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Ask HN: AWS budget capping service?

6 points by kingofspain ↗ HN
Hello!

I'm working on a new project of mine where I'll be offloading a fair few files to S3/cloudfront. Now I'm a little bit short on cash at the moment and this will be my first proper use of AWS at any kind of scale and I'm a bit hesitant to write them a blank cheque. If something goes wrong or I suddenly get a billion visits then I'd rather be cut off than face runaway thousands in charges.

Trawling through Amazon's forums there are posts as far back as 2006 saying a 'max budget' feature is in the works but then nothing. There are links to third party services that are ether dead or look, ahem, rustic. I was wondering what some of you guys might use to keep tabs on your charges and allows you to cap spending. My initial preference is for a reliable web-based service - I can manage a server myself but I'm not sure I have the skillz to run my own monitoring scripts properly.

Anyone who can help me out will receive a blank cheque in the post...

8 comments

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tocomment
I've recently been keen to find an answer to this also. Let us know if you find anything.
tocomment
You know those visa gift cards that you preload with cash. Could you sign up for AWS with one of those and then when it's out of money Amazon would simply cut you off?

Or how about a debit card with the desired amount in your account?

Or a credit card with a low credit limit?

dholowiski
That's a good idea, but amazon keeps track of what you're using, and bills you at the end of the month. So even if your visa card only has $50, they could still send you a bill for $50,000.
rprasad
There are 3rd party services which can handle this for you, but I can't think of any of them off the top of my head.

You can use the AWS api's to do your own self-monitoring and cut back or suspend services if you approach or hit your spending limit. EDIT: You'll actually need to do the calculations to match up the service stats with the billing costs, but that should be a fairly simple calculation.

japhyr
I am interested in trying AWS as well, and this is my fear. I have a django project that is hosted on a server at my school. It would be quite useful to people if they could access it from outside the school. This being my first run through, I wouldn't want to make a mistake that ends up being financially costly.
lsc
hm. I'm slowly trying to build a service that will compete with S3 from the bottom (I will be focusing on remote backups first, e.g. it will likely be lower performance than s3. It will also be dramatically cheaper.) Of course, I'm slow, and there's no way this will get out of testing until hard drive prices come back down to normal.

You sound like you might be a possible customer (perhaps for version 2, which will do static http hosting like s3 can.)

First, why are you using S3? because it's cheap at the low end? or because of the reputation? I'm assuming the former.

So billing is a hard question. Right now, storage/static http hosting is sold on two models:

1. the dreamhost model. One flat monthly fee for a large quota they assume you won't use. The problem here is that all the money is made off the light users, so there isn't a strong incentive to provide good service to heavy users.

2. the S3 model. Per-usage fees. The advantage is that the provider makes money off the heavy users, so there is a strong incentive for them to make it work well for the heavy users. The problem is that it gets expensive with more use; depending on your business model, this can be a problem; I mean, if your revenue is tied tightly to your usage, it's fine, but if your usage can go up without

The big problem with both, I think, is that it's not always clear what the best choice is. The S3 model results in super low prices for users that don't use much... but as you complain, those users usually don't want unexpected bills. It also results in super premium pricing for high end users.

The dreamhost model looks like a great idea for heavy users, as the cost per unit usage, if you use the whole quota (and only the whole quota) is usually really low, as the provider expects you to not use the whole quota. Of course, the providers then are setup for light users, as that's where they make their money.

Anyhow, I just wanted to get your thoughts; Why are you going with amazon s3 rather than someone that uses the dreamhost model?

japhyr
I lean towards amazon because I know that my usage should be low. I made a web app that is useful for my school, but it is not a revenue-generating site. I'm willing to pay for low-usage hosting, or have my school pay for hosting. But neither I nor my school would be willing to pay for spikes in usage. I think there's a pretty small chance of such a spike, but I want to better understand how to control for that before setting up hosting on a per-usage model such as amazon.