this post was submitted on 12 Jun 2025
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Oh, it's expected costs.
Like, figure out the compute requirements of your code, multiply by the cost per compute unit (or whatever): boom, your cost.
Totally predictable.
Compared to suddenly having to replace a $20k server that dies in your data center.
So much easier.
Except when your code (let's be honest, the most likely thing to have an error in it... At least compared to some 4+ year old production hardware that everyone runs) has a bug in it that requires 20x compute.
But maybe that is a popularity spike (the hug-of-death)! That's why you migrated to the #cloud anyway, right? To handle these spikes! And you've always paid your bills so... Yeh, here's a 20x bill.
Good point. Maybe it depends on what I want to happen when that load spike comes.
Saw that Grafana gets special notifications permissions on iOS for emergencies - expensive charges should wake up whoever’s on the hook for them :)
I don't know what they wanted to happen, but at my old place the load spike overloaded the UPS units.
Me: "we really shouldn't be running these at ~~85~~ ~~90~~ 95%."
Brass: "That's not 100. Find room to ingest this company we bought when the CEO made a friend at a circlejerk."
Overnight server update check: blip
UPS: Bypass mode, bitches!
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
We run our own shit.
Servers can be expensive but it's easy to over provision with spares. The real thing that most people forget about is basically everything else.
AWS hides redundant networking, and fast networking to the point where you can just move the slider to get more. The storage abstraction and redundancy and the ease of multi site / region. All of this stuff explodes the cost and complexity a great deal.
AWS is pricey for sure and at some point large enterprises will want a hybrid cloud solution to temper the costs but there is a world of difference between spinning up some ec2 and sticking a box in a colo.
All that said you can definitely make trade offs, everyone thinks their little app is going need to scale to 500 million users. The reality is most can have a half day of down time with little actual impact.