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AWS bill capping feature request thread still unanswered after 10 years

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Re: AWS bill capping feature request thread still unanswered after 10 years

#151

Post by niteshade »

whoknew1122 wrote: post #146
jgalt212 wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

$0 ingress charges and >> $0 egress charges make AWS roach motel.

So basically you're complaining about pricing? Unlike other cloud providers, AWS has never had a price increase for a service. Just decreases. I guess 'customer obsession' would be giving away everything for free?

Customer obsession would be things like implementing bill caps on new account creation.

Customer obsession would be NOT shipping buggy, unreliable software like AWS Amplify.

Customer obsession would be CloudFormation-first.

Customer obsession would be not forcing me to upgrade to a paid Support account to report a bug.

The list goes on, unfortunately. I do believe AWS employees mean what they say, but the external reality (IMO) is it takes a lot of time and effort to get AWS to notice their customers unless you're one of the big boys.

Re: AWS bill capping feature request thread still unanswered after 10 years

#152

Post by pardner »

runnerup wrote: post #11

My understanding is that this is a difficult problem to solve "perfectly" due to lag between incurring a cost and recording the cost. I believe GCP currently has the best feature for this. You can set both billing alerts as well as caps. However, I also believe that it can take up to 24 hours between incurring a cost and it showing up on your billing report. So even on GCP (which is the most forward-thinking cloud se…

There ought to be a "emergency shutoff" threshold, period. And there's just no customer-centric excuse for not implementing it after these many years.

Here's how to implement it:

"Amazon, what do you do today if my credit card fails and all the retries fail?"

Do THAT if billing hits .

Will it disrupt the heck out of all my AWS services? Of course. That's the point, if something went so seriously wrong that my billing hits an absurd level that will put me out of business, I'd rather have downtime.

Re: AWS bill capping feature request thread still unanswered after 10 years

#153

Post by lupire »

whoknew1122 wrote: post #146
jgalt212 wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

$0 ingress charges and >> $0 egress charges make AWS roach motel.

So basically you're complaining about pricing? Unlike other cloud providers, AWS has never had a price increase for a service. Just decreases. I guess 'customer obsession' would be giving away everything for free?

Amazon is in the news right now for employees making tone-deaf dishonest public statements trying to deflect legitimate criticism. Out of respect for your employer, please stop.

Re: AWS bill capping feature request thread still unanswered after 10 years

#154

Post by lupire »

ayberk wrote: post #147
jgalt212 wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would argue that AWS does not have a "Customer Obsession", and that's exactly why it's Amazon's most profitable business (by far) and the underwriter of all of Bezos's ambitions.

I am an AWS employee as well, and I'm definitely one of the biggest critics of the company. That being said, AWS is definitely still customer obsessed. I feel dirty defending AWS, but this is one case I'd give them the benefit of the doubt. There must be _a_ reason they haven't implemented this yet and that reason must be somehow protecting the customer. "Customers want this" ends the discussion around here. You must…

Unpredictable $30K charges protects the customer?

Like $35 bank overdraft fees protect the customer from not getting a candy bar.

Re: AWS bill capping feature request thread still unanswered after 10 years

#155

Post by lupire »

pardner wrote: post #152
runnerup wrote: post #11

My understanding is that this is a difficult problem to solve "perfectly" due to lag between incurring a cost and recording the cost. I believe GCP currently has the best feature for this. You can set both billing alerts as well as caps. However, I also believe that it can take up to 24 hours between incurring a cost and it showing up on your billing report. So even on GCP (which is the most forward-thinking cloud se…

There ought to be a "emergency shutoff" threshold, period. And there's just no customer-centric excuse for not implementing it after these many years. Here's how to implement it: "Amazon, what do you do today if my credit card fails and all the retries fail?" Do THAT if billing hits . Will it disrupt the heck out of all my AWS services? Of course. That's the point, if something went so seriously wrong that my billing…

The challenge is that there is a lag between consuming the resource and counting the price.

Re: AWS bill capping feature request thread still unanswered after 10 years

#156

Post by tyrex2017 »

Many comments say it cant be done, but this is disingenious. As if we were bureaucrats with no imagination:

Eg just have 2 caps: First cap triggers a red alarm prohibiting provisioning, or storing, of new data. The second one (when you are like 50% above the first cap) is dark red, closing down everything except storage.

Sure, decisions have to be made for every single service, but you don’t need a perfect solution if it is optional.

Eg, you could start ONLY with EC2 and will have fixed 50% of the problem.

Re: AWS bill capping feature request thread still unanswered after 10 years

#157

Post by lupire »

nucleardog wrote: post #150
p1necone wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're over complicating things, I'm not assuming the existence of any magical function (other than the one Amazon already uses to calculate your bill). All I want is to be able to say "I do not, under any circumstances want to spend more than $X per month on this service." Amazon just needs to keep track of usage, and start rate limiting/returning 402s/blocking writes when the monthly limit is hit. If I estimate I'm…

> Amazon just needs to keep track of usage, and start rate limiting/returning 402s/blocking writes when the monthly limit is hit. You're accruing costs even if you stop reading and writing. You're paying for the on-going storage, running of instances, etc. What you're describing does not implement what you're describing it as. E.g., It's the first day of the billing cycle, so our bill is effectively $0. So no limits…

You're twisting things. Amazon can alert you of the storage use and threaten to charge you in a few days, not a month. They can give you grace once per year so you're "on notice" after your first goof.

Re: AWS bill capping feature request thread still unanswered after 10 years

#158

Post by p1necone »

nucleardog wrote: post #150
p1necone wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're over complicating things, I'm not assuming the existence of any magical function (other than the one Amazon already uses to calculate your bill). All I want is to be able to say "I do not, under any circumstances want to spend more than $X per month on this service." Amazon just needs to keep track of usage, and start rate limiting/returning 402s/blocking writes when the monthly limit is hit. If I estimate I'm…

> Amazon just needs to keep track of usage, and start rate limiting/returning 402s/blocking writes when the monthly limit is hit. You're accruing costs even if you stop reading and writing. You're paying for the on-going storage, running of instances, etc. What you're describing does not implement what you're describing it as. E.g., It's the first day of the billing cycle, so our bill is effectively $0. So no limits…

AWS doesn't run on a magical black box that eats customer money and spits out storage. They absolutely can eat some costs in a minority of cases in order to provide better service to customers (and I'm sure they already do in many other ways).

Re: AWS bill capping feature request thread still unanswered after 10 years

#159

Post by m0dest »

pardner wrote: post #152
runnerup wrote: post #11

My understanding is that this is a difficult problem to solve "perfectly" due to lag between incurring a cost and recording the cost. I believe GCP currently has the best feature for this. You can set both billing alerts as well as caps. However, I also believe that it can take up to 24 hours between incurring a cost and it showing up on your billing report. So even on GCP (which is the most forward-thinking cloud se…

There ought to be a "emergency shutoff" threshold, period. And there's just no customer-centric excuse for not implementing it after these many years. Here's how to implement it: "Amazon, what do you do today if my credit card fails and all the retries fail?" Do THAT if billing hits . Will it disrupt the heck out of all my AWS services? Of course. That's the point, if something went so seriously wrong that my billing…

At one point, I owed a balance of $0.57 to AWS and started to get warning emails about my account being suspended. Just out of morbid curiosity, I waited to see what would happen.

2.5 years later, after dozens of automated mails, they finally suspended it.

Re: AWS bill capping feature request thread still unanswered after 10 years

#160

Post by pardner »

lupire wrote: post #155
pardner wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There ought to be a "emergency shutoff" threshold, period. And there's just no customer-centric excuse for not implementing it after these many years. Here's how to implement it: "Amazon, what do you do today if my credit card fails and all the retries fail?" Do THAT if billing hits . Will it disrupt the heck out of all my AWS services? Of course. That's the point, if something went so seriously wrong that my billing…

The challenge is that there is a lag between consuming the resource and counting the price.

Seems like yet more "let perfect be the enemy of the good" thinking.

If you want a cut-me-off set to $X, and some lag might allow charges to reach X+Y before the cutoff took effect, which is the customer-centric answer:

a) don't offer ANY cap, simply let the customer's out of control charges just keep racking up to catastrophic levels that put them out of business?

b) cut it off as soon as you DO detect it exceeded their cut-me-off threshold even if by that point it has reached X+Y?

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