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Serverless Horrors

serverlesshorrors.com

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Re: Serverless Horrors

#251

Post by noAnswer »

mikeocool wrote: post #124
phoenixhaber wrote: post #43

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…

> I had them refund the bill (as in how am I going to pay it?) but to this day I've hated Amazon with a passion They refunded you $100k with few questions asked, and you hate them for it? I’ve made a few expensive mistakes on AWS that were entirely my fault, and AWS has always refunded me for them. I imagine if Amazon did implement “shut every down when I exceed my budget” there’d be a bunch of horror stories like “I…

He hit you in the face? But girl, he apologized! Best boyfriend ever.

Re: Serverless Horrors

#252

Post by 104 »

bratwurst3000 wrote: post #155
phoenixhaber wrote: post #43

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…

allways set cost alarm and max spending. AWS has great tools to controll costs. You could have blocked this with good config but I understand its confusing and not super apparent. IMHO there should be a pop up or sth asking " you want to stop the instance the moment it costs anything?" its so easy to get billed a ridicules amount if money

[dead]

Re: Serverless Horrors

#253

Post by mmh0000 »

Vvector wrote: post #153
VectorLock wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Amazon refunded you and you hate them for it? I think one of the reasons I appreciate AWS so much is that any time there has been snafu that led to a huge bill like this they've made it pretty painless to get a refund- just like you experienced.

If it is a "free tier", Amazon should halt the application when it exceeds quota. Moving the account to a paid tier and charging $100k is not the right thing to do.

Yes. They said it was free then they surprise charge you $100k.

That’s an insane amount of both money and stress. You’re at Amazon’s mercy if they will or will not refund it. And while this is in process you’re wondering if your entire financial future is ruined.

Re: Serverless Horrors

#254

Post by maxbond »

zahlman wrote: post #219

I don't understand why it should be called "serverless" when using cloud infrastructure. Fundamentally you're still creating software following a client-server model, and expecting a server to run somewhere so that your users' clients work. To me, "serverless" is when the end user downloads the software, and thereafter does not require an Internet connection to use it. Or at the very least, if the software uses an In…

That's generally called "local." Serverless is poorly named but describes how certain backends are deployed, not applications without a backend.

Re: Serverless Horrors

#255

Post by McGlockenshire »

skippyboxedhero wrote: post #92
game_the0ry wrote: post #76

I have a feeling I will be downvoted for this, but... Have the people posting these horror stories never heard of billing alerts?

Many of the stories on the site are from people who have billing alerts. If you have bot spam, how do you actually think their billing alerts work? The alert is updated every 100ms and shuts off your server immediately? That isn't how billing alerts can or should work.

Yes, actually, if continuing to run the service is going to exceed my available budget then I do want the service turned off! If I can't pay for it, and I know I can't pay for it, what other possible choice do I have?

Do any of you people have budgets, or do you all rely on the unending flow of VC money?

Re: Serverless Horrors

#256

Post by mlhpdx »

tannedNerd wrote: post #233
mlhpdx wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it simple? So what happens when you hit the cap, does AWS delete the resources that are incurring the cost and destroy your app? Imagine the horror stories on Hacker News that would generate.

Or simply returns 503? Why would you go directly to destroying things??

Not everything on AWS is a Web app

Re: Serverless Horrors

#257

Post by mlhpdx »

estimator7292 wrote: post #239
mlhpdx wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it simple? So what happens when you hit the cap, does AWS delete the resources that are incurring the cost and destroy your app? Imagine the horror stories on Hacker News that would generate.

I mean, would you rather have a $10k build or have your server forcefully shut down after you hit $1k in three days? One of those things is more important to different types of business. In some situations, any downtime at all is worth thousands per hour. In others, the service staying online is only worth hundreds of dollars a week. So yes, the solution is as simple as giving the user hard spend caps that they can c…

If you want hard caps, you can already do it. It’s not a checkbox in the UX, but the capability is there.

Re: Serverless Horrors

#258

Post by mlhpdx »

ndsipa_pomu wrote: post #218
mlhpdx wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it simple? So what happens when you hit the cap, does AWS delete the resources that are incurring the cost and destroy your app? Imagine the horror stories on Hacker News that would generate.

Surely that's the fault of the purchaser setting the cap too low. Maybe rather than completely stopping the service, it'd be better to rate limit the service when approaching/reaching the cap.

Using that logic, isn’t it the fault of the user to set up an app without rate limiting?

Re: Serverless Horrors

#259

Post by CivBase »

I can't imagine hosting a small-time project on rented infrastructure without some kind of mechanism to terminate it once costs exceed a reasonable threshold.

Re: Serverless Horrors

#260

Post by sokoloff »

tannedNerd wrote: post #233
mlhpdx wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it simple? So what happens when you hit the cap, does AWS delete the resources that are incurring the cost and destroy your app? Imagine the horror stories on Hacker News that would generate.

Or simply returns 503? Why would you go directly to destroying things??

Suppose you’re going over the billing cap based on your storage consumption, how would AWS stop the continued consumption without deleting storage?
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