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Switching to AWS Graviton slashed our infrastructure bill

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Re: Switching to AWS Graviton slashed our infrastructure bill

#121

Post by wizofaus »

pclmulqdq wrote: post #14
c7DJTLrn wrote: post #2

Cloud cost optimisation is underrated. In the companies I've worked in nobody has really given a shit (at least not under normal economic circumstances). In the industry there's a strong avoidance of ARM compute instances for no good reason. If I were building from scratch today I would definitely go with Graviton.

I think the main reason is "I want to run the same binaries locally that I run in the cloud," and it's a pretty valid one. However, it's also an expensive one sometimes.

Valid why? Do you not trust compilers? Is it infeasible to (at least occasionally) run automated tests on cloud instances? Personally I've been pretty used to quite significant differences between local and production environments - it's rarely an issue, and I don't remember CPU architecture every being one. Things like timezones or firewall restrictions/ network differences (including talking to 3rd party APIs with IP whitelisting) are far more likely to cause problems.

Re: Switching to AWS Graviton slashed our infrastructure bill

#122

Post by allset_ »

gryf wrote: post #24
c7DJTLrn wrote: post #2

Cloud cost optimisation is underrated. In the companies I've worked in nobody has really given a shit (at least not under normal economic circumstances). In the industry there's a strong avoidance of ARM compute instances for no good reason. If I were building from scratch today I would definitely go with Graviton.

This. We have three people entirely dedicated to reducing costs. As for avoiding ARM, we do only x86-64 because corporate security policy demands that we have Windows laptops so that some box ticking overlord can fill out a security policy compliance form. That means we're stuck limping along with docker and WSL2. Every single engineer in the org has an arm64 machine at home already and wants a proper computer at wor…

Builds in production shouldn't be built using developer laptops. I think you're approaching this wrong. You can build and test on x86_64 laptops all day if you want and still easily deploy to arm64 servers.

Re: Switching to AWS Graviton slashed our infrastructure bill

#123

Post by andrewstuart »

estebank wrote: post #116
andrewstuart wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I managed to build it without really grasping Rust by hacking around and looking at examples of how other stuff worked that I wanted to do, and by avoiding doing things in Rust that I didn't understand - stuff as basic as function calls. The resulting code worked but was garbage and at the end of the day Rust had not clicked for me and being fluent in it still felt a distant goal. I love the idea of Rust but I don't…

If you don't mind, what where the things that were hard to deal with? You mention "function calls", but I'd like to understand what that actually means in practice. This kind of negative feedback is useful to improve Rust for any other newcomers, even if we have already soured you for good.

I could not even succeed in doing the simplest thing like putting code into a function and executing the function and getting a result back. I can't recall why.

Re: Switching to AWS Graviton slashed our infrastructure bill

#124

Post by jiggawatts »

yjftsjthsd-h wrote: post #113
jiggawatts wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Despite that you were paying 8x the previous amount!? How is that possible? E.g.: With Kubernetes and AWS you ought to be able to use clusters with a base of "reserved" capacity plus spot pricing for peak hours on top, right? From what I've seen (in my limited experience), that should reduce costs for most orgs, not increase them!

> How is that possible? TLDR: AWS is really expensive compared the equivalent compute elsewhere, to the point of overwhelming its advantages. --- Long answer that I wrote before realizing how long it was: I'm not the person you're replying to, I don't know the exact details, I don't know their company. However:) I can tell you that AWS is a factor more expensive than renting or owning your own metal. They (claim to)…

Really?

I just priced up a 128-core (dual EYPC) Dell server with specs comparable to a matching Azure cloud server (HB120rs_v3), and the "1 year reserved" price for Azure came out to about the same as the purchase price over 3 years. The 3-year reserved price is about the same as the purchase price over 4 years. There's a new 5-year reservation option, which is the equivalent of owning the hardware for 7 years. Spot pricing is the equivalent of amortizing the purchase price over 12 years!!

Meanwhile, using the cloud, you can upgrade to the 9004 series in just a few months, not 12 years from now. And then whatever comes after the 9004 series in like 2 years, not 5, 7, or 12.

So it looks like that at the larger scales, the pricing is very directly competitive with on-premises hardware.

Consider that the cloud hosts include most basic operations costs, such as cooling, electricity, data centre floor space rental, the SFP ports and cabling, etc, etc...

Speaking of which, a quick back-of-the-envelope calculation is that a 128 core server will cost about $20K in cooling and electricity over its lifetime.

Note that the Azure HB120rs_v3 sizes come with 200 Gbps InfiniBand "just thrown in" for laughs. Try pricing that up some time, in case you want to build your own hyperconverged infrastructure!

Admittedly, at the smaller sizes, Azure and AWS are less competitive, but you do get flexibility, automation, and a bunch of other stuff that's difficult and expensive at scale on-prem.

Re: Switching to AWS Graviton slashed our infrastructure bill

#125

Post by hdjjhhvvhga »

jack_pp wrote: post #9
hdjjhhvvhga wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I started to build today, I'd definitely go for Hetzner Cloud. There is zero possibility that I get surprised by a large bill.

I feel it's currently in beta, I've tried it and apparently I can't create more than a few instances because my account is "too new", without a clear way to remove that limit so you're right, can't have a large bill if you can't even create 10 instances.

It's very easy - you just write to them and ask to increase the limit to whatever you need. You need to do so in writing, not on the phone.

Re: Switching to AWS Graviton slashed our infrastructure bill

#126

Post by raffraffraff »

jiggawatts wrote: post #69
c7DJTLrn wrote: post #2

Cloud cost optimisation is underrated. In the companies I've worked in nobody has really given a shit (at least not under normal economic circumstances). In the industry there's a strong avoidance of ARM compute instances for no good reason. If I were building from scratch today I would definitely go with Graviton.

At $dayjob I found an unused box in the cloud running an expensive database engine. It was idle for months, created to be used by a consultant on a project that had wound up. The consultant had quit his consultancy on top of this. I was told under no uncertain terms not to even think of touching this VM because “the budget has been approved”. I was shocked at the flagrant waste of money and assumed it was a one-off a…

Imagine seeing your startup grow into a company where bureaucracy rewards department heads who waste money now to protect their budget so they can keep wasting it next year...

Re: Switching to AWS Graviton slashed our infrastructure bill

#127

Post by fxtentacle »

mbesto wrote: post #88
fxtentacle wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, according to Shopify. According to a German court, a US parent company being able to access your data - which is the case both for Shopify and here - automatically disqualifies you from being GDPR-compliant: https://gdprhub.eu/index.php?title=VK_Baden-W%C3%BCrttemberg...

> which is the case both for Shopify and here - automatically disqualifies you from being GDPR-compliant: It doesn't automatically disqualify you. No reason to spread this FUD. From your article: > The Chamber found that, contrary to what Company A stated in their offer, it did disclose customer data to a third party. More specifically, it disclosed customer data to a third party in a third country (its parent compan…

That "disclose customer data to a third party" violates article 44 of the GDPR if there's no matching exemption to allow it. One possible exemption would be if the recipient is also bound by the GDPR. But obviously, the US government is not bound by GDPR. So anything that would allow the US CLOUD act to access a EU customer's data is a GDPR violation.

Re: Switching to AWS Graviton slashed our infrastructure bill

#128

Post by gryf »

allset_ wrote: post #122
gryf wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This. We have three people entirely dedicated to reducing costs. As for avoiding ARM, we do only x86-64 because corporate security policy demands that we have Windows laptops so that some box ticking overlord can fill out a security policy compliance form. That means we're stuck limping along with docker and WSL2. Every single engineer in the org has an arm64 machine at home already and wants a proper computer at wor…

Builds in production shouldn't be built using developer laptops. I think you're approaching this wrong. You can build and test on x86_64 laptops all day if you want and still easily deploy to arm64 servers.

We don't do production builds on laptops.

But it's important that all builds are 100% reproducible on all build targets and that includes non docker ones. That is much more difficult if you have to cross compile stuff. We can barely manage one architecture.

Re: Switching to AWS Graviton slashed our infrastructure bill

#129

Post by likeabbas »

andrewstuart wrote: post #123
estebank wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you don't mind, what where the things that were hard to deal with? You mention "function calls", but I'd like to understand what that actually means in practice. This kind of negative feedback is useful to improve Rust for any other newcomers, even if we have already soured you for good.

I could not even succeed in doing the simplest thing like putting code into a function and executing the function and getting a result back. I can't recall why.

Interestingly, I started a side project to rebuild OneTimeSecret in Rust yesterday and got the basics working already https://github.com/likeabbas/RustOneTimeSecret

The only other exposure I had to the language was attempting some Leetcode problems. I really like Rust so far. The type system is extremely powerful, the compiler gives robust error messages, and it has so many awesome features like pattern matching and destructuring.

Re: Switching to AWS Graviton slashed our infrastructure bill

#130

Post by happymellon »

scarface74 wrote: post #120
lostmsu wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's only for meeting rooms.

So in a meeting, is this person who is presenting going to copy everything they need from their desktop? If it’s a group meeting will no one else have their computers with them?

1. I don't think you understand what a thin client is.

2. I have found that face-to-face meetings where other people bring their laptops usually means that they get distracted and don't participate.

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