<story><title>Almost every infrastructure decision I endorse or regret</title><url>https://cep.dev/posts/every-infrastructure-decision-i-endorse-or-regret-after-4-years-running-infrastructure-at-a-startup/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>morsecodist</author><text>&amp;gt; Picking AWS over Google Cloud&lt;p&gt;I know this is an unpopular opinion but I think google cloud is amazing compared to AWS. I use google cloud run and it works like a dream. I have never found an easier way to get a docker container running in the cloud. The services all have sensible names, there are fewer more important services compared to the mess of AWS services, and the UI is more intuitive. The only downside I have found is the lack of community resulting in fewer tutorials, difficulty finding experienced hires, and fewer third party tools. I recommend trying it. I&amp;#x27;d love to get the user base to an even dozen.&lt;p&gt;The reasoning the author cites is that AWS has more responsive customer service and maybe I am missing out but it would never even occur to me to speak to someone from a cloud provider. They mention having &amp;quot;regular cadence meetings with our AWS account manager&amp;quot; and I am not sure what could be discussed. I must be doing simper stuff.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>jq-r</author><text>&amp;gt; &amp;quot;regular cadence meetings with our AWS account manager&amp;quot; and I am not sure what could be discusse.&lt;p&gt;As being on a number of those calls, its just a bunch of crap where they talk like a scripted bot reading from corporate buzzword bingo card over a slideshow. Their real intention is two fold. To sell you even more AWS complexity&amp;#x2F;services, and to provide &amp;quot;value&amp;quot; to their person of contact (which is person working in your company).&lt;p&gt;We&amp;#x27;re paying north of 500K per year in AWS support (which is a highway robbery), and in return you get a &amp;quot;team&amp;quot; of people supposedly dedicated to you, which sounds good in theory but you get a labirinth of irresponsiblity, stalling and frustration in reality.&lt;p&gt;So even when you want to reach out to that team you have to first to through L1 support which I&amp;#x27;m sure will be replaced by bots soon (and no value will be lost) which is useful in 1 out of 10 cases. Then if you&amp;#x27;re not satisfied with L1&amp;#x27;s answer(s), then you try to escalate to your &amp;quot;dedicated&amp;quot; support team, then they schedule a call in three days time, or if that is around Friday, that means Monday etc.&lt;p&gt;Their goal is to stall so you figure and fix stuff on your own so they shield their own better quality teams. No wonder our top engineers just left all AWS communication and in cases where unavoidable they delegate this to junior people who still think they are getting something in return.</text></comment>
<story><title>Almost every infrastructure decision I endorse or regret</title><url>https://cep.dev/posts/every-infrastructure-decision-i-endorse-or-regret-after-4-years-running-infrastructure-at-a-startup/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>morsecodist</author><text>&amp;gt; Picking AWS over Google Cloud&lt;p&gt;I know this is an unpopular opinion but I think google cloud is amazing compared to AWS. I use google cloud run and it works like a dream. I have never found an easier way to get a docker container running in the cloud. The services all have sensible names, there are fewer more important services compared to the mess of AWS services, and the UI is more intuitive. The only downside I have found is the lack of community resulting in fewer tutorials, difficulty finding experienced hires, and fewer third party tools. I recommend trying it. I&amp;#x27;d love to get the user base to an even dozen.&lt;p&gt;The reasoning the author cites is that AWS has more responsive customer service and maybe I am missing out but it would never even occur to me to speak to someone from a cloud provider. They mention having &amp;quot;regular cadence meetings with our AWS account manager&amp;quot; and I am not sure what could be discussed. I must be doing simper stuff.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>rswail</author><text>We are a reasonably large AWS customer and our account manager sends out regular emails with NDA information on what&amp;#x27;s coming up, we have regular meetings with them about things as wide ranging as database tuning and code development&amp;#x2F;deployment governance.&lt;p&gt;They often provide that consulting for free, and we know their biases. There&amp;#x27;s nothing hidden about the fact that they will push us to use AWS services.&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, they will also help us optimize those services and save money that is directly measurable.&lt;p&gt;GCP might have a better API and better &amp;quot;naming&amp;quot; of their services, but the breadth of AWS services, the incorporation of IAM across their services, governance and automation all makes it worth while.&lt;p&gt;Cloud has come a long way from &amp;quot;it&amp;#x27;s so easy to spin up a VM&amp;#x2F;container&amp;#x2F;lambda&amp;quot;.</text></comment>