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Ask HN: How do you learn to use AWS when you are terrified to being overcharged?

8 points by noreasonw ↗ HN
I don't get any money from programming, and I would like to learn to use AWS but I am a very risk averse kind of people and I don't want to be overcharge in case I do some silly thing in the web. I would like a service that guarantees that no matter what happens you don't pay more than a small amount for learning, I don't mind if my code disappear from the server or the application is no longer working when the money is over. I imagine that working in the cloud is about being at risk but, just in the learning phase I would like to have the minimum risk when learning. Any ideas?

17 comments

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cpr
There are free micro instances, last I knew.
noreasonw
Unfortunately the word free is a little ambiguous since it can be free (as in beer) but suddenly you are charged because you make something stupid (or someone hacked your account and created a zillion services)
autotune
Which is why you enable Multi Factor Authentication beforehand and make sure the roles you assign the instances you create don't have write access except for the one bastion, which you make sure doesn't have root login or even access to the public internet except for your IP but still have access to your private servers via VPCs.
Turing_Machine
They have a "billing alerts" feature that should help. It will send you email if your charges exceed the amount you've set.
noreasonw
If you are hacked the first thing the bad guys do is to disable your billing alerts.
mindcrime
Has that been a common problem for AWS users? I'm not asking to be snide, I honestly don't know. I just haven't heard a lot about that happening.

Something else to keep in mind... Amazon have a reputation for being pretty good about issuing refunds in situations where people rack up large bills due to various kinds of accidents. There are a number of such stories in old HN posts, and my own experience was very favorable: I setup a couple of big instances for a demo at a conference, and then a week or two later had a heart attack, and didn't get around to shutting down the instances until about 3 months later. I wound up getting billed several thousand dollars, but Amazon had no problem issuing me a refund. YMMV, of course.

Someone1234
API key theft is a common problem with AWS users.

The problem people have is that when they generate an API key they grant that key "everything" even account management stuff. Instead of giving it the least privilege needed to accomplish whatever it is that it does.

Then they'll inadvertently upload it to e.g. GitHub or similar in some source code and bad guys have bots which will steal it then make use of your account for all kinds of evil purposes.

Having things like 2F on your main account (which you should) won't save you from this. And if you go to bed, by the time you wake up the account charges could be in the tens of thousands even with billing alerts.

mindcrime
Then they'll inadvertently upload it to e.g. GitHub or similar in some source code and bad guys have bots which will steal it then make use of your account for all kinds of evil purposes.

OK, yeah, that was the one scenario I was thinking about. I just didn't know if there was some other AWS hack being employed commonly.

For this, there is at least a solution, even if people don't use it, and that is to use IAM roles. Create your root account and never (or almost never) use it, except to create IAM users with more limited permissions, and then use the AIM user for all your day to day stuff.

Turing_Machine
Well, if you are hacked, you're not liable for the fraudulent charges anyway (in the U.S.... mileage may vary elsewhere). Your CC company will charge it back, in the unlikely event that Amazon didn't take care of it on their own initiative (which they almost certainly would... as another poster noted, they have a good reputation in that area).

I interpreted "doing something silly" as "firing up 10,000 instances and forgetting to shut them back down", rather than fraud.

autotune
AutoScale is the funnest part though...
gazarsgo
Open your account with a $100 Visa gift card.
noreasonw
Can I use an anonymous user?, that is I don't want to disclose my name, address, email or any other personal information
Someone1234
No.

Amazon verifies accounts heavily to stop fraud and abuse. I needed a legitimate telephone number (which they called).

mindcrime
One thing AWS doesn't have, is a feature to let you forcibly terminate instances based on a billing limit or a time schedule. But, micro instances are so cheap (and even free for a time), that you can probably afford to set up a single micro instance, and put a watchdog process on there that will use the API to monitor your instances and terminate them if you forget and leave ones running or something.
auganov
Get a CC that allows you to set a low spending limit.
codegeek
do you want to learn AWS specifcally or do you want to learn to code stuff in general ?

If latter, may I suggest you try digitalocean then ? I know you are talking about AWS sepcifically but for your use case, get a $5 DO VPS and play as much as you want.