[treve]

I hope people considering this architecture read this article and reconsider if they can build their applications using mostly portable services.

I'd be curious what kind of use-cases people have that makes this complexity worth it.

[TruthWillHurt]

Using "portable services" is a non-cloud pattern and a return to 2008.

If you're not using managed services, i.e running your own database, backups and all - you might as well use bare-metal.

[kaydub]

This is the way.

The only places I've worked at/for as of the last 2-3 years that don't heavily rely on managed services were an absolute disaster. A lot of "not invented here" syndrome. A lot of anti-patterns and janky hacks to make things work.

Currently working somewhere 100% locked in to AWS and I've never been happier.

[yencabulator]

There's a huge gap between "we assume there's a competently run Postgres somewhere" and being vendor-locked to AWS. Former doesn't imply latter.

[henrydark]

Nothing wrong with bare metal.

[sokoloff]

Bare metal has higher fixed costs (mostly people’s comp) and lower marginal unit costs (per GB RAM, per TB, per CPU-second).

I think at small scale, I’d put nearly everything natively in the cloud (including every side project that has a network-connected, always on component). At extreme scale, most things should be bare metal. There’s a crossover point somewhere in the middle. For me, that crossover point is somewhere in the huge scale range.

[treve]

Non-cloud pattern and 2008 are both unqualified issues.

That said, RDS is great. Managed, automated backups and portable.