[awinder]

Yeah $5 for a single point of failure in one data center of possibly questionable quality. Versus 20 a month for an app spread across availability zones for the all-in price, resilient to failure on single machines, etc.

A single downtime event on a single host will likely have costs that can never be actuarially recovered from, in this head to head. Pay the $15 extra bucks.

[malchow]

You say that, but IME it takes lots of configuration effort and lots more AWS services in order to really get the kind of resiliency that, say, Amazon.com enjoys. And core services in core regions in AWS do go down. It doesn't not happen.

I think AWS would do well to expand massively its free tier. Talented startups in my world are starting to look askance at AWS fees.

[awinder]

Respectfully, I disagree. If you use the services listed in the article, you're not really talking about that many more components than you're going to run on your own box. You've got a DB (dynamodb), an app server (lambda), and an http load balancer / content server (s3 / api gateway). And then you have to set up DNS anywhere but Route 53, why not. I don't see how this is dramatically a larger configuration haul compared to:

1. Nginx config & tuning 2. Postgres / MySQL config & tuning 3. App server config & tuning

It is dramatically different config & tuning, so we might exist in a time where people overvalue familiarity & it colors their impressions of effort, but I don't think it's a long-term viable crutch to lean on either.

As to core services going down, I read you loud & clear, it does happen. From my experience, it happens way less often than outages on a single box though, or even a collection of boxes you're managing. And I don't know if there has been a time where there were simultaneous region failures in AWS -- and with dynamo global tables its easier than ever to get a multi-region app launched.

Pricing is the kicker for sure though. Your bill line is going to be higher. You're also priced in though which from a biz standpoint is huge. It's very difficult to budget failure, it's probably a hidden component in your engineering team costs. For startups this can be mitigated through AWS' accelerator-linked programs though, otherwise, I'd encourage any CTO / CEO / founder team to really think about how cost is not measured in the data center bill, but in that cost, plus engineer cost, plus customer retention costs, plus opportunity cost.

[shriek]

Also, couldn't you just set a limit in your budget in AWS. That and alarms on events etc?