Thread

1. brap · 1791102425 · focus · HN ↗

   When I first started working with cloud providers it was shocking to discover this feature doesn’t exist, basically anywhere.

   It’s such a basic thing, not having it has to be deliberate to make you accidentally spend more than you’d like.

   1. Terretta · 1791121440 · focus · HN ↗

      Mistaken view.

      I was a member of AWS customer advisory board for years. Two dozen of largest enterprises and unicorns and so on. Nobody wanted the billing department "inline" of systems controls.

      AWS provides all the controls you need to flip the switch yourself, and provides the CDK / TF / etc. patterns for it. Plenty GitHub projects to host your own light switch service.

      Don't relinquish the switch.

      1. kemitchell · 1791123402 · focus · HN ↗

         Might you recommend any talks or writing on the AWS advisory board and how it works? I found Amazon’s reference page on it, but it’s scant.
      2. callmeal · 1791123666 · focus · HN ↗

         > Two dozen of largest enterprises and unicorns and so on. Nobody wanted the billing department "inline" of systems controls.

         And of course, two dozen enterprises trump hundreds if not thousands of other small businesses right? Did AWS think of, oh I don't know, a 'feature flag' or somesuch thing that enterprises and unicorns are so fond of to provide this feature to those who don't have VC money to flush?

         1. Terretta · 1791125532 · focus · HN ↗

            Again, they give you the tools for this. You can understand your usage by API, you can set threshold actions on it, you can switch things on and off, and applyable templates exist, all of which are under your control and "out of band" from the systems delivering traffic or compute to your paying customers.

            1. dwedge · 1791126359 · focus · HN ↗

               Using these tools can you switch everything off immediately (or at least within a minute) of total billing going over $X? Because if not, you're being disingenuous

               1. dcminter · 1791128707 · focus · HN ↗

                  Not to mention that one of the things people want a hard limit for is to limit the financial blast radius of misconfiguration. Saying "oh sure, you can cobble that together yourself" is super missing the point.
            2. oblio · 1791133623 · focus · HN ↗

               Stop defending a dark pattern that is making them a lot of money.
      3. devsda · 1791128522 · focus · HN ↗

         Amazon didn't have to build a hosted db, queue, mail or anything else that is value add as long as it provides basic hosted compute, storage and network.

         But it still does and can only claim having those after building them.

         Their customers have been asking for that hard cap feature for a long long time, not building that feature while saying customers have all the tools to build it themselves is just a deliberate misdirection at this point.

Unofficial Hacker News client; not affiliated with Y Combinator.