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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

#241

Post by pcthrowaway »

hnbad wrote: post #94
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…

I think it is an irresponsible fad that people use cloud services for hobby projects (and despite its wide popularity I'm calling HIBP a hobby project since he's running it on the side for free) unless they have solid cloud ops experience from their day job. Cloud providers love it when people do this and are famously easy to talk to when you get an unexpected invoice high enough to require remortgaging your house to…

I don't know what the alternative is. Run a home server and pay an ISP $$$ for unusually high upload bandwidth/throughput? 99/100 times running it in the cloud is going to be cheaper, easier, and more resilient.

Of course, the delayed sticker shock is a problem.. I think Google cloud actually lets you create a budget that turns services off if they go over, so there's a solution here if you run a hobby project that you suspect might take off and cost you more than it's worth.

Re: I got pwned by my cloud costs

#242

Post by rwmj »

dewey wrote: post #100
rcarmo wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are plenty of people using both, it's a good combination.

The point is about Cloudflare not being from Microsoft / Azure which is the company he's evangelising for.

Presumably MSFT don't have a competing product. It's like asking why he's hosting it on Intel processors.

Re: I got pwned by my cloud costs

#243

Post by can16358p »

yetihehe wrote: post #189
audiometry wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not that good. I'm constantly getting "Access Blocked" to various websites by Cloudflare trying to protect them....from me reading them.

I never do. Maybe you or something on your computer or network is the problem?

Nope. Just being in some country (in my case Turkey) is perfectly enought to be geoblocked.

Re: I got pwned by my cloud costs

#244

Post by viraptor »

welterde wrote: post #224
viraptor wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Keep in mind that the "<= 4 euro/month virtual machine" has maybe 256MB of RAM available and running anything beyond nginx + a web server which needs to be cycled every few days due to memory fragmentation can become challenging. I've tried this many times, but it's just not worth the extra hassle. And I want a vpn, monitoring and database even on the toy project server as a minimum in reality.

Maybe 5+ years ago. These days ~4€/month gets you 2GB of RAM, SSD storage and plenty of bandwidth. Hetzner has such a VPS offering (2GB RAM/20GB nvme SSD/20TB bandwidth), netcup has one for ~3€, contabo has 8GB/50GB nvme/32TB for 6€/month and there are plenty of smaller companies around the world offering similar deals (usually somewhat less included bandwidth outside europe though).

It does look like I'm behind on pricing changes. Sounds like it's time to move away from vultr.

Re: I got pwned by my cloud costs

#245

Post by can16358p »

raxxorrax wrote: post #226
yetihehe wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I never do. Maybe you or something on your computer or network is the problem?

If you configured your client to hide enough information, Cloudflare tends to believe you are a threat. VPN users probably have that problem a lot more.

You don't have to hide any information. I don't hide any information and still get blocked because of the country I reside in.

Re: I got pwned by my cloud costs

#246

Post by patrec »

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

> Sounds like a pretty expensive privilege.

I'd be suprised if his Microsoft Regional Director and MVP status isn't worth much more than 4 figures to him.

Those seeking to initiate engagements with Troy might care more about the fact that he pops up on HN and other high profile tech outlets frequently and the visibility of Have I Been Pwned, but the Regional Director status probably helps a lot with getting some of these engagements signed off.

He probably also receives significant subsidies from Microsoft as well.

Re: I got pwned by my cloud costs

#247

Post by NicoJuicy »

Grollicus wrote: post #26
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.

Do you have any substance to your allegation of Microsoft hiding behind their pricing model? This is very straight forward from their view, before: almost no traffic = almost no costs, now: huge traffic = $$$. On the other hand, it doesn't seem that Troy did try to talk to them about this and seems to want to eat the costs himself. As it was his mistake. I think that's commendable. I also think with the amount of fre…

He's an Azure MVP. He already has 13 k in credits/yr, which could absorb the costs ( just guessing here)

Re: I got pwned by my cloud costs

#248

Post by llampx »

octoberfranklin wrote: post #126
omegalulw wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I think the case is for big companies that have a hard time attracting IT talent. Like, not in an even remotely IT-related industry, and their headquarters is in a city with no significant tech community. Places that scream "working here will not improve your resume". I'm a major cloud skeptic, but there's a certain class of giant enterprisey companies that are never going to be able to attract good IT talent, and if…

> I think the case is for big companies that have a hard time attracting IT talent.

Companies that have made a name for themselves by outsourcing to the cheapest IT contractor that will promise them the moon and fill the seats with barely warm bodies? I was one of those bodies so I know exactly why they can't attract talent - they don't bother, and don't reward it. They treat IT as a cost center and are surprised when they get disrupted. The only good options in those companies are to work on the business side or worst case as a project/product/program manager interfacing with the warm fungible contractor bodies.

Many Enterprises are only alive because of inertia and goodwill from earlier decades.

Re: I got pwned by my cloud costs

#249

Post by zelphirkalt »

raxxorrax wrote: post #226
yetihehe wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I never do. Maybe you or something on your computer or network is the problem?

If you configured your client to hide enough information, Cloudflare tends to believe you are a threat. VPN users probably have that problem a lot more.

And so Cloudflare becomes an enemy of privacy?

Re: I got pwned by my cloud costs

#250

Post by pid-1 »

welterde wrote: post #181
pid-1 wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a few dozens of personal projects on AWS using APIGW, Lambda, CloudFront, Dynamo DB and S3. Their monthly cost is something between 0 and a few cents. Stuff like Hertzner is fine, but if you know your way around AWS you realize have massive cost savings. Prob the same for Azure. Finally, in many places 40 EUR for a pet project is actually a lot of money.

Probably would run just fine on a <= 4 euro/month virtual machine too. Of course it doesn't quite scale to zero like APIGW,lambda,etc. but on the other hand you can be fairly confident to not pay more if your pet project suddenly lands on the front page of HN.

No it wouldn't, because I infrequently need burst (bigger lambdas).

As for costs, setting up billing and usage alarms on AWS is absolutely trivial.

Finally, using stuff like S3 or dynamo for storage gives me a peace of mind I will never have when managing my own servers.

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