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ElephantSQL Is Shutting Down

elephantsql.com

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Re: ElephantSQL Is Shutting Down

#111

Post by AMartin223 »

neilv wrote: post #102
renegade-otter wrote: post #66

I switched to DigitalOcean and it's been a delight. $15/month for a managed Postgres is a good deal, and I am really tired of the hellscape that has become AWS configuration even for the most simplest things. Isn't the whole point of the cloud is simplicity?

For kitchen table startups that nevertheless deal in important data, having reliable managed PostgreSQL for much lower cost than AWS RDS would be awesome. The main thing I'm looking for in managed PostgreSQL isn't "installation" -- that's easy -- what I need is not to have to spend weeks of configuring and testing and drilling, to be reasonably confident that I won't lose customer data. I see DigitalOcean does PG sta…

FYI to answer your questions both Aiven (the one mentioned by ElephantSQL as the partnered migration path) and Digitalocean do regular WAL-based backups in addition to the daily, so latest transaction available is 'moments before someone ripped the cables'. It does kind of suck the docs are not super clear about that though.

Re: ElephantSQL Is Shutting Down

#112

Post by craigkerstiens »

a2800276 wrote: post #4

What a shame. This is "cloud" as it ought to be: be clear about the service you provide, provide it well, no lock in. Simple and matter-of-factly. I just started evaluating them about a month ago, loved their hosted postgres and a couple of days later the EOL announcement poped up in my dashboard :(

Fully agree with this sentiment it's very much our focus and goal at Crunchy Data with one big thing I'd add-great support.

I recall seeing them crop up in the early days of building and running Heroku Postgres, they were a very very early managed service provider. To my knowledge they never seemed to grow to massive scale but were a steady business (though I don't know any of the details for sure). That they were still around for over a decade is a testament from a lot of others.

Re: ElephantSQL Is Shutting Down

#113

Post by renegade-otter »

paulddraper wrote: post #74
renegade-otter wrote: post #66

I switched to DigitalOcean and it's been a delight. $15/month for a managed Postgres is a good deal, and I am really tired of the hellscape that has become AWS configuration even for the most simplest things. Isn't the whole point of the cloud is simplicity?

What has gotten more complicated that used to be simpler in AWS?

The number of instance types alone for RDS is ... around 200? Then there's storage types, IOPS, multi-zone, etc. All of that without any price estimate. Which is by design, of course.

Digital Ocean will give you the cost as you configure the options. Complete transparency. This is how it SHOULD be.

Cost obfuscation is an AWS feature. I was afraid to spin up the smallest instance because I didn't want to find out it was going to cost me over $100 at the end of the billing cycle.

Re: ElephantSQL Is Shutting Down

#115

Post by neilv »

AMartin223 wrote: post #111
neilv wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For kitchen table startups that nevertheless deal in important data, having reliable managed PostgreSQL for much lower cost than AWS RDS would be awesome. The main thing I'm looking for in managed PostgreSQL isn't "installation" -- that's easy -- what I need is not to have to spend weeks of configuring and testing and drilling, to be reasonably confident that I won't lose customer data. I see DigitalOcean does PG sta…

FYI to answer your questions both Aiven (the one mentioned by ElephantSQL as the partnered migration path) and Digitalocean do regular WAL-based backups in addition to the daily, so latest transaction available is 'moments before someone ripped the cables'. It does kind of suck the docs are not super clear about that though.

Thank you. That helps. Though, not finding documentation that they even do it doesn't give me the confidence that they've been really rigorous about implementing it.

I think, the next time I need this for a kitchen table startup, I'll have see whether the documentation is much more reassuring then, or contact them.

If I need more reassurance than I'm getting, I might have to get AWS startup credits, and hope AWS costs don't outpace my ability to pay.

Re: ElephantSQL Is Shutting Down

#116

Post by riku_iki »

eddd-ddde wrote: post #82
tbarbugli wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

well, they shut this down probably because they cannot afford to keep a product that bring little revenue. I never heard of AWS retiring a product (I am excluding ancient stuff like VPC classic and SimpleDB, both had an upgrade path to something superior)

AWS can continue to provide you a product that consistently loses money because they have a gazillion million dollars. They have the ability to kill comeptition by losing money until they go broke first.

For AWS such services bring network effect, and pay back in other segments of ecosystem.

Re: ElephantSQL Is Shutting Down

#117

Post by riku_iki »

AMartin223 wrote: post #111
neilv wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For kitchen table startups that nevertheless deal in important data, having reliable managed PostgreSQL for much lower cost than AWS RDS would be awesome. The main thing I'm looking for in managed PostgreSQL isn't "installation" -- that's easy -- what I need is not to have to spend weeks of configuring and testing and drilling, to be reasonably confident that I won't lose customer data. I see DigitalOcean does PG sta…

FYI to answer your questions both Aiven (the one mentioned by ElephantSQL as the partnered migration path) and Digitalocean do regular WAL-based backups in addition to the daily, so latest transaction available is 'moments before someone ripped the cables'. It does kind of suck the docs are not super clear about that though.

> Digitalocean do regular WAL-based backups in addition to the daily, so latest transaction available is 'moments before someone ripped the cables'. It does kind of suck the docs are not super clear about that though.

how do you know they do WAL backup if they don't mention it anywhere in the doc?..

Re: ElephantSQL Is Shutting Down

#119

Post by ydant »

tempnow987 wrote: post #88
tbarbugli wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

well, they shut this down probably because they cannot afford to keep a product that bring little revenue. I never heard of AWS retiring a product (I am excluding ancient stuff like VPC classic and SimpleDB, both had an upgrade path to something superior)

SimpleDB disappeared off the marketing pages - but I don't think it got shut down in reality until 2020 maybe? It was easily 5+ years after DynamoDB came along. There was definitely a period where there was little SimpleDB availability publicly but on the backend it kept working. Would love it if someone had more of the detailed history.

SimpleDB still works for my company's AWS account. There's been no announcement of a shutdown that I've seen (and I check occasionally since it's almost entirely disappeared from most of AWS's documentation).
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