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AWS free tier data transfer expansion

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Re: AWS free tier data transfer expansion

#171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So why is cost optimization a constant point of conversation with AWS if it's so easy? Limited IO bandwidth in middle and upper management alongside difficult schedules (we covered that one already). Take 2 steps above engineer on an org chart and detail becomes invisible, the vast majority of tasks begin to resemble a teenager at a mall with their dad's credit card. Meaningful technical validation phases are almos…

> Limited IO bandwidth in middle and upper management alongside difficult schedules (we covered that one already). Take 2 steps above engineer on an org chart and detail becomes invisible, the vast majority of tasks begin to resemble a teenager at a mall with their dad's credit card. Meaningful technical validation phases are almost unheard of in many organizations, and largely antithetical to agile. I'm sorry, but w…

> what are you trying to say

I'm saying this is my bread and butter, and I've seen the same pattern in every company I've crossed the doors of. It's no made up scenario when a team of contractors have spent 12 months building out some service, not a single person will have given a damn about costs, so cost optimization is purchased separately. The contractors aren't wrong nor is the business wrong, nor is this pattern unique to cloud spend.

> I happen to work in the security industry

Then surely you will understand how an entire subindustry can exist to mop up after engineers who could otherwise 'simply' avoid most mistakes if they just spent more time Googling.

Re: AWS free tier data transfer expansion

#172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Limited IO bandwidth in middle and upper management alongside difficult schedules (we covered that one already). Take 2 steps above engineer on an org chart and detail becomes invisible, the vast majority of tasks begin to resemble a teenager at a mall with their dad's credit card. Meaningful technical validation phases are almost unheard of in many organizations, and largely antithetical to agile. I'm sorry, but w…

> what are you trying to say I'm saying this is my bread and butter, and I've seen the same pattern in every company I've crossed the doors of. It's no made up scenario when a team of contractors have spent 12 months building out some service, not a single person will have given a damn about costs, so cost optimization is purchased separately. The contractors aren't wrong nor is the business wrong, nor is this patter…

> Then surely you will understand how an entire subindustry can exist to mop up after engineers who could otherwise 'simply' avoid most mistakes if they just spent more time Googling.

Yes, I'm sure an entire $50 billion dollar industry comes down to, like all your arguments, just lazy people and the simple fix is "Googling".

Re: AWS free tier data transfer expansion

#173
post #45
post #5

It went from 1GB to 100GB, meanwhile Oracle is offering 10TB on their Free Tier. https://www.oracle.com/cloud/free/

They have terrible sign up experience, I'm far from only one who hasn't been able to sign up there because of some cryptic error. When I've tried to google that, there were reports of them requiring using email with full name in it. But changing to that didn't help, using different credit/debit cards didn't help. But prices are quite nice as far as I can tell from the outside.

They've invested a lot into the signup experience since 2019 but offering a generous Free Tier like this means they also attract a LOT of people trying to exploit it for whatever the badness of the day happens to be.

Providers always have a false positive rate on signup experiences and last time I looked Oracle had provided a way to contact them and say "You got it wrong" (and they are reasonably good at fixing those situations).

Re: AWS free tier data transfer expansion

#174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Corey's business exists because prevailing engineering culture encourages pretty much the entire industry to consider optimization as an afterthought, not because engineers can't understand AWS pricing, or interpret a few bar charts in Cost Explorer, and in the face of a deadline, if it's not on the agile board everyone knows it doesn't exist. Nobody is actively encouraging the entire industry to consider optimizat…

> So why is cost optimization a constant point of conversation with AWS if it's so easy? Limited IO bandwidth in middle and upper management alongside difficult schedules (we covered that one already). Take 2 steps above engineer on an org chart and detail becomes invisible, the vast majority of tasks begin to resemble a teenager at a mall with their dad's credit card. Meaningful technical validation phases are almos…

> Because they market to folk who never take the time to model comparative costs. In any project I considered them for (3 I think,

You make valid points, but what you're missing is the same accusations you level at Cloudflare were once leveled at AWS (which is why AWS had virtually no credible competition from Y!, MSFT, GOOG for 7 years!).

Also, Cloudflare's moat isn't 0ms cold-starts, but their persistence in commoditising bandwidth. Think Amazon Prime free 2-day shipping and how that worked out...

Re: AWS free tier data transfer expansion

#175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An underestimated chunk of AWSs costs is people. They employ >50k people, and likely have a salary bill of several billion dollars, a significant portion of revenue. 50,000 x 250k = 12.5B Also, they do cross-subsidize, because many AWS services are either hardly used (CodePipeline) or free (CloudFormation) and the cost to run those services is non-negligible.

Very good point RE people. Running AWS is expensive, I'm sure, but to be clear, I'm not advocating for bandwidth to be free. Just that $0.08 per GB is not competitive. Also, since CloudFormation is a feature that facilitates creating more resources that you do pay for I'm not sure that is a great example. That is more like saying that the other services subsidize the Web Console. CloudFormation is not a product in-an…

You're overthinking it, and Code Pipeline is just one example. As I'm writing this they have close to 300 services!!! Many of them, maybe hundreds of them just straight up lose money.

The Corey Quinn number I keep quoting is that >60% of AWS revenue for large (>100MM) accounts is EC2. That jives with what I hear from people in the industry.

That means that the other 250+ services are splitting less than 40% of AWS revenue....

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