[sofixa]

> Plenty of heavy traffic, high redundancy applications exist without the need for AWS (or any other cloud providers) overpriced "bespoke" systems.

And almost all of them need a database, a load balancer, maybe some sort of cache. AWS has got you covered.

Maybe some of them need some async periodic reporting tasks. Or to store massive files or datasets and do analysis on them. Or transcode video. Or transform images. Or run another type of database for a third party piece of software. Or run a queue for something. Or capture logs or metrics.

And on and on and and on. AWS has got you covered.

This is Excel all over again. "Excel is too complex and has too many features, nobody needs more than 20% of Excel. It's just that everyone needs a different 20%".

[esskay]

You're right AWS does have you covered. But that doesn't mean thats the only way of doing it. Load balancing is insanely easy to do yourself, databases even easier. Caching, ditto.

I think a few people who claim to be in devops could do with learning the basics about how things like Ansible can help them as there's a fair few people who seem to be under the impression AWS is the only, and the best option, which unless you're FAANG really is rarely the case.

[sofixa]

You can spin up a redundant database setup with backups and monitoring and automatic fail over in 10 mins (the time it takes in AWS)? And maintain it? If you've done this a few times before and have it highly automated, sure. But let's not pretend it's "even easier" than "insanely easy".

Load balancing is trivial unless you get into global multicast LBs, but AWS have you covered there too.

[ta1243]

You could never run a site like hacker news on a single box somewhere with a backup box a couple of states away.

(/s, obviously)

[sofixa]

And have the two fail at the same time because similarly old hardware with similarly old and used disks fails at roughly the same time :)

[motorest]

> You're right AWS does have you covered. But that doesn't mean thats the only way of doing it. Load balancing is insanely easy to do yourself, databases even easier. Caching, ditto

I think you don't understand the scenario you are commenting on. I'll explain why.

It's irrelevant if you believe that you are able to imagine another way to do something, and that you believe it's "insanely easy" to do those yourself. What matters is that others can do that assessment themselves, and what you are failing to understand is that when they do so, their conclusion is that the easiest way by far to deploy and maintain those services is AWS.

And it isn't even close.

You mention load balancing and caching. The likes of AWS allows you to setup a global deployment of those services with a couple of clicks. In AWS it's a basic configuration change. And if you don't want it, you just tear down everything with a couple of clicks as well.

Why do you think a third of all the internet runs on AWS? Do you think every single cloud engineer in the world is unable to exercise any form of critical thinking? Do you think there's a conspiracy out there to force AWS to rule the world?