That being said, a big reason for using AWS/GCP is all the additional services that are available on the platform.. If the workload being run isn't that complicated, the hyperscalers are probably overkill. Even DO or Linode would be a better option under those circumstances.

[–] Overmind@lemmy.sdf.org 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

This. AWS architect here. There are a lot of ways to reduce pricing in AWS like horizontal scaling, serverless functions, reserved instances. Most people aren't aware of it and if you're going to dive in head first into something like cloud, you'll need to bear the consequences and then learn eventually.

[–] greyscale@lemmy.sdf.org 1 points 1 year ago

Even with ASGs, ec2 costs a bomb for performance.

And "serverless" functions are a trap.

If you're gonna commit to reserved instances, just buy hardware for goodness sake, its a 3 year commitment with a huge upfront spend.

[–] penguin@sh.itjust.works 1 points 1 year ago

AWS is perfect for large operations that value stability and elasticity over anything else.

It's very easy to just spin up a thousand extra servers for momentary demand or some new exciting project. It's also easy to locate multiple instances all over the world for low latency with your users.

If you know you're going to need a couple servers for years and have the hardware knowhow, then it's cheaper to do it yourself for sure.

It's also possible to use aws more efficiently if you know all of their services. I ran a small utils website for my friends and I on it a while ago and it was essentially free since the static files were tiny and on s3 and the backend was lambda which gives you quite a few free calls before charging.

[–] fmstrat@lemmy.nowsci.com 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Habit (guess). Its what is used professionally, despite being proven over and over that cost-per-speed is terrible compared to less known providers.

[–] virtualbriefcase@lemm.ee 0 points 1 year ago

That, and like others mentioned their flexibility, plus the fact that they're fairly reliable (maybe less than some good Iaas providers but a fair bit more than your consumer vps places). Moments ago I went to the hetzner site to check them out and got:

Status Code 504 Gateway Timeout

The upstream server failed to send a request in the time allowed by the server. If you are the Administrator of the Upstream, check your server logs for errors.

Annoying if it's you nextloud instance down for a minutes, but a worthy trade off if you're paying 1/4 of the price. Extremely costly for big business or even risking peoples's lives for a few different very important systems.