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A serverless email server on AWS using S3 and SES

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Re: A serverless email server on AWS using S3 and SES

#171

Post by scarface74 »

c-cube wrote: post #166
scarface74 wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is it any more misleading than “bugs”, “containers”, “the cloud”,”server farms”, etc. Wouldn’t you be the first to criticize someone who didn’t take the time to understand other computer concepts that had been around for years and then attempted to speak intelligently about them?

It's misleading because "serverless" intuitively means peer to peer, where everything runs on clients and there are truly no servers. So unlike "bug" it has an intuitive meaning that is the opposite of what the buzzword now means.

Serverless has never been used in the context of peer to peer. And “bug” isn’t anymore “intuitive” to the uninitiated.

Re: A serverless email server on AWS using S3 and SES

#172

Post by johannes1234321 »

rahuldottech wrote: post #27
abjKT26nO8 wrote: post #5

I don't know anything about serverless --- to this day I fail to understand what this word is even supposed to mean. And the deployment diagram[1] sure looks complicated to me. I think I prefer old-school servers. [1]: " rel="nofollow">https://raw.githubusercontent.com/0x4447/0x4447-product-s3-e...

Yeah, it's a really dumb term. > Serverless computing is a cloud-computing execution model in which the cloud provider runs the server ...so, there is a server? What's with the name, then?

There is no dedicated server for this. The engine picks a server and deploys the code as needed and terminates it if usage goes away.

Once the thing has no requests there is no more server where the code is deployed.

In a "normal" environment you have dedicated machines where the code is ready to run.

Re: A serverless email server on AWS using S3 and SES

#173

Post by tshaddox »

rumanator wrote: post #111
cddotdotslash wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not a single post on Hacker News can use the term "serverless" without the exact same replies being posted every time. It's as if a certain portion of the HN crowd simply cannot fathom that a new term exists and is in use, and instead resort to the same, tired responses.

> Not a single post on Hacker News can use the term "serverless" wits nhout the exact same replies being posted every time. As a serverless skeptic/critic, the buzzword bingo aspect of serverless computing is far from being the problem, and it's a gross missrepresentation of the problems posed by serverless computing. The main problem with server applications such as AWS lambda, along with lack of control, is how utt…

Okay, it may very well be true that one particular serverless product is very expensive or overly complex. That’s a fine argument to make.

But that has nothing to do with whether the term “serverless” has a well-established meaning. It’s not just a buzzword, or at least it’s not always used as a buzzword and does in fact have a straightforward meaning.

If I don’t like serverless products, or I think people need to be aware of problems they might face, I should just make those arguments. I should not just say “I still don’t know what serverless means” or “serverless is just a buzzword.”

Re: A serverless email server on AWS using S3 and SES

#174

Post by social_quotient »

arno1 wrote: post #15
coder1001 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you mind writing a blog post somewhere explaining to noobs how this can be done? This will be a great post with lots of traffic I imagine! Thanks, great work!

I am actually thinking on writing it since long ago... But not motivated enough... :/

I’d read it

Re: A serverless email server on AWS using S3 and SES

#175

Post by tuldia »

cddotdotslash wrote: post #129
rumanator wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Not a single post on Hacker News can use the term "serverless" wits nhout the exact same replies being posted every time. As a serverless skeptic/critic, the buzzword bingo aspect of serverless computing is far from being the problem, and it's a gross missrepresentation of the problems posed by serverless computing. The main problem with server applications such as AWS lambda, along with lack of control, is how utt…

There are absolutely valid criticisms of serverless (as you called out, vendor lock in and complexity for large applications being a big ones). But it's still an important and interesting technology that many individuals and companies are invested in, sharing side projects, open source tools (like the OP's), etc. In many cases, it can be cost efficient, or even (human) resource efficient to use a serverless setup. So…

You are missing the point. (the "tired responses")

No, there only very few cases, such as shaving video encoding time (the one that started all this mess around "serverless")

For majority of other cases, using "(human) resource efficient" or "time saved managing servers" to justify the use of "serverless" is a plain bogus argument, since you end up shifting (best case scenario) OR spending more (worst case) time "managing the cloud's alphabet soup".

I will not even start talking about the code base mess.

Re: A serverless email server on AWS using S3 and SES

#176

Post by jdub »

Cyph0n wrote: post #156
wiradikusuma wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I thought SES is the cheapest of all since it's the lowest level? (Compared to Mailgun etc)

No, especially if you’re expecting emails with large attachments. SES charges $0.09 per 1000 mail “chunks”, where a chunk is 256 Kb of data. This is on top of the base SES fee and S3 operation and storage fees.

But it only charges for each complete chunk. So < 256KB is free, 256KB is $0.09/1000, etc.

Re: A serverless email server on AWS using S3 and SES

#177

Post by social_quotient »

jijji wrote: post #158
arno1 wrote: post #12

> This stack was created out of frustration due to the fact that to this day there's no easy way to have a full email server without the overhead of installing and configuring all servers needed to handle incoming and outgoing messages. Interesting approach, though I solved this frustration by the use of a Docker and kept "my data is mine" + "no vendor lock-in" + "I control all the gears" approach. (Though, it's not…

complex but not to mention expensive. i wonder what the costs per month would be sending/receiving a relatively small workload per day (1000 messages) doing it with SES and S3 versus a cheap vps provider.

The SES and S3 side of things would be free?

(62,000 free per month) https://aws.amazon.com/ses/pricing/

Yes, complexity would be a factor for sure.

Re: A serverless email server on AWS using S3 and SES

#178

Post by scarface74 »

wodny wrote: post #123
scarface74 wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You’ve never worked with C code that had to run on both big endian and little endian systems that had to share a common byte protocol. Where two bytes in the same order can mean something completely different. There are a lot of things “confusing” about computer science when you don’t take the time to learn it.

On the contrary, I've worked with 8 and {32,64}bit x {LE,BE} chips many times and wrote quite a lot of network code in C. But you're mixing syntax with semantics.

Which byte is the high order byte is just as much semantics defined by the chip vendor that would be confusing to the uninitiated as “Serverless” would be to an old school net ops person who doesn’t know anything about cloud computing.

Re: A serverless email server on AWS using S3 and SES

#179

Post by why_only_15 »

social_quotient wrote: post #177
jijji wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

complex but not to mention expensive. i wonder what the costs per month would be sending/receiving a relatively small workload per day (1000 messages) doing it with SES and S3 versus a cheap vps provider.

The SES and S3 side of things would be free? (62,000 free per month) https://aws.amazon.com/ses/pricing/ Yes, complexity would be a factor for sure.

For receiving they only get 1,000 free, and for both after that it's $0.10/1,000 emails, which isn't very much at all.

Re: A serverless email server on AWS using S3 and SES

#180

Post by scarface74 »

tuldia wrote: post #175
cddotdotslash wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are absolutely valid criticisms of serverless (as you called out, vendor lock in and complexity for large applications being a big ones). But it's still an important and interesting technology that many individuals and companies are invested in, sharing side projects, open source tools (like the OP's), etc. In many cases, it can be cost efficient, or even (human) resource efficient to use a serverless setup. So…

You are missing the point. (the "tired responses") No, there only very few cases, such as shaving video encoding time (the one that started all this mess around "serverless") For majority of other cases, using "(human) resource efficient" or "time saved managing servers" to justify the use of "serverless" is a plain bogus argument, since you end up shifting (best case scenario) OR spending more (worst case) time "man…

Again you only spend more time if you don’t know what you’re doing.

I’m not a front end developer by any stretch of the imagination. Would it be a valid argument if I said that React isn’t a good solution because I have years of experienced with server side rendering?

Again, don’t blame the tools just because you didn’t take the time to learn how to use them efficiently.

If my name doesn’t give you a clue,I was around and developing way before AWS or hosted solutions was a thing. Being able to provision resources by writing yaml and not having to deal with the infrastructure gatekeepers is a godsend.

No, there only very few cases, such as shaving video encoding time (the one that started all this mess around "serverless")

There are millions of people using computers in countless different ways. Are you sure that you know all of the valid use cases?

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