Re:We reduced our server costs by moving away from AWS
by neeleshs on Wednesday September 28, 2022 @06:08PM
(#33013889)
YMMV, I run a startup that serves critical customer use cases, and from day 1 I had to care that my DB was HA, backed up, and could be restored. Actually had a case early on where we had to test this because I accidentally deleted customer data and had to restore - took all of one click, with no scripts, no prior investment into backup management etc. We also had to go through infosec reviews from day 1, and many of these are a must have. Doesn't matter if it's a small crew or large. Our customers care.
3 years fast forward with hundreds of customers, and we haven't had a need to hire someone full time to "manage" these services. This may/will change down the line, but I couldn't have built my business without one of these cloud vendors.
Edit: I also know the pain of building (and managing) this on bare metal (last company did that) - and it was just apache/php/mysql on bare metal. It was a mess
Re:We reduced our server costs by moving away from AWS
by boltzmann-brain on Thursday September 29, 2022 @06:53AM
(#33018820)
I would definitely say that your use case for AWS is not just warranted but good. There are many use cases where going for your own servers or even data center (even "rack room" or "server in storage room") is a better idea, but this isn't it.
It's much easier to setup and forget basic bare metal servers with PG/NGINX and whatnot, than it is to automate using dozens of AWS services.
People pretend that AWS doesn't cost engineers to run it, when it's IMO basically the same human cost, if not bigger as complexity grows. You just don't pay that cost upfront, but you sure do pay it later with interest.
You get stuff like HA but that's not free. You also now have to manage a new boatload of services, scripts, changing APIs, etc.