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Serverless: A lesson learned the hard way

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Re: Serverless: A lesson learned the hard way

#31

Post by AndrewCHM »

cddotdotslash wrote: post #17

This is not a "Serverless" problem; this is a mistake a developer made that used a pay-per-use system. If I write code that launches EC2 instances and I accidentally set it to launch an instance every second instead of minute because I divided wrong, that's my fault.

If I set up a server to run a script each time a file gets updated in a folder, then the costs arn't going to increase.

Its not a "problem" with server/serverless of course, but no-scaling-by-default vs unlimited-scaling-by-default (which is imo the better way to split the server/serverless topic), one is going to cost more when things get thrown for a loop

Re: Serverless: A lesson learned the hard way

#32

Post by Danihan »

aetherson wrote: post #9
toomuchtodo wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I live in Florida, and even in Miami $200 is a very nice dinner once or twice a year. $200 for a decent lunch is insane.

He's being ridiculous. I live and work in SF. Restaurants here are definitely expensive! But my wife and I get "decent lunches" for $60, not $200. A quite nice dinner for date night is probably $120-$150. (And if we were more price-conscious, I'm pretty sure that we could get "decent" lunches and "quite nice" dinners for less than we pay). You can of course spend much more than that if you choose. But $200 is nothing…

I didn't say it was the minimum. Just a nice lunch.

Re: Serverless: A lesson learned the hard way

#33

Post by apetresc »

aetherson wrote: post #9
toomuchtodo wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I live in Florida, and even in Miami $200 is a very nice dinner once or twice a year. $200 for a decent lunch is insane.

He's being ridiculous. I live and work in SF. Restaurants here are definitely expensive! But my wife and I get "decent lunches" for $60, not $200. A quite nice dinner for date night is probably $120-$150. (And if we were more price-conscious, I'm pretty sure that we could get "decent" lunches and "quite nice" dinners for less than we pay). You can of course spend much more than that if you choose. But $200 is nothing…

You both remind me of Lucille Bluth. $20 is PLENTY for a "decent" lunch, even in SF... you can be much more than "pretty sure" that you can have dinner for less than $150, too.

Re: Serverless: A lesson learned the hard way

#34

Post by tdb7893 »

eridius wrote: post #28
cddotdotslash wrote: post #17

This is not a "Serverless" problem; this is a mistake a developer made that used a pay-per-use system. If I write code that launches EC2 instances and I accidentally set it to launch an instance every second instead of minute because I divided wrong, that's my fault.

It is a serverless issue because if you were using your own server, a mistake like this wouldn't have cost money, it would have just degraded your service (or possibly brought it offline). So I guess the question is, with a mistake like this, is it better to be charged hundreds or thousands of dollars, or to have your service degrade or go offline until you can fix it?

Could you just do serverless where it starts to rate limit one you reach a certain cost? It seems like this is an issue that could be fixed somehow

Re: Serverless: A lesson learned the hard way

#35

Post by chrisco255 »

eridius wrote: post #28
cddotdotslash wrote: post #17

This is not a "Serverless" problem; this is a mistake a developer made that used a pay-per-use system. If I write code that launches EC2 instances and I accidentally set it to launch an instance every second instead of minute because I divided wrong, that's my fault.

It is a serverless issue because if you were using your own server, a mistake like this wouldn't have cost money, it would have just degraded your service (or possibly brought it offline). So I guess the question is, with a mistake like this, is it better to be charged hundreds or thousands of dollars, or to have your service degrade or go offline until you can fix it?

The developer should be writing unit tests for their code so they can avoid small mistakes like this.

Re: Serverless: A lesson learned the hard way

#36

Post by jzawodn »

OzzyB wrote: post #29
cddotdotslash wrote: post #17

This is not a "Serverless" problem; this is a mistake a developer made that used a pay-per-use system. If I write code that launches EC2 instances and I accidentally set it to launch an instance every second instead of minute because I divided wrong, that's my fault.

It's "serverless" in the sense that if the developer had provisioned a "server" then the max incursion of cost would equal the cost of that server, no more no less. So yeah, let's blame the developer, but let's not play like mistakes don't happen and they're not costly in the "serverless" world.

LOL WAT? How is it "serverless" if you're provisioning a server?

Re: Serverless: A lesson learned the hard way

#37

Post by cbhl »

tschellenbach wrote: post #21
Dolores12 wrote: post #3

"a $180 actual cost. I was left with a light headed feeling, it's a lot of money for me" people still play with fire. limit your losses, go with digital ocean or something for 5$/mo flat no matter what.

that depends for 5$ it breaks after a certain level of traffic. for many applications its always better to spend $$ instead of things shutting down. (hosting is usually insignificant compared to people, revenue etc)

If $180 is significant, then this person is probably a student or on a budget, not a business. So they'd probably prefer the downtime.

Re: Serverless: A lesson learned the hard way

#38

Post by concede_pluto »

occultist_throw wrote: post #18
mipmap04 wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Azure has this. When you hit your spending limit, it shuts down your services.

They didn't a year and a half ago. Created a 3k bill for my employer over RemoteApp. Yeah, charge per user, they said. Oh yeah, min 20 users, and we round up - of course in small print at the time. Unless I have hard guarantees, I give "cloud providers" re-loadable cards. Can't take more money than what's on there.

The vendor could still assign the debt to a collection agency or sue; a declined charge does not get you off the hook unless they decide it's not worth pursuing.

Re: Serverless: A lesson learned the hard way

#39

Post by thorum »

I wrote my (small) AWS app so it can run both on AWS and my local machine. Then you can write tests against the higher-level logic like "save this file to S3" and run those tests locally as well.

My main challenge with serverless is using Lambda with API Gateway. Lambda has no database connection pooling, so I end up with a ridiculous number of connections to RDS - one for each simultaneous user. I haven't found a solution to this yet, other than not using API Gateway.

Re: Serverless: A lesson learned the hard way

#40

Post by Danihan »

F_r_k wrote: post #7
Danihan wrote: post #2

The idea that $200 matters that much to a European programmer is so bizarre to me. I just spent that on a decent lunch for two in SF...

That just shows you've got no idea what you're talking about

All I said was that I find it bizarre. What is it that you think I don't know exactly?
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