About comparison with other services, I was working in Deloitte Analytics before, managing the cloud services provided by IBM Softlayer. You cannot compare them, AWS offers many more and I was not really satisfied with SoftLayer, for example I had a problem with a network upgrade they did on January 2014 and I have lost a lot of data, with poor support to restore it. Also the starting price of 25$ per month is really expensive. AWS is far more mature and interesting.
Then for my own servers I use CloudAtCost cause is cheaper but if I run a business for sure I would go with AWS. If you gain money, is not that expensive and if you stick with Amazon advices and philosophy is very reliable.
Re: AWS mistakes to avoid
#259Full disclosure: I work for Linode and I am super biased. This is my own opinion etc etc Perhaps the first AWS mistake you might make is... using AWS? Even before I started at Linode, I thought it was terrible. It's extremely, unreasonably pricey. The UI is terrible. Their offerings are availble elsewhere. I started MediaCrush, a now-defunct media hosting website, on AWS. After a while, we switched to dedicated hosti…
A disclosure does not allow you to make a blanket statement like "Perhaps the first AWS mistake you might make is... using AWS?".
Reply by kawsper to your comment highlights several drawbacks of Linode. Specifically this feedback "Your API is a mess, and so is your documentation. Everything is GET-requests. And creating a new instance, shouldn't take 11 requests" alone, if true, is sufficient for me to not consider Linode for hosting. As being in an ultra small team of 2, we can't afford the luxury of API requests failing so many times.
Having used AWS since 2010, and since 2007 for backups(s3), I can say that your comparison $20,000 in AWS vs $250 is wrong. Have you assumed a very foolish selection by a user? Where in a user will just pick up all their services (e.g. RDS for a DB, etc.)
Just as a fact, we don't use RDS but install MySql by ourselves as it allows us to have other things on that instance, and also comes out cheap in comparison. On this note my contribution to the OP (article) would have been bundle different services on an instance, rather than buying stereotyped instances. Of course YMMV.
The biggest advantage is for ultra small teams, where you have comfort of a stable environment, with respect to instances launching; APIs working; volumes getting attached/unattached; snapshots getting taken; backups done on s3. All taking place automatically, while you rest peacefully.
I am not arguing that apples to apples Linode (or some other service) will not be cheaper than AWS. I am sure it will be. But still many people would like to stick with AWS because of stability and maturity of its cloud.
Also you got to give credit to AWS for pioneering hourly billing, and disrupting the cloud environment. Despite agreeing with you mainly on the cheaper point, when I moved to AWS from dedicated hosting in 2010, my monthly bills reduced.
Lastly. The experimentation. The wide variety of instances it has from micro (to the recently launched nano) to ultra large instances, allow you to experiment a lot. For example: in the past few months: I moved from couple m3.large to couple c4.xlarge, while experimenting in between on c3.xlarge type of instances.
Finally, when you make such a blanket statement, you not only demonstrate your naivete but also undermine the decisions of thousands of satisfied AWS users.
All said, I would like you (Linode) and others to be a good alternative. I am glad you are there. This is to keep AWS on its toes. Which is in my interest as their customer.
PS: Lest my handle makes someone think, I represent AWS. Please be assured I do not. I just created this handle, when I had to ask an AWS specific question (you can check my first post in this handle). And then continued with it for other things.
Edit: minor correction
Re: AWS mistakes to avoid
#260Full disclosure: I work for Linode and I am super biased. This is my own opinion etc etc Perhaps the first AWS mistake you might make is... using AWS? Even before I started at Linode, I thought it was terrible. It's extremely, unreasonably pricey. The UI is terrible. Their offerings are availble elsewhere. I started MediaCrush, a now-defunct media hosting website, on AWS. After a while, we switched to dedicated hosti…
Since you're dealing in absolutes, let me return the favor; you're being a little silly. Yes, Linode beats AWS when it comes to price. On the other hand, Linode's offer is incredibly basic and simplistic. AWS offers service after service that Linode simply doesn't and realistically cannot. Sure, you can emulate a subset of these services (and a subset of their features) using open-source software but at what price ?…
Your post basically picks the one thing he voluntarily disclosed and ignores the rest of his perfectly reasonable statements in some manic attempt to defend the one true stack.
The only points you even remotely bring up are vague and wishy-washy and could easily be applied to any statement, even outside of programming.