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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

#291

Post by SkipperCat »

southerntofu wrote: post #238
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…

Just did the calc and 600GB/day is about 55Mbit/s. That's really not a lot and if there's not too much computation server-side you could serve this from a raspberry pi at home (provided you have good uplink). But that's assuming you keep the CloudFlare cache of course, or as author mentioned himself, advertising only torrents for the multi-gig files. I really don't understand the cloud craze. Everything is more compl…

The cloud is great for scaling. The lead time for new servers deployed in a data center is weeks compared to seconds in the cloud. Plus there's no sunk cost in the cloud - you can turn it off when done and it evaporates.

Also, the cloud offers managed software as a service. You don't have to manage your own HA DB cluster or PubSub. It's all just there and it works. That can save you a lot on technical labor costs.

But yes, I do agree with your point. If you don't know what you're doing, you can nuke your budget super quick.

Re: I got pwned by my cloud costs

#292

Post by vidarh »

throw8932894 wrote: post #165
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.

Not really, on site makes sense for Facebook or Google. Or for extra privacy. Mid-sized companies can get cracking deals (like 10% cost) on major cloud providers.

On prem rarely makes sense any more other than at that kind of huge scale or for privacy, sure. But that's because dedicated hosting operates on really thin margins and has become really cheap. You have to get to massive scale before cloud providers will give you big enough discount to start approaching the kind of costs you can get that way with a decently engineered system. Not least because cloud providers themselves provides a weapon: Set up your system so it can scale up using a cloud provider to handle traffic spikes and you can load those dedicated servers much more heavily than you could otherwise risk.

The biggest issue, though, is how few people are aware they can negotiate with their cloud provider. I've seen so many places just pay the sticker price without even trying to get discounts.

(Conversely, I once got a contract to do zero-downtime migrations first from AWS to Google Cloud and then to Hetzner so a startup could launch on AWS and spend the huge amount of free credits they'd been given there, then migrate to Google Cloud to do the same, and then finally move to Hetzner once they had to actually start paying; relative to what they'd have to start paying if they'd stayed on either AWS or Google after their credits ran out the cost of having me do the extra setup to handle that was covered with ~2-3 months of their savings)

Re: I got pwned by my cloud costs

#293

Post by Symbiote »

adrianN wrote: post #160
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.

There is a size where on prem would be much cheaper on paper, but internal red tape for access to internal resources is such that teams are unnecessarily slowed down. For example I once worked at a place where it took several months to get an additional on-prem box to speed up our CI pipeline. Of course you can also add that amount of red tape to a cloud solution, but in my experience it's easier to get approval for…

On-prem and AWS/GCS/Azure aren't the only options.

There are smaller cloud providers, rented VMs, rented dedicated servers and rented colocation space.

Re: I got pwned by my cloud costs

#294

Post by rhn_mk1 »

fbrncci wrote: post #290
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 have a pretty complicated architecture that would cost me about 20-35$ if it was hosted just on Digitalocean or Hetzner. Instead its AWS ...soon to be multicloud, and costs me about 140$/mo (which does vary). But it does allow me to experiment, write long articles and design some fun stuff; about which I blog on my own website. The blog has gotten me both clients on freelance projects and enough "cred" to start on…

What stops you from having a blog on Hetzner? That doesn't seem like it has anything to do with AWS whatsoever... or do they offer a blogging pltform?

Re: I got pwned by my cloud costs

#295

Post by cube00 »

selestify wrote: post #289
tetha wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It depends somewhat on the organizational skillset you have, in my opinion. Current workplace is considering a fully self-hosted stack as a unique selling point for the customers and segments we're in. That means, we have storage and linux admins available, as well as tooling and know-how how to run this securely and efficiently. Thus, placing large and often downloaded files on our file stores at hetzner is very muc…

Where is a good place to learn good administrative practices?

I found the RedHat Security and Hardening Guides useful for this.

Re: I got pwned by my cloud costs

#296

Post by christophilus »

tpetry wrote: post #37
iso1631 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Get a VPS from linode for $5 a month and it costs $5 a month.

Sure that's what i am doing. A beefy dedicated machine with no bandwidth pricing. But that also means i need to do everything by my own. I don't get any of the worry-free services of AWS.

I worry far less about my Netcup servers + BunnyCDN than I ever did about my AWS bills.

Re: I got pwned by my cloud costs

#297

Post by christophilus »

nix23 wrote: post #15
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.

>Every cloud makes this mistake easy! Funny enough...Oracle (OCI) makes it better, you can buy oracle"coins" 1to1 with $ and load your account just with what you think you need.

If Oracle cloud is still shenanigan free in 2 decades, I’ll consider it. Until then, Oracle gets $0 of any budget I’m in charge of.

Re: I got pwned by my cloud costs

#298

Post by immibis »

SkipperCat wrote: post #291
southerntofu wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just did the calc and 600GB/day is about 55Mbit/s. That's really not a lot and if there's not too much computation server-side you could serve this from a raspberry pi at home (provided you have good uplink). But that's assuming you keep the CloudFlare cache of course, or as author mentioned himself, advertising only torrents for the multi-gig files. I really don't understand the cloud craze. Everything is more compl…

The cloud is great for scaling. The lead time for new servers deployed in a data center is weeks compared to seconds in the cloud. Plus there's no sunk cost in the cloud - you can turn it off when done and it evaporates. Also, the cloud offers managed software as a service. You don't have to manage your own HA DB cluster or PubSub. It's all just there and it works. That can save you a lot on technical labor costs. Bu…

The technical ability to scale is a bit meaningless if you can't afford it.

Re: I got pwned by my cloud costs

#299

Post by faebi »

I have 10gbits internet at home. Sometimes I wonder how many services/people I could bankrupt by using it harder. Not that I want this, but more like, why is it even possible?

Re: I got pwned by my cloud costs

#300

Post by immibis »

rhn_mk1 wrote: post #294
fbrncci wrote: post #290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a pretty complicated architecture that would cost me about 20-35$ if it was hosted just on Digitalocean or Hetzner. Instead its AWS ...soon to be multicloud, and costs me about 140$/mo (which does vary). But it does allow me to experiment, write long articles and design some fun stuff; about which I blog on my own website. The blog has gotten me both clients on freelance projects and enough "cred" to start on…

What stops you from having a blog on Hetzner? That doesn't seem like it has anything to do with AWS whatsoever... or do they offer a blogging pltform?

Because the blog is about his experiments in AWS?

AWS is cool and all and has a bunch of interesting stuff, it's just expensive.

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