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Serverless Horrors

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Re: Serverless Horrors

#311

Post by phoenixhaber »

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…

Since this seems to be getting some comments. Yes, it is in fact easy to shut down an instance if it goes over a spending limit. As in you monitor traffic tied directly to the billing system and you set up an if statement and if it goes over the limit you shut down the server and dump the service to a static drive.

It's the easiest thing in the world - they just don't want to because they figured that they could use their scale to screw over their customers. And now you have the same guys who screwed everyone over with cloud compute wanting you to pay for AI by using their monopoly position to charge you economic rents. Because now things like edge compute is easy because everyone overspent on hard drives because of crypto. And so you have jerks who just move on to the next thing to use their power to abuse the market rather than build credibility because the market incentivizes building bubbles and bad behavior.

Smart evil people who tell others "no you're just too dumb to 'get it' (oh by the way give me more money before this market collapses)" are the absolute bane of the industry.

It's weird that you have people in here defending the practice as if it's a difficult thing to do. Taxi cabs somehow manage not to charge you thousands of dollars for places you don't drive to but you can't set up an if statement on a server? So you're saying Amazon is run by people that are dumber than a taxi cab company?

Ok, well you might have a point. And this is how Waymo was started. I may or may not be kidding.

Re: Serverless Horrors

#312

Post by derefr »

pixl97 wrote: post #228
christophilus wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree, but I could also see how someone would complain about that: “Our e-commerce site was taken down by Amazon right on our biggest day of the year. They should have just moved us up to the next tier.”

Then let that be the non default option.

The default option is always going to be the one that makes the majority of Amazon's paying customers happy.

Re: Serverless Horrors

#313

Post by leptons »

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…

A "Server" is typically a single machine that has a specific OS and runs layers of various software that allows your business logic to be accessed by other computers (by your users). For a "Server" you typically have to choose an OS to run, install all the support software (server monitoring, etc), update the software, and if the server fails you have to fix it or rebuild it.

With "Serverless", your code is in a "function as a service" model where all you have to worry about is the business logic (your code). You don't have to set up the server, you don't have to install the server OS, or any basic server software that is needed to support the business logic code (http server, etc). You don't have to update the server or the underlying server software. You don't have to perform any maintenance to keep the server running smoothly. You never (typically) have to worry about your server going down. All you have to do is upload your business logic function "somewhere" and then your code runs when called. Essentially you do not have to deal with any of the hassle that comes with setting up and maintaining your own "server", all you have to do is write the code that is your business logic.

That's why it's called "Serverless" because you don't have to deal with any of the hassle that comes with running an actual "server".

Re: Serverless Horrors

#314

Post by bee_rider »

exe34 wrote: post #164
bee_rider wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> But, I don’t think the idea of just stopping charging works. I'm sorry but this is complete bullshit. they can set a default limit of 1 trillion dollars and give us the option to drop it to $5. there's a good reason they won't do it, but it's not this bullshit claim that's always bandied about.

How would you resolve the situation where ongoing storage costs cause the limit (whatever it is) to be exceeded?

Re: Serverless Horrors

#315

Post by qcnguy »

McGlockenshire wrote: post #245
qcnguy wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not comparable. With a VPS there is no monthly maximum, just a max load on a second by second basis. You can be hit with traffic of which 90% bounces because your server is down, get nowhere near your intended monthly maximum, and then the rest of the month is quiet.

You seem to be describing this as a bad thing instead of the objectively good thing that it is.

The ideal is obviously smoothed limits, such that you can absorb a big traffic spike if it still fits within your budget. Nobody seems to offer that.

Re: Serverless Horrors

#316

Post by scarface_74 »

citizenpaul wrote: post #304
JustExAWS wrote: post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have had a “larger account” when I was at startup and was able to ask for a refund for a business. As I asked before, if what is causing overages is not web requests but storage should they just delete everything?

Not sure what you define as larger account. Counter real world example. I was doing some consult work for a place that had a 9k unexpected charge on AWS. They asked about it and I explained about how they could dispute it. They said ugh never-mind and just paid it. FYI it was a charity which I've since learned its common for charities to be wasteful like this with money since they are understaffed and OPM(Other peopl…

So how is that a counter example? The client never asked for a credit. Since the startup I worked for, I have been working in AWS consulting - first directly at AWS (Professional Services) and now a third party consulting company.

While I have no love for AWS as an employer, I can tell you that everyone up and down the chain makes damn sure that customers don’t waste money on AWS. We were always incentivized to find the lowest cost option that met their needs. AWS definitely doesn’t want customers to have a bad experience or to get the reputation that it’s hard to get a refund when you make a mistake.

Of course AWS wanted more workloads on their system.

Semi related, AWS will gladly throw credits at customers to pay for the cost of migrations and for both inside and outside professional services firms to do proof of concepts.

Re: Serverless Horrors

#317

Post by nostrebored »

general1465 wrote: post #243

I tried AWS serverless, figured out that it is impossible to test anything locally while you are forced to use AWS IAM role for serverless run which has access to everything. That's just a problem waiting to happen while you are always running tests on production...

1. Put your stuff in a stack. Deploy it to your isolated developer account. Basically free staging environment.

2. Use the officially supported docker runtime for local testing.

3. Treat it like any other code and make unit tests

4. Use one of the tools like localstack to emulate your staging env on your machine.

There are so many options that I don’t know how you could walk away with your opinion.

Re: Serverless Horrors

#318

Post by nromiun »

I was also too careless with AWS when I was a beginner with no deployment experience and I am very lucky that I did not push a wrong button.

All these stories of bill forgiveness reminds me of survivorship bias. Does this happens to everyone that reaches out to support or just the ones that get enough traction on social media? I am pretty sure there is no official policy from AWS, GCP or Azure.

Re: Serverless Horrors

#319

Post by [deleted] »

qcnguy wrote: post #90
nurettin wrote: post #52

I've had this twice. Once with oracle, once with azure. They both charged me $2000-$5000 for simply opening and closing a database instance (used only for a single day to test a friend's open source project) To be fair, support was excellent both times and they waived the bills after I explained the situation.

How did you run up a $5000 bill for just testing a project? What kind of project was it that could put so much load on the DB?

[deleted]
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