Maybe what the world really needs is a FOSS Framework that implements all the features on a swarm of VPS/Hardware servers? It's really disturbing to see the web reduced to a handful of giant cloud providers who also happen to suck at doing their job
Troubles with the AWS web console
111–120 of 237 posts
Re: Troubles with the AWS web console
#112I know many people will disagree, but I really miss the VMware fat windows client. (vsphere 5, before they ruined it with the weird flash hybrid that didn't work properly) That, was a paragon of design reliability and speed compared to the AWS console. What annoys me the most is the sheer weight of each page. If you have to context change, its multiple seconds before the page is useable. A classic example is lambda.…
> anything to do with ECS can cause a 3 hour, uninterruptible hang, followed by another timeout as it tries to roll back
This is the single largest problem with ECS and the fact that neither the containers team, nor the CloudFormation team have paid any attention to the problem after who knows how many years is incredibly frustrating.
And 3 hours is actually one of the better cases. 10+ hour hangs that can only be cancelled / rolled back by contacting support are joyous occasions.
Re: Troubles with the AWS web console
#113These comments are fascinating to me. I was responsible for designing, leading, and building the frontend for an AWS service. One of the challenges was with obtaining useful feedback from a diverse range of people. During the product definition phase, the majority of the feedback, input, and feature priority was for customers who were planning to dedicate a large budget towards using said service. I often felt that s…
Noting your verb tense, “I was”, I’m assuming you’re no longer in that role. This isn’t feedback, just discussion. I talked to Jassy after his keynote in 2018: “Your message says AWS is for ‘builders’. Why do you keep saying ‘just click and ...’ instead of ‘just call the API and’?” In short, to your point: AWS is for builders... who pay. And right now all the growth is in enterprise, where we don’t know how to make A…
Most AWS services' console/API are 1-1. Occasionally a console might offer some convenience features which are just a combination of API calls, but I'm not aware of any service that has functionality solely offered in the console. As the original comment touched on, this would be really unusual in AWS where most attention goes to the APIs/SDKs which are what larger customers use.
Re: Troubles with the AWS web console
#114These comments are fascinating to me. I was responsible for designing, leading, and building the frontend for an AWS service. One of the challenges was with obtaining useful feedback from a diverse range of people. During the product definition phase, the majority of the feedback, input, and feature priority was for customers who were planning to dedicate a large budget towards using said service. I often felt that s…
The API sucks, too, though, when used from the command line. Every non-automated way of interacting with AWS is like pulling teeth, and in reality most people do this all the time. You can't automate a process you've never done manually, and you don't necessarily want to invest in building out an automation which you only need to do a few times. It's like AWS's excuse is "we offload the problem of a good UI onto our users", which in my opinion is really stupid. All it would take is one UI team which made common tools and standards for UI design and applied them throughout. The API has a consistent design throughout, so why not the UI?
Re: Troubles with the AWS web console
#115Then you haven’t tried the Google Cloud consoles.
Re: Troubles with the AWS web console
#116Earlier quoted context omitted.
> universal thinking within AWS is that people will ultimately use the API/CLI/SDK ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°) - But still 99% of tutorials and documentation refer to the UI.
To be fair, the AWS documentation nearly always covers both.
an outdated version of both.
Here's a bunch of buttons! What do you mean you didn't install the CLI, discover your system has mixed up versions of the package manager, and finally get around to running this convoluted command, after you learn how to get a list of IDs from your organization with the CLI
Re: Troubles with the AWS web console
#117Earlier quoted context omitted.
For me that isn't the problem. It's mapping the several-thousand acronym riddled hairballs into reality. The reality matches no other reality which means the knowledge is probably useless in 20 years time, much as the knowledge I had of proprietary stuff then is useless now. My head has only a certain amount of space and motivation for ephemeral complexity hairballs like AWS. At this point I have to wonder if this is…
Being in technology means constant learning. My knowledge of the intricacies of the 65C02 in the 80s, working with DEC VAX and Stratus VOS in the 90s, knowing MFC and DCOM in the 2000s, etc all useless. When I started learning AWS, it was quite simple mapping what I’ve done for over 20 years on prem from both a development and networking perspective.
>My knowledge of the intricacies of the 65C02 in the 80s, working with DEC VAX and Stratus VOS in the 90s
VOS rocked! Loved the old Stratus boxes :-)
Re: Troubles with the AWS web console
#118Earlier quoted context omitted.
The only part of the console that I absolutely hate is dealing with the Parameter Store. But I hate everything else about the parameter store too so there is that. CodePipeline is pretty bad too. There is no way you can create a cross account code pipeline from the console.
CloudWatch log filters are pretty bad too. I basically just use ctrl + f now in cw logs to find what I'm looking for.
I haven't had this problem. For simple string searches CloudWatch returns exactly what I'm looking for, even for partial word matches, and for more complicated queries there is the excellent Insights feature.
Re: Troubles with the AWS web console
#119Search in the UI is my particular bane. Sometimes it works great (searching for EC2 instances). Sometimes you need to construct restricted search queries (slightly aided by a slow dropdown auto-complete) that look like `Name: Begins With: /blah/` (ParameterStore). Sometimes search is client-side, and only searches the page you're currently on (ECR, I think? I can't remember what does this). I think in this case it's…
The search is definitely one of the biggest pain points when using the UI. I can only hope someone makes an executive decision and forces every service team to offer a proper search (more than prefix, same page search).
I assume the bad search functionality happens because the service teams don’t really use their own service with more than some demo resources.
Re: Troubles with the AWS web console
#120These comments are fascinating to me. I was responsible for designing, leading, and building the frontend for an AWS service. One of the challenges was with obtaining useful feedback from a diverse range of people. During the product definition phase, the majority of the feedback, input, and feature priority was for customers who were planning to dedicate a large budget towards using said service. I often felt that s…
I think that the vast majority of UI's in AWS are perfectly fine. But there's one that drives my entire team insane: the AWS Parameter Store
Holy mother of god, the search on it is horrific and simply doesn't work. Heartfelt begging through the feedback tool goes unanswered. I have offered money, firstborn children, sacrificial goats, virtually everything. But the search is still broken :( I've had to scroll through a hundred pages of parameters to find things.