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Please fix the AWS free tier before somebody gets hurt

cloudirregular.substack.com

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Re: Please fix the AWS free tier before somebody gets hurt

#371

Post by tomerv »

adamparsons wrote: post #108

I cancelled an account 2 years ago because no matter how much I explored cost manager or any regions I used, I can't find why I still get billed a small dollar or so a month. I still get bills on the 3rd of each month, followed by a "we can't charge your card" (I removed it when they pulled this shit) followed by a few days later you get the "hey we're gonna suspend your account if you don't pay" Yeah cool, I only cl…

Same here. I had a monthly billing of a few dollars and couldn't figure out where it's coming from (and given that it's only a few dollars, it wouldn't make sense to spend many hours investigating). In the end I just canceled the card and hoped for the best.

Re: Please fix the AWS free tier before somebody gets hurt

#372

Post by matwood »

twodave wrote: post #105
paaakthecaaa wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They definitely need a senior executive to stand up and say, "The Customer wants us to be transparent in billing, fix that now." Then they need to start a team dedicated to finding a good way to let customers halt spending at a given limit with minimal impact on their operations. They already win on UX (okay, okay, it's an opinion ffs), but unlimited liability makes a lot of people very uncomfortable. Those two actio…

Have to agree with the others. For example, while setting up ELB it's possible to select at least one option (un-checking the Public IP box) that causes the setup to just fail with a nonsensical error message. Turns out ELB requires a public IP to communicate with the nodes. That's just the most glaring one off the top of my head. I also remember trying to set up SFTP whenever it was first released. It was literally…

Unless you understand IAM, the scoping of individual users from the sftp service can be a bit confusing. What you need is a scope down policy:

https://docs.aws.amazon.com/transfer/latest/userguide/scope-...

The more annoying part is that the service only supports public/private key logins. If you want user/pass you have to write a lambda. The lambda is pretty simple though, it checks the credentials (so it can hit any backend you like), and if they pass it returns a 200 with a json doc of role (which is just sftp assume role), policy (the scope down from above), and home dir.

https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/storage/enable-password-authent...

This touches on a larger issue with AWS though. It's that they are trending to leave out functionality and point to lambda as the solution. On one hand, I get it. The lambda solution is infinitely more flexible, but what if I just wanted an sftp for a couple users that uses user/pass?

To your final point, it is so much less maintenance. There is no server to manage, and since I want all the data in s3 anyway, it's already there. This solution replaced a server with chroots, EBS, scripts to move data to s3, etc...

Re: Please fix the AWS free tier before somebody gets hurt

#373

Post by matwood »

farnsworth wrote: post #143
willcipriano wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apparently I owe AWS 1 cent for DNS. The problem is I can't login to pay it, so every month I get a email that says "your aws account is going to be suspended" and 30 days later I'm disappointed that they didn't follow through with the threat.

AWS charges me $1 or $2 every month, and I log into my account and click through every page and can't find a single active service or any clue on what it's for. It's marked "EC2 - Other", whatever the f that means

What does the bill details screen show? I manage an AWS bill and I find it overly detailed. Others mentioned leftover EIPs, but the bill shows these as their own line item.

Not saying it can't happen, but I've never seen an 'Other' listed on the bill details screen. As I said above, it's detailed to a fault.

Re: Please fix the AWS free tier before somebody gets hurt

#374

Post by acdha »

amelius wrote: post #345
swiftcoder wrote: post #336

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm also going to point out, as a former AWS engineer, that "too hard" isn't in the AWS engineering vocabulary. If an AWS engineer were to dismiss something as "too hard", they'd be on the fast track to a performance-improvement-plan. The problem isn't that it's too hard. It's that it isn't a business priority. As soon as it becomes prioritised, a legion of very smart AWS engineers will solve it.

> "too hard" isn't in the AWS engineering vocabulary Let these people fix climate change then. Sarcasm aside, it must be boring working in a place where no problem is ever too hard.

I realize it can be fun to be snarky but consider the “business priority” portion you didn’t quote and the difference between “it’s too hard to do” and “doing it would cost X and impact performance of service Y by Z%”.

Re: Please fix the AWS free tier before somebody gets hurt

#375

Post by comprev »

Graffur wrote: post #339
swiftcoder wrote: post #336

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm also going to point out, as a former AWS engineer, that "too hard" isn't in the AWS engineering vocabulary. If an AWS engineer were to dismiss something as "too hard", they'd be on the fast track to a performance-improvement-plan. The problem isn't that it's too hard. It's that it isn't a business priority. As soon as it becomes prioritised, a legion of very smart AWS engineers will solve it.

This is in line with all the bad things I've heard about Amazon. Why do people work there?

The CV title of having worked at FAANG and the big tech compensation.

Re: Please fix the AWS free tier before somebody gets hurt

#377

Post by ______- »

Does anyone else use the AWS free tier for a year, and then when the free year ends, signup for a new account and start another free tier account? It's a good technique if you live frugally.

The only caveat being you have to migrate everything to new servers, which can get messy if you don't practice how to do that efficiently.

Re: Please fix the AWS free tier before somebody gets hurt

#378

Post by k12sosse »

swiftcoder wrote: post #336
jiggawatts wrote: post #136

Everyone: PLEASE stop making the argument that it's "too hard" or even "impossible" to implement spending limits. As the article points out: Every other cloud does this! They all have non-production subscription types with hard spending limits. There's a difference between "unable" and "unwilling". The people that refuse to understand the difference are the same people that don't understand that "unsupported" isn't s…

I'm also going to point out, as a former AWS engineer, that "too hard" isn't in the AWS engineering vocabulary. If an AWS engineer were to dismiss something as "too hard", they'd be on the fast track to a performance-improvement-plan. The problem isn't that it's too hard. It's that it isn't a business priority. As soon as it becomes prioritised, a legion of very smart AWS engineers will solve it.

I routinely tell a coworker that isn't possible so that he does the work for me. Oh I know it's possible, I just don't want to do it. Thanks Corey! You're the best.

Re: Please fix the AWS free tier before somebody gets hurt

#379

Post by nix23 »

jiggawatts wrote: post #136

Everyone: PLEASE stop making the argument that it's "too hard" or even "impossible" to implement spending limits. As the article points out: Every other cloud does this! They all have non-production subscription types with hard spending limits. There's a difference between "unable" and "unwilling". The people that refuse to understand the difference are the same people that don't understand that "unsupported" isn't s…

>Don't walk down the same path as IBM's mainframes, where no student anywhere ever has been able to learn on their own

WHAT?

https://www.ibm.com/it-infrastructure/z/education/master-the...

http://wotho.ethz.ch/tk4-/

https://sdl-hercules-390.github.io/html/

https://mainframe.informatik.uni-leipzig.de/

>There's a difference between "unable" and "unwilling".

True words, look at the Links.

Re: Please fix the AWS free tier before somebody gets hurt

#380

Post by throwaway98797 »

k12sosse wrote: post #378
swiftcoder wrote: post #336

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm also going to point out, as a former AWS engineer, that "too hard" isn't in the AWS engineering vocabulary. If an AWS engineer were to dismiss something as "too hard", they'd be on the fast track to a performance-improvement-plan. The problem isn't that it's too hard. It's that it isn't a business priority. As soon as it becomes prioritised, a legion of very smart AWS engineers will solve it.

I routinely tell a coworker that isn't possible so that he does the work for me. Oh I know it's possible, I just don't want to do it. Thanks Corey! You're the best.

score one for manipulation
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