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Serverless Horrors

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131–140 of 503 posts

Re: Serverless Horrors

#131
post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The entire service with it's horrifically complicated click through dashboard (but you can get a certification! It's so complicated they invented a fake degree for it!) just to confuse the customer into losing money. By that logic, any technology that you can get certified in is too complicated? Most systems are now distributed and presenting a holistic view of how it was designed to work can be useful to prevent s…

> By that logic, any technology that you can get certified in is too complicated? In IT, I am inclined to agree with that. In real engineering, it's sometimes necessary, especially dangerous technology and technology that people trust with their life

> dangerous technology and technology that people trust with their life

Software runs on so many things we depend on IMO it also in many cases falls in the "dangerous technology" category.

Non-hobby OSes, non-hobby web browsers, device drivers, software that runs critical infrastructure, software that runs on network equipment, software that handles personal data, --IMHO it would not be unreasonable to require formal qualifications for developers working on any of those.

Re: Serverless Horrors

#132

Yeah I also left my website hosted on Google Cloud because costs popped from everywhere, and there is basically no built-in functionality to limit them. So I didn't really slept relaxed (I actually slept great, but I hope you get the point) knowing that a bug could cost me... who knows how much. Actually, as the website of OP says, for spending control you have budget notifications and with that you can disable the b…

You can write Google cloud functions to disable your credit card when certain thresholds are met pretty easily, but it's unethical that this isn't just a toggle somewhere in settings.

Re: Serverless Horrors

#133
post #83

When I was learning to program through a bootcamp I spun up an elastic beanstalk instance that was free but required a credit card to prove your identity. No problem that makes sense - it's an easy way to prove authentication as a bot can't spam a credit card (or else it would be financial fraud and most likely a felony). Amazon then charged me one hundred thousand dollars as the server was hit by bot spam. I had the…

This is an example of why cloud hosting is so scary. Yes, Amazon, and I assume Azure and Google's cloud and others, "usually" refund the money. But I don't want to be forced into bankruptcy because my five visitor a week demo project suddenly becomes the target of a DDOS for no reason at all and the hosting company decides this isn't a "usually" so please send the wire transfer.

When I am playing around in the cloud I am super paranoid about charges, so I end up locking the ACLs to only permit traffic to my home IP. It’s too bad that they don’t have a better built in way of making sandbox labs. When I was doing cloud training with A Cloud Guru, it would generate a whole global AWS instance that would only last for 30 minutes.

Re: Serverless Horrors

#134
post #65
post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't they charge for every TB exceeding the included limit? (website says "For each additional TB, we charge € 1.19 in the EU and US, and € 8.81 in Singapore.")

They do, but the risk of having to pay $1.44/TB after the first 20TB is easier to swallow than say, CloudFront's ~$100/TB after 1TB.

> CloudFront's ~$100/TB after 1TB.

I had to double-check because that sounds hilariously wrong. I can't find it anywhere in the pricing. It's at most 0.08/TB.

Am I missing something?

Re: Serverless Horrors

#135
post #134
post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They do, but the risk of having to pay $1.44/TB after the first 20TB is easier to swallow than say, CloudFront's ~$100/TB after 1TB.

> CloudFront's ~$100/TB after 1TB. I had to double-check because that sounds hilariously wrong. I can't find it anywhere in the pricing. It's at most 0.08/TB. Am I missing something?

You're missing the unit, it's $0.085 per GB, not TB, and that's only for NA/EU traffic. I rounded up a bit from that number because other regions cost more, plus you get billed a flat amount for each request as well.

They do offer progressively cheaper rates as you use more bandwidth each month, but that doesn't have much impact until you're already spending eye watering amounts of money.

Re: Serverless Horrors

#136

When I was learning to program through a bootcamp I spun up an elastic beanstalk instance that was free but required a credit card to prove your identity. No problem that makes sense - it's an easy way to prove authentication as a bot can't spam a credit card (or else it would be financial fraud and most likely a felony). Amazon then charged me one hundred thousand dollars as the server was hit by bot spam. I had the…

These "refund after overcharge" things are not without benefit to the corporations. They get a nice tax write-off. It's couch-cushion change for them, but it adds up. They have whole armies of beancounters, dreaming this stuff up. It's also the game behind those "coupons" you get, for outrageously-priced meds that aren't covered by insurance. If they charge $1,000 for the medication, but give you a "special discount"…

I’m fairly certain that’s incorrect.

Businesses are only taxed on actual revenue earned.

What you decide to charge—whether $100, $50, or even giving it away for free—is purely a business decision, not a tax one.

This is different from a nonprofit donation scenario though. For example, if your service normally costs $X but you choose to provide it for free (or at a discount) as a donation to a non-profit, you can typically write off the difference.

Re: Serverless Horrors

#137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These aren’t limits though, they are just budget notifications. What would be helpful, would be if when you set up your account there was a default limit – as in an actual limit, where all projects stop working once you go over it - of some sane amount like $5 or $50 or even $500. I have a handful of toy projects on AWS and Google cloud. On both I have budgets set up at $1 and $10, with notifications at 10% 50% and 9…

I’ve accidentally hit myself with a bigger than expected AWS bill (just $500 but as a student I didn’t really want to spend that much). So I get being annoyed with the pricing model. But, I don’t think the idea of just stopping charging works. For example, I had some of their machine image thingies (AMI) on my account. They charged me less than a dollar a month, totally reasonable. The only reasonable interpretation…

> The only reasonable interpretation of “emergency stop on all charges completely” would be to delete those images

I disagree; a reasonable but customer-friendly interpretation would be to move these into a read-only "recycle bin" storage for e.g. a month, and only afterwards delete them if you don't provide additional budget.

Re: Serverless Horrors

#138

"Serverless" is a an Orwellian name for a server-based system!

But your so called "no-code" system runs on code. Checkmate atheists.

There becomes a point where being mad that the specific flavor of PaaS termed serverless achtually has severs is just finding a thing to be mad at.

Re: Serverless Horrors

#140

I read a lot of the posts at the little blog here and, uh, every single one sounds like a complete amateur making a cloud configuration mistake. I haven't found one that is the provider's fault or the fault of "serverless" I would be embarrassed to put my name on these posts admitting I can't handle my configs while blaming everyone but myself. Serverless isn't a horror, serverlesshorrors poster. You are the horror.…

You're not wrong about cloud configuration mistakes, but a tool that lets you increase costs 10000x (without even letting you set a safety) is a hell of a chainsaw.

I'm more worried about the overconfident SRE that doesn't stay up at night worrying about these.

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