Backups, configuration and failover. Which traditionally meant a db guy or an ops guy which costs money. I've done it for multiple database technologies and doing it right is not at all easy or cheap on time.

With that said, Kubernetes might fix this because they have access to more parts of the system in a generic API. With tech like KubeDB[1] and other operators[2] we might see these prices coming closer to bare-metal.

[1] https://kubedb.com/ [2] https://github.com/zalando/postgres-operator

Yep, this is exactly it. By the way, even SQL Server can use Kubernetes for HA nowadays.[1]

[1] https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sql/linux/tutorial-sql-serv...

Does running Postgres in a container hurt performance?

Not inherently, but if you want to use provisioned storage then your storage driver[0] will have some cost (unless you use local storage).

Of course, if you're on AWS then you'd be paying the EBS tax either way.

[0]: https://kubernetes.io/docs/concepts/storage/storage-classes/...

No.

It used to be unreliable. Is it not now?

I don't think so. We run a bunch of things in k8s / docker and you can achieve bare metal performance.

The idea with the hosted version of the service is that you're paying more but (in theory) you're also getting more. You can certainly host your own Redis but Azure's hosted offering probably automatically takes care of a bunch of "housekeeping" things that you would have to manage yourself otherwise, like provisioning, HA, scaling, backups, and automatic integration with other Azure services.

For a lot of companies, an extra $35 per month to save hours of work is a no-brainer.

A rudimentary price comparison tends to show AWS/Azure costs much higher than bare metal or VPS, sometimes an order of magnitude higher, but the reality is more nuanced.

Many people still prefer hosted services because (a) total cost of ownership can be much lower once you factor in the cost of a qualified engineer installing it, ensuring it's online 365/24/7, and keeping it up to date (b) comparisons tend to be apples-to-oranges, since many AWS services are charged on a per-transaction basis. With a VPS, it often appears a lot cheaper by comparison, but you're also paying for a lot of capacity (RAM, CPU, storage) that you're not using, and generally can't use most of the time because you need to reserve enough for peak periods.

The 1GB redis instance on hosted infrastructure typically comes with opinionated defaults - and tight integration with the hosting provider's other offerings - for security, monitoring, resiliency, support and license management. If you're only going to run one or two Redis instances, $500/year compared with the additional engineering time required to handle anything other than just tossing the box on the Internet starts to look pretty reasonable.

There is a cost to manage the instance, upgrading monitoring etc. Even though there is no SLA on the basic tier, I would imagine Azure does some maintenance and monitoring. However is it worth 35$ etc, I am not sure. Also, the basic tier does not have replicas. If you want replicas you have to pay 100$ per month.

Not all of them, Digital Ocean starts at $15/mo for a 1GB Redis instance.