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I got pwned by my cloud costs

troyhunt.com

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Re: I got pwned by my cloud costs

#141

Post by gwd »

harry8 wrote: post #68
tpetry wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every cloud makes this mistake easy! You have to manually activate billing alerts for everyone because they want you to spend more snd more each month. I am still waiting for a cloud without these dark patterns. But that will never happen because it‘s leaving a big amount of money on the table by not being hostile.

Dark patterns - this sounds like a colour scheme you don't care for. "Predatory death-trap pricing" captures the spirit of the thing with rather more clarity. It is wholly intentional after all.

> Dark patterns - this sounds like a colour scheme you don't care for.

Or craft clothing for goths?

But the "dark" comes from its association with evil: "Defense against the Dark Arts", "The Dark Lord", "Turn to the Dark Side of the Force". It's a clear implication that the people are "selling their souls to the devil": knowingly doing something "a little bit evil" to achieve their aims.

Re: I got pwned by my cloud costs

#142

Post by octoberfranklin »

dt3ft wrote: post #78
lpcvoid wrote: post #56

Can somebody explain to me why I wouldn't just rent a 40 EUR dedicated server from Hetzner with unlimited traffic and gigabit uplink? His 600GB/day is way less than what you get over a gigabit link within a day. Sure, sudden bursts would perhaps "throttle" at a gigabit, but according to his article that was only the cloudflare proxy anyhow, so no pain in having that take a few seconds longer. As far as I am concerned…

Not much to explain, you're absolutely right. Hetzner would have been a much wiser choice here, but advocating any cloud provider at this scale probably has its perks too or he wouldn't be burning his money. Then again, perks only go so long and at some point do come to an end, so this is why he may be writing about costs right now. Take a look at their datacenter in Germany: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5eo8nz_ni…

Wow, that video is fascinating.

Love how they are totally not ashamed to kick off the video with their collection of 14,000 mini-tower desktop PCs. Not rackmounted. Mini-towers.

Also totally ultra-curious about the PS/2 kvm. All those machines are from an era when USB keyboards had been around a long time already. Wondering if this is a security measure...

Re: I got pwned by my cloud costs

#143

Post by hardwaresofton »

dx034 wrote: post #120
hardwaresofton wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well there’s a gap between the amount of convenience you get on the major clouds and one like Hetzner. I’m a huge Hetzner fan, and their cloud offering is definitely growing but still isn’t as convenient and featureful as it could be (and they don’t share their roadmap currently so hard to tell what they’re working on next). I’m trying to do something about it though, working on Nimbus Web Services[0]. In my mind all…

But he could've put static files on a Hetzner server and still have his backend in Azure. That would've solved these issues and probably saved even more money.

Being able to run a relatively simple global cache with a cheap provider like Hetzner has the origin is also harder than it should have to be.

Re: I got pwned by my cloud costs

#144

Post by [deleted] »

omegalulw wrote: post #111
bennyp101 wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because it's not cool, and won't make your CV sparkle. I'm sure there becomes a point where cost of (hardware + maintenance + staffing) > (cloud + staffing), in which case sure crack on. But like you, I'll stick to a rented server for my stuff.

The direction is opposite IMO. As you grow bigger on prem starts making a lot more sense.

[deleted]

Re: I got pwned by my cloud costs

#145

Post by dx034 »

Aissen wrote: post #63
knorker wrote: post #41

As soon as I saw "17GB file" i thought "that's what torrents are for". Otherwise one mistake and... Well this happens. Or someone maliciously bypasses CF cache e.g. by parameters. Cloud just is not suitable for any kind of volume egress. It's a death trap. Like going on vacation with data roaming enabled.

Yeah, HIBP is using torrents: > I removed the direct download links from the HIBP website and just left the torrents which had plenty of seeds so it was still easy to get the data. Since then, Cloudflare upped that 15GB limit and I've restored the links for folks that aren't in a position to pull down a torrent. Crisis over.

And then Cloudflare will not cache it at some locations for random reasons and the cloud bill is back. Anyone with technical knowledge should have no problem routing static files via machines at OVH/Hetzner and the like, no reason to enter such risks for maybe an hour of setup time saved.

Re: I got pwned by my cloud costs

#146

Post by dx034 »

zekica wrote: post #121
hdjjhhvvhga wrote: post #67

It is very good these things are getting publicized. More and more people realize these payment schemes for what they are: a scam. Every cloud provider that refuse to put a hard spending limit participates in this. It is important to remember that not all cloud providers participate in it. For example, in Hetzner Cloud, they explicitly provide the maximum amount you are going to pay for a given instance or service in…

On Hetzner and with their €1.00 per TB after 20TB included, you can pay up to €324 per vps as you are limited to 1Gbps if you fully saturate the link all month.

I doubt you'll manage to get the exact 1Gbps per VPS out all month. On dedicated that's more likely. But luckily they have a very easy setting for billing alerts and maximum in the settings page.

Re: I got pwned by my cloud costs

#147

Post by dachryn »

fs111 wrote: post #69
technion wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He is a Microsoft MVP. A title that is given for being a "community evangelist" of Microsoft. You wouldn't get that throwing it on a Heztner machine. Edit: Consider this article, and Geoff's statement about Azure credits. https://www.theregister.com/2021/04/21/microsoft_revokes_mvp...

Sounds like a pretty expensive privilege. How is using cloudflare okay in this then? Cloudflare is also not Azure

Azure is integrated with Cloudflare, if you chose to do so.

They also offer Azure CDN, as a competing product. But I don't know if anybody takes it serious or not

Re: I got pwned by my cloud costs

#148

Post by dx034 »

knorker wrote: post #41

As soon as I saw "17GB file" i thought "that's what torrents are for". Otherwise one mistake and... Well this happens. Or someone maliciously bypasses CF cache e.g. by parameters. Cloud just is not suitable for any kind of volume egress. It's a death trap. Like going on vacation with data roaming enabled.

Or Hetzner server auction to get a cheap 20/30€ machine with unlimited traffic at 1Gbps. Setup time is max 1h even if you do it manually, with cloudflare Tunnel it's also really easy to lock down everything with a firewall and have minimal exposure to threats.

Re: I got pwned by my cloud costs

#149

Post by jacquesm »

baybal2 wrote: post #27
cyberCleve wrote: post #3

Ouch. If Troy Hunt of all people can make this mistake, it can happen to anybody. HIBP is an awesome service funded totally by donations, so it's too bad this happened. Of course Microsoft is happy to hide behind their confusing pricing model and let customers overpay for Azure without alerting them.

Who is Hunt Troy?

The guy behind 'Have I been pwned', a website where you can check if your login credentials to some website have been leaked.

https://haveibeenpwned.com/

Re: I got pwned by my cloud costs

#150

Post by lysecret »

This is a big trap to fall in to. I dont understand why network trafficking is so expencive also in AWS. I once had a 2k monthly bill purely from networking because i accidentally routed a lot of requests through a NAT. That hurt haha. Now i stay away from those things :D
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