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Google Cloud vs. AWS Onboarding Comparison

kevinslin.com

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Re: Google Cloud vs. AWS Onboarding Comparison

#151
post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just started using Google Cloud SQL – the allure of a managed Postgres service was strong. Can you share some of your experiences with it?

Sure. - No way to upgrade major postgres version without full export and import into new cluster. - Incredible delay between postgres versions. IIRC, it took nearly 2 years for them to add postgres 11 after it was released. - HA is basically useless. Costs double, still has 4-5 minute window of downtime as it fails over, doesn't avoid maintenance window downtime (both primary/standby have same maintenance window) and…

I need to run Postgres in production soon. I've used AWS RDS (MySQL) in the past, but am also considering Google Cloud SQL.

Things that seem similar in AWS:

- For major version upgrades, you need to bring up a new instance from a snapshot and catch it up with replication.

- HA failover results in a few minutes of downtime. (They claim using their SQL proxy will reduce this.)

- Lag in providing the latest Postgres versions. GCP seems to be a bit ahead of AWS here.

Is there a managed Postgres offering that you prefer? Aiven looks nice, feature-wise.

Re: Google Cloud vs. AWS Onboarding Comparison

#152
post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just started using Google Cloud SQL – the allure of a managed Postgres service was strong. Can you share some of your experiences with it?

Sure. - No way to upgrade major postgres version without full export and import into new cluster. - Incredible delay between postgres versions. IIRC, it took nearly 2 years for them to add postgres 11 after it was released. - HA is basically useless. Costs double, still has 4-5 minute window of downtime as it fails over, doesn't avoid maintenance window downtime (both primary/standby have same maintenance window) and…

Why don't they make the upgrade seamless? If it's truly an export/import process, then it should be dead simple for them to do that on their end. Especially after they've snatched your db from serving requests

Re: Google Cloud vs. AWS Onboarding Comparison

#153
post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was able to get 130k free GCP credits (over 3 years) just by filling out the startup forms... as a complete nobody. You don't even need an affiliate to sponsor you.

I'm not saying anything for or against AWS or GCP. All I'm saying is most startups experience with AWS won't begin with "Send email to dedicated YC email address" so it's hard to draw conclusions from this article about what AWS support is like for "regular" start ups.

While I agree that this is a confound and as someone who also went through the same process, GCP also knows that you're applying as a YC company, and is a PITA regardless - in that way, there's a normalization factor of applying to both entities' startup credit programs with similar social factors. I've heard the same pains with GCP from non-YC founders about the free credits process and from non-YC technologists about bad customer service.

Re: Google Cloud vs. AWS Onboarding Comparison

#154
I recently joined a new company to start a Data Science team. They had an existing GCP account for years that they had small usage on and had a long term valid form of payment. I request a tiny increase in our GPU quota (ie: 8 T4s in one region) on GCP and was denied and told to talk to a sales person. I literally said in my message to sales that AWS doesn't make it this hard to give them money. Every quota increase still seems to require escalation to our sales person and all they could offer as advice was to switch to invoice billing.

Re: Google Cloud vs. AWS Onboarding Comparison

#155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same terrible experience here with GCP sales and support, but the other options aren't much better. The reality is that unless you are in the 7 figure range, you don't get serious attention. I'm still surprised why sales is so dysfunctional but billions of quarterly profit means there's little need to change.

GCP loses more than a billion a quarter: https://www.google.com/amp/s/techcrunch.com/2021/02/02/googl...

Non-AMP link: https://techcrunch.com/2021/02/02/google-cloud-lost-5-6b-in-...

Re: Google Cloud vs. AWS Onboarding Comparison

#156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eh. It’s similar in AWS-land. Basic business hours support is $29/month or 3% of your service spend, whichever is greater. 24/7 is $100/mo or 10%, which also includes outage assistance. I’ve also worked for places with enterprise support ($15,000/mo or 10%) but of you’re bringing in millions per month it’s definitely worth it. The AWS personal health dashboard is also pretty reliable. The public status page is the so…

I don't know about Google's support offerings. But when I worked for a startup that was on AWS, here's what we'd do: 1.) Try to figure things out ourselves 2.) If we can't figure it out, subscribe to AWS Support. 3.) Get question answered and then turn off the support plan. You'll have your support plan for the rest of the month and pay a prorated amount for the days during which you had support. It's quick and cheap…

You can do the same with GCP

Re: Google Cloud vs. AWS Onboarding Comparison

#157
post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google will suspend entire accounts even if you have more than one owner. A few years back, our business credit card was somehow stolen and used to buy Google Adwords. We disputed the charge with our bank. A day or two later, at 4am local time, our GCP account was suspended for fraud (presumably because the same, stolen, card was attached to that account). All instances were stopped and our service was brought to a h…

That's why one should not use GCP for anything

AWS doesn't suspend your account if you chargeback your AWS charges?

Hold on while I go mine myself a ton of crypto coins.

Re: Google Cloud vs. AWS Onboarding Comparison

#158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

you only get billing/account support unless you have subscription, starting at 150 US$ month

Huh? Please look at the actual AWS page: https://aws.amazon.com/premiumsupport/pricing/ Developer support $29/month, and business support is $100 (both go up if you spend more). I paid for business support. You get 24x7 phone, email, and chat access to Cloud Support Engineers Unlimited cases / unlimited contacts (IAM supported) This is for $100/MONTH!! That is the deal of the century. And they are ridiculously helpfu…

The price starts to go up steeply once you hit the % of monthly spend.

I'd guess they don't get many resource intensive support queries from the < $10k a month customers (and at that level you probably don't get the A team support)

Re: Google Cloud vs. AWS Onboarding Comparison

#160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seems like k8s is a big seller for a lot of companies. We don't use it currently on our team and the larger company is whole-sale in on AWS I'm not sure they'd ever be able to make the switch. Always like to see why people make these big changes though, thanks!

I spent over a year doing a full migration from AWS EC2 + ECS instances to GCP + docker + kubernetes. It was a huge task that has paid off very well. 1) Costs per customer are lower because you can fit more containers per VM due to kubernetes doing the scheduling for you. Customers also include developer environments. 2) The number of deploys is way up because there is a simple and established pattern that everyone f…

I know you're only picking on Digital Ocean incidentally here, but their managed Kubernetes offering is Pretty Okay. I use it for my personal stuff and it's pretty much everything I expect from a managed Kubernetes offering.

Just don't use EKS. That is managed Kubernetes in the checkbox marketing sense only.

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