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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

#341

Post by snovv_crash »

ghughes wrote: post #119
fuzzy2 wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That dedicated server you have to manage (ensure security, install the software you need, keep it updated and secure etc). It’s not for everyone. Also, as you can see in a screenshot on TFA: Some services are simply dirt cheap. The storage account and its various “sub-services” is such a thing. It’s hard to compete with dedicated hardware here. Depending on your dedicated hosting provider, the traffic cost trap exist…

> ensure security, install the software you need, keep it updated and secure etc These things are now trivial enough that it doesn't make sense to pay 10x the cost of bare metal for a cloud provider to solve them for you unless you have a crazy amount of runway or absolutely no idea what you're doing.

Or unless your traffic is so low that the marginal cost differences are something you can swallow.

I've been running something on AppEngine for 10 years and it costs me less than $1 a month. Not sure I could find a cheaper VPS.

On the other hand, I also manage a Mediawiki install, and a cheap Hetzner VPS works great for this.

Re: I got pwned by my cloud costs

#342

Post by marcan_42 »

pcthrowaway wrote: post #313
marcan_42 wrote: post #283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A dedicated server isn't usually considered a "cloud" service. It's a physical server allocated to you, with unmetered bandwidth and local disk.

Where do you get bare metal servers for that cheap? I assumed by VPS you were talking about a VM

The VPS was a VM, but I moved from that to dedicated a long time ago.

Hetzner has nice dedicated servers for €33/mo:

https://www.hetzner.com/sb

I'm on an older one that just got bumped up to €29/mo due to increasing electricity prices; it was €21/mo until now, and I can't blame them for that one. The specs are E3-1245 V2 / 16GB / 2x3T, there's over 45 vhosts on it across ~25 wwwroots plus other random services, and CPU usage is basically nothing. The cores are really there just to handle bursty stuff. Most random side projects and small websites don't need almost any resources on modern hardware.

Previously I was on a Scaleway Dedibox, which go as low as €15/mo right now. It was €10 at one point even.

https://www.scaleway.com/en/dedibox/start/start-2-s-sata/

Re: I got pwned by my cloud costs

#343

Post by PragmaticPulp »

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…

For such a (relatively) simple architecture: I agree. Easy dedicated server, make a point to watch security updates.

The reason to use cloud-style services is so you can focus on building the product quickly instead of building and maintaining architecture. But once the product is stable, a cost-reduction pass is in order.

Re: I got pwned by my cloud costs

#344

Post by napolux »

TacticalCoder wrote: post #340

Are there cloud services that allow to easily put a maximum budget, to make sure you have no surprise costs like that?

In my experience you can only setup billing alerts, which are fair, if you ask me.

I took a good course on pluralsight about AWS and the first lesson was to setup a billing alert.

What will hard limits will do to your infra? You can't take down / suspend DBs, EC2s, etc... Just because you set a 1k USD limit and that's it.

Alerts are the 1st thing you should setup IMHO

Re: I got pwned by my cloud costs

#345

Post by kuschku »

pbalau wrote: post #329
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…

Wouldn't riding a horse prevent that car crash?

Luckily you can avoid both by just cycling everywhere. Lower CO2 output and lower cost, too.

I use rented dedicated servers for everything, and always travel by bicycle or transit. It's not as ridiculous as you make it seem.

Re: I got pwned by my cloud costs

#346

Post by lvass »

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…

IIRC, hertzner "unlimited" traffic isn't quite unlimited. You have a few monthly TB depending on what you contracted, if you go over it there's massive speed reductions until you pay a fee.

Re: I got pwned by my cloud costs

#347

Post by b112 »

windexh8er wrote: post #339
fs111 wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds like a pretty expensive privilege. How is using cloudflare okay in this then? Cloudflare is also not Azure

The simple answer here is that Troy was using Cloudflare to offset costs he knew he would incur with Azure. He states verbatim: "Firstly, I always knew bandwidth on Azure was expensive and I should have been monitoring it better, particularly on the storage account serving the most data." ...and he didn't have simple monitors in place to alert him of uncommon billing spikes. I get your point, if he's not OK with usin…

There are no savings with cloud, weaving or not.

You want to waste money? Hire a car, with a driver, when you need it.

Want to save money. Learn to drive.

You always pay more for outsourcing stuff, a lot more, than doing it yourself.

You can buy 1000x the processing power, by buying baremetal. You can get 100,000x more bandwith for cost, when not using the cloud.

People think baremetal is hard. It isn't. It does take knowledge.

Re: I got pwned by my cloud costs

#348

Post by dom96 »

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 don't understand why anyone would sign up for services that have an unknown future cost. This is exactly why I avoid Amazon's S3 and prefer something like Digital Ocean (or Hetzner). I would much rather have my service shut down than spend many thousands of dollars because some cache failed.

Re: I got pwned by my cloud costs

#349

Post by [deleted] »

dom96 wrote: post #348
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 don't understand why anyone would sign up for services that have an unknown future cost. This is exactly why I avoid Amazon's S3 and prefer something like Digital Ocean (or Hetzner). I would much rather have my service shut down than spend many thousands of dollars because some cache failed.

[deleted]

Re: I got pwned by my cloud costs

#350

Post by qw »

j1elo wrote: post #32
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.

> If Troy Hunt of all people can make this mistake, it can happen to anybody. Exactly this. As a low-level / embedded / non-cloud stuff dev, I've been getting up to speed through all the cloud-ification of the industry, but I'm still scared (not literally ofc) of running most things on my own on any big cloud provider (smaller ones seem more manageable). I'm reading this and seems like being a customer of cloud servi…

> I reached out to a friend at Cloudflare and shortly thereafter, the penny dropped

Another advantage is his big network that he can ask for help. There's also a chance that his blog post will reach the right person in Azure and he'll get a reduced bill.

As someone who doesn't have the same network or the "fame", I am concerned about what would have happened to me in that situation.

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