[tetha]

> Do you really need the advanced features of AWS and Azure right now? Or would a simple virtual machine at a reasonable price be sufficient? That’s the main question here.

This is one of the more important points and why the point "The learning curve of a single server isn't so big, especially when compared to AWS" is sitting a bit wrong with me.

Sure, if you talk about 1 VM, I agree. And I wouldn't second guess doing this, at all. It would be my initial plan as well as long as I don't have to make any strong availability guarantees. And for this use case, I'd call AWS a bad choice. It's not a simple VM provider.

But once you start running e.g. a redundant postgres cluster for updates without downtime, the amount of stuff to know also grows, a lot. Suddenly you also need backups, tests of backups. And this is where AWS/the cloud allows you to save time, and treadmill time.

[JeremyTheo]

The article was originally intended at manufacturing companies, not at IT startups, that currently go "all-in" on AWS and Azure with all of their managed services, when actually 95% of their workloads are in virtual machines, and the remaining stuff could easily be handled on a single VM. Or maybe a couple of VMs and a managed postgres somewhere (e.g., maybe even at AWS or Azure).

Would probably give them way more budget in actually building applications than running the infrastructure.

Maybe I'll extend the article to include the point of using a managed postgres at AWS / Azure / fly.io, whatever, in combination with Hetzner VMs.

[rcarmo]

I have a single VM for my personal stuff, but I use Azure’s backup and automated fail-over mechanisms as well as managed services for database and data processing for this very reason.