• aaron@infosec.pub
    11·
    23 hours ago

    I tried something or other on aws. I only needed the ‘definitely free, no cost whatsoever we will suspend the account before you hit whatever limits we set - that I didn’t even hit a fraction of’ tier free trial month to do whatever it was I was doing.

    At the end of the ‘totally free’ month they charged me something like £1.80. Obviously £1.80 is inconsequential, it is the fact there was any charge at all given everything I had been told - I can’t remember what I did, probably learned to set up a vpn or something simple - I didn’t even use it beyond setting it up and testing it.

    I made sure I burned the account in a big firey pit and I will never go back to them for anything I am paying for (news that I doubt is keeping Jeff Bezos up at night, but it isn’t inconceivable I might have bigger projects in the future). I doubt they could figure out what the charge was for. Presumably chatgpt hallucinates their billing now which might be an improvement.

  • henfredemars@infosec.pubEnglish
    79·
    2 days ago

    I was promised 15 years ago that cloud computing would avoid unexpected bills and provide consistent expenses that project managers love so much.

    • towerful@programming.dev
      47·
      2 days ago

      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.

        • MelodiousFunk@slrpnk.net
          4·
          1 day ago

          Maybe it depends on what I want to happen when that load spike comes.

          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)_/¯

        • brbposting@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
          6·
          1 day ago

          Saw that Grafana gets special notifications permissions on iOS for emergencies - expensive charges should wake up whoever’s on the hook for them :)

  • Allero
    13·
    1 day ago

    That’s why pay-as-you-go payment model is completely unfitting for the world of computers.

    Prices can rack up dramatically without you noticing.

    • bamboo@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
      48·
      2 days ago

      I enabled Cloudtrail to log all DynamoDB read/write data events when trying to troubleshoot an issue. Even though I only left this enabled for a few days, the Cloudtrail line item was $5k more than it should have been. My back of the napkin math with assumptions came out to be 100 times less than that, so I had a really awkward support email asking them to reverse the charges, which they did fortunately.

  • Philharmonic3@lemmy.world
    31·
    1 day ago

    I’m very new to programming and somehow have a job where I have to write Python scripts. Someone on my team mentioned that we use AWS and now I’m scared. Can someone explain how you accidentally rack up such a bill?

    • JackbyDev@programming.devEnglish
      222·
      1 day ago

      You’re gonna be fine. Honestly, if your team has given you permissions to do something accidental like this then it’s on them. You’re not gonna get stuck with the bill. You’re not gonna get fired. It wouldn’t be your fault.

      It’s really only scary when you’re doing it solo with your own back information lol.

    • Oderus@lemmy.worldEnglish
      242·
      1 day ago

      It’s actually difficult. You can set a budget so AWS will alert you when you hit it.

      They have a price calculator that’ll calculate costs before you do anything.

      Inbound Internet is free. Only outboard costs you anything.

      Network transfers between VPC’s using private links are free.

      AWS accounts are free.

      Lambda functions are ultra cheap as you only pay for the time you use it.

      S3 is object storage with 11 9’s of uptime and it’s cheaper than any enterprise NAS.

      Basically you’d have to setup something wrong and ignore it for weeks to incur a large bill.

    • adhdplantdev@lemm.ee
      12·
      1 day ago

      Just make sure whatever resources you spin up you’re spitting down. This stuff though tends to happen when people accidentally let a a script that creates and destroys instances run over the weekend and it didn’t appropriately clean up instances for you…

      Or you thought you would try your hand at training in llm and then realized you spent way too much money on the infrastructure and resources

    • frezik@midwest.social
      2·
      24 hours ago

      AWS has a multitude of different offerings with confusing pricing structures. They have zero incentive to make them understandable.

      That said, chances are your new company has people who understand this already and know how to manage it. Hopefully, they’ll put up some guardrails that prevent you and others from running up a big bill. I wouldn’t expect a junior programmer to know how to do this, but that’s ok as long as the company is managed right. Granted, that can be a big if sometimes.

  • Lucy :3@feddit.org
    551·
    2 days ago

    Experienced at running my own server: 50€/month power bill

    It’s okay I guess

      • Lucy :3@feddit.org
        30·
        2 days ago

        ~0.28€/kWh

        So 50€/month assumes an average of 263W used 24/7, though considering I also have two switches and a workstation/backup server as well as the inefficiency of an UPS, that is realistic.

  • wise_pancake@lemmy.ca
    35·
    2 days ago

    This is how I feel about vibe coding

    “Claude can you help me with this”

    “Sure, taking a look”

    you’ve exceeded your allotted token limit

    Oops.

    • towerful@programming.dev
      22·
      2 days ago

      Years ago, I played with AWS then contacted their support to make sure any AWS billing to my account was disabled.
      I thought I’d try it again recently, and couldn’t log in.
      I still don’t think I’m missing anything.

      I’d rather have VPS or server providers where I know exactly what I’m getting per month no matter what, tho I’ve ran near data transfer surcharges.

    • Landless2029@lemmy.world
      8·
      1 day ago

      First thing I learned in a video course was setting a spending budget for your account. I set a $10/month limit and never broke it in 6 years.