Free data transfer out to internet when moving out of AWS(aws.amazon.com)
aws.amazon.com
Free data transfer out to internet when moving out of AWS
https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/aws/free-data-transfer-out-to-internet-when-moving-out-of-aws/
129 comments
More and more it feels like the EU is the only thing keeping the bastards honest
Not sure where you're seeing honesty..
I hope this is just the start of egress fee changes in response to the European Data Act. Taking a look at other parts of the law's text [1], I think this change related to Article 25, but Article 34 section 2 is what really stands out to me:
> Where a data processing service is being used in parallel with another data processing service, the providers of data processing services may impose data egress charges, but only for the purpose of passing on egress costs incurred, without exceeding such costs.
Hopefully this article doesn't end up with exploitable loopholes. Bringing down AWS, GCP, and Azure egress costs to market rates could majorly help reduce cloud lock-in gradually without having to close your entire account.
[1]: https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/HTML/?uri=OJ:...
> Where a data processing service is being used in parallel with another data processing service, the providers of data processing services may impose data egress charges, but only for the purpose of passing on egress costs incurred, without exceeding such costs.
Hopefully this article doesn't end up with exploitable loopholes. Bringing down AWS, GCP, and Azure egress costs to market rates could majorly help reduce cloud lock-in gradually without having to close your entire account.
[1]: https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/HTML/?uri=OJ:...
My question (and maybe it is answered there but I don't want to read a full legal document to find it).
What exactly do they consider "costs"? Is it just the cost they pay an IP for data out or can it include maintenance, hardware, people, etc?
I am also curious if this will have any impact on the cost of services. Does AWS do any sort of thing where the higher egress costs offset the cost of services? Or ingress costs, or internal communication costs? Stuff that does cost AWS something to run in some form but could have been paid for by this.
It's a question I honestly don't know, so I am curious.
What exactly do they consider "costs"? Is it just the cost they pay an IP for data out or can it include maintenance, hardware, people, etc?
I am also curious if this will have any impact on the cost of services. Does AWS do any sort of thing where the higher egress costs offset the cost of services? Or ingress costs, or internal communication costs? Stuff that does cost AWS something to run in some form but could have been paid for by this.
It's a question I honestly don't know, so I am curious.
I don’t work at Amazon nor am I an accountant, but likely your intuition is correct. There’s this managerial accounting strategy called activity based costing (ABC) where you can better map costs (ie real money spent on stuff) to the company outputs; in this case data egress, but it works for all activities (server maintenance, programmer time, etc). You basically take a weighted average of the time and money spent on activities to understand the cost of those activities. This is how Amazon knows the costs of all its services.
The second question is a bit trickier to answer. Amazon has a lot of fixed costs and ABC is one way to allocate those fixed costs (fixed costs = servers). You can also do something similar for the revenues of different AWS services. However, managers will tend to look at revenues and costs together because teasing apart the different revenue streams and their allocated cost structures doesn’t match reality. If you go too deep into that rabbit hole, you lose sight of the true nature of the business. Which is “we buy a shitload of servers up front and rent them to you virtually by the second.” To answer the question, the egress revenue likely dwarfs all the other revenue generating activities at AWS, making the other services look “bad” when comparing revenue to costs. On paper, egress makes up substantially all profit for the business. But this is by design- executives believe that this business model captures the most value so they’re not that interested in jacking up other service costs because overall profitability will be less. Is there subsidization? Yes, but Amazon believes they have the better business by charging users like this vs pricing everything “fairly.”
The second question is a bit trickier to answer. Amazon has a lot of fixed costs and ABC is one way to allocate those fixed costs (fixed costs = servers). You can also do something similar for the revenues of different AWS services. However, managers will tend to look at revenues and costs together because teasing apart the different revenue streams and their allocated cost structures doesn’t match reality. If you go too deep into that rabbit hole, you lose sight of the true nature of the business. Which is “we buy a shitload of servers up front and rent them to you virtually by the second.” To answer the question, the egress revenue likely dwarfs all the other revenue generating activities at AWS, making the other services look “bad” when comparing revenue to costs. On paper, egress makes up substantially all profit for the business. But this is by design- executives believe that this business model captures the most value so they’re not that interested in jacking up other service costs because overall profitability will be less. Is there subsidization? Yes, but Amazon believes they have the better business by charging users like this vs pricing everything “fairly.”
in cali the power company says "you can use this cost structure or that cost structure, your choice!" - so it's this vile little game where if you choose incorrectly they scalp you, and it takes a bit of arithmetic to compute expected values, power usage at various times of day, etc - something the average joe may not be able to estimate easily. in an ideal world, they would automatically pick the lower of the two.
to a degree I have seen AWS plans work this way, where you choose from options A/B/C and buyer beware if you end up getting scalped.
to a degree I have seen AWS plans work this way, where you choose from options A/B/C and buyer beware if you end up getting scalped.
So do we know how much are the egress costs for AWS?
In other words how much AWS is overcharging?
I guess they make every effort / creative bookkeeping trick to exaggerate their egress costs and it will take years until EU completes their investigation and fines them and more years until courts have had their final word.
In other words how much AWS is overcharging?
I guess they make every effort / creative bookkeeping trick to exaggerate their egress costs and it will take years until EU completes their investigation and fines them and more years until courts have had their final word.
https://blog.cloudflare.com/aws-egregious-egress contains a pretty good overview of Amazon’s margins.
Yes
You just have to believe that, on the scale on AWS, 1Mbps in Europe costs 0.08$ (includes the transit, the hardware, the people etc). This includes every networking parts : do not forget the switches and stuff : VPC are free, and intra-zone network is free. Someone must pay, so it is sane to assume that "someone" is partly cross-region, partly internet egress, partly cross-zone.
Don't forget the R&D that revolves around VPC, subnets, security groups, acl etc.
So, yes, 0.08$/Mbps. Known from an external source which is a (partly) competitor. Trust me, dude. This number is legit.
You just have to believe that, on the scale on AWS, 1Mbps in Europe costs 0.08$ (includes the transit, the hardware, the people etc). This includes every networking parts : do not forget the switches and stuff : VPC are free, and intra-zone network is free. Someone must pay, so it is sane to assume that "someone" is partly cross-region, partly internet egress, partly cross-zone.
Don't forget the R&D that revolves around VPC, subnets, security groups, acl etc.
So, yes, 0.08$/Mbps. Known from an external source which is a (partly) competitor. Trust me, dude. This number is legit.
That number sounds in the ballpark.
There's a bunch of providers in Europe that will give you a whole server for €50/month with unmetered 1gbps networking. Or, as I like to consider it, €50/month for 1 gbps networking, and you get a free server.
Yeah, their networks may not have as much complexity and features as AWS, but I've never found any of that complexity appealing. Keep your network simple and let your hosts do the work.
There's a bunch of providers in Europe that will give you a whole server for €50/month with unmetered 1gbps networking. Or, as I like to consider it, €50/month for 1 gbps networking, and you get a free server.
Yeah, their networks may not have as much complexity and features as AWS, but I've never found any of that complexity appealing. Keep your network simple and let your hosts do the work.
Average is playing here : you pay 50€/mo for 1gbps, and takes into account that most people won't use 1Gbps
It is the same for home internet connections : the offers is defined by the average use.
AWS and friends, on the other side, do not care about averages, and avoid you that burden too : what matter is how much you consumed, not "when" or "how" you consumed int
It is the same for home internet connections : the offers is defined by the average use.
AWS and friends, on the other side, do not care about averages, and avoid you that burden too : what matter is how much you consumed, not "when" or "how" you consumed int
Do remember this isn't the cost of an actual unmetered 1Gbps, just the part they expect you to use on average. I know Hetzner is pretty generous, but some people have been asked to reduce their bandwidth after using 250TB/month consistently for several months (that's about an actual fully utilized 1Gbps).
Amazon builds their own switches so they are not paying some insane cost for hardware/software/support to a company like Cisco. Generic network infrastructure is dirt cheap now (take a look at fs.com). Granted it is not trivial to build your own custom switch and you need to hire some really smart people to do this but I am sure this paid off tremendously for AWS.
> 1Mbps in Europe costs 0.08$
Per month?
Anyway, I can’t tell what your point is, but keep in mind that nearly all the complexity you discuss, and nearly all the hardware needed, applies to within-AZ traffic as well, and AWS doesn’t charge for that.
Per month?
Anyway, I can’t tell what your point is, but keep in mind that nearly all the complexity you discuss, and nearly all the hardware needed, applies to within-AZ traffic as well, and AWS doesn’t charge for that.
You only need to look at the pricing of their other competitors which comes nowhere close to the costs of AWS networking (except for Azure and GCP).
Also snarky statements such as the ones you are making do not particularly help your argument.
Also snarky statements such as the ones you are making do not particularly help your argument.
I have seen a rack with power and 10Gig ethernet advertised for $700 per month; so my guess is that Amazon pays less than 25 cents per Mbps per month and in some cases, nothing.
We can safely assume that almost 100% of their traffic is settlement free peered so obsensibly 'free'. They do however haul the traffic on their own backbone extensively before handing it over (which will be part of the reason for the extremely high level of settlement free). That is extensive and costly ; they lease fibres in subsea cables and in some cases part own them. Similar for terrestrial fibre. This wraps the world, so the fixed cost of that is super high, but the unit costs would be tiny. All in I'd be astonished if the weighted average for say Europe was more than 0.11 cents per GB if they are charging you 2 cents that's ~20x cost, if it's 8 cents...
The one to watch is https://www.cloudflare.com/bandwidth-alliance/
AWS could plausibly claim _some_ additional expense on their premium network offering (not full rate, of course, but some) for the additional monitoring and adjustment they do to adjust to peering conditions but none of that is plausible for other companies peering with them who provide the same services. If their customer uses Fastly or Cloudflare, they don’t need any additional cost to toss packets over the wall and let the other service worry about routing. I’d imagine those companies are making sure that the EU regulators know exactly how much they need to charge for that.
AWS could plausibly claim _some_ additional expense on their premium network offering (not full rate, of course, but some) for the additional monitoring and adjustment they do to adjust to peering conditions but none of that is plausible for other companies peering with them who provide the same services. If their customer uses Fastly or Cloudflare, they don’t need any additional cost to toss packets over the wall and let the other service worry about routing. I’d imagine those companies are making sure that the EU regulators know exactly how much they need to charge for that.
Indeed. I think Amazon could argue that since egress rates are higher than ingress rates, effectively all their network costs are egress.
And all their network costs includes all the routers, all the fibers, all the staff in the networking and infrastructure teams, and all the teams that support those teams.
And all their network costs includes all the routers, all the fibers, all the staff in the networking and infrastructure teams, and all the teams that support those teams.
It gets to the meat and potatoes at the end. They were forced to do it, so they put a positive spin on it as if they're doing it out of the goodness of their heart.
Still a positive, but man, that marketing messaging. I give props to the team who wrote that.
Still a positive, but man, that marketing messaging. I give props to the team who wrote that.
At least they acknowledged it in passing
Googles equivalent announcement was all flowery bullshit making it seem like a voluntary action
Googles equivalent announcement was all flowery bullshit making it seem like a voluntary action
That, friends, is a "tell".
It shows they know they are raking people over the coals with intentional, preconceived illegal anticompetitive behavior written into their documentation.
Right from the playbook, they have a sweet marketing wrapup for when they have to walk back their preconceived illegal behavior to the minimum directed border.
Tech corps especially now do this as standard operating procedure (I mean Uber had entire divisions and armies of lawyers to bypass/obfuscate/delay imposition of local cab and labor laws). It's why you can't trust them with AI, personal information, AI, customer service, AI, following laws, AI, or anything.
I know Google in the heydey of the aughts wasn't as "good" as they tried to be, but at least the "do no evil" kind of kept them in check to some degree. But at some point they bought the corporation-formerly-known-as-DoubleClick, and I think in retrospect that was the beginning of the end of functional idealism in the internet.
It shows they know they are raking people over the coals with intentional, preconceived illegal anticompetitive behavior written into their documentation.
Right from the playbook, they have a sweet marketing wrapup for when they have to walk back their preconceived illegal behavior to the minimum directed border.
Tech corps especially now do this as standard operating procedure (I mean Uber had entire divisions and armies of lawyers to bypass/obfuscate/delay imposition of local cab and labor laws). It's why you can't trust them with AI, personal information, AI, customer service, AI, following laws, AI, or anything.
I know Google in the heydey of the aughts wasn't as "good" as they tried to be, but at least the "do no evil" kind of kept them in check to some degree. But at some point they bought the corporation-formerly-known-as-DoubleClick, and I think in retrospect that was the beginning of the end of functional idealism in the internet.
The other comment mentioned how google didn't even acknowledge why they did it.
I have to say, talking to AWS and GCP, the AWS marketing, onboarding, and support arm are far far far far far superior to google's. In fact they are so far apart that our management has blatantly discarded google as even an option for moving our infra over because of how terrible our interactions have been. I'm all for de-throning the king, but it ain't gonna be done by the court jester.
In any case, point is, AWS has good strategy where it matters most.
I have to say, talking to AWS and GCP, the AWS marketing, onboarding, and support arm are far far far far far superior to google's. In fact they are so far apart that our management has blatantly discarded google as even an option for moving our infra over because of how terrible our interactions have been. I'm all for de-throning the king, but it ain't gonna be done by the court jester.
In any case, point is, AWS has good strategy where it matters most.
Agreed. Court jester is the correct phrase, as GCP are complete clowns. Some of the stories we know of, from our customers, about GCP's conduct and lack of any semblance of professionalism are shocking. MSFT/Azure on the other hand, are formidable and worthy competitors in the cloud space, against AWS.
Can you give specific examples of what was lacking? Ive only had positive experiences with GCP.
We want to migrate to it:
"Okay cool! We'll sign you up! Good luck!"
vs
"We have a migration strategy, and partners who can help you lift-and-ship or at least consult to get you a lay of the land. Try these companies and see if you're interested, and we'll help you along the way."
Google is -- thanks for reaching out, you can certainly sign up and figure it all out, here's a few books!
Amazon -- things are complex, and here's a few books to read, but I know you don't have a few years so here's some people who know how to do this, and we've ironed out how most companies succeed in migrating. Also he's a ton of incentive to move to amazon-exclusive services.
"Okay cool! We'll sign you up! Good luck!"
vs
"We have a migration strategy, and partners who can help you lift-and-ship or at least consult to get you a lay of the land. Try these companies and see if you're interested, and we'll help you along the way."
Google is -- thanks for reaching out, you can certainly sign up and figure it all out, here's a few books!
Amazon -- things are complex, and here's a few books to read, but I know you don't have a few years so here's some people who know how to do this, and we've ironed out how most companies succeed in migrating. Also he's a ton of incentive to move to amazon-exclusive services.
I specialize in Amazon Redshift.
Speaking for and only for Amazon Redshift, as I have little knowledge of other AWS services, I hold AWS's blogs, messaging, Support communications, TAMs, the lot, as relentlessly positive and to my eye deliberately and knowingly obfuscating all weakness. I regard information from AWS regarding Redshift as safe to read when and only when you already know what's going on / the underlying truth. Otherwise you will be misled, and to your cost at AWS's benefit.
By the sounds of it, the messaging over this change in data policy is the same.
Speaking for and only for Amazon Redshift, as I have little knowledge of other AWS services, I hold AWS's blogs, messaging, Support communications, TAMs, the lot, as relentlessly positive and to my eye deliberately and knowingly obfuscating all weakness. I regard information from AWS regarding Redshift as safe to read when and only when you already know what's going on / the underlying truth. Otherwise you will be misled, and to your cost at AWS's benefit.
By the sounds of it, the messaging over this change in data policy is the same.
> "safe to read when and only when you already know what's going on / the underlying truth"
I've never read AWS blogs before but that was exactly my feeling after reading the linked article on "fair software principles" or something. You can tell that somebody has a hobby horse they're riding, and it's only because it's in their financial self-interest, but unless you already knew what the actual issue was before you read the blog, you're still going to be clueless afterwards!
I've never read AWS blogs before but that was exactly my feeling after reading the linked article on "fair software principles" or something. You can tell that somebody has a hobby horse they're riding, and it's only because it's in their financial self-interest, but unless you already knew what the actual issue was before you read the blog, you're still going to be clueless afterwards!
One of the other question is whether you have to delete all data / close your account 60 days after you transfer out without fee:
https://twitter.com/QuinnyPig/status/1765102310563500521
Probably obeying the letter of the European Data Act, but obviously not great if true.
Probably obeying the letter of the European Data Act, but obviously not great if true.
> Probably obeying the letter of the European Data Act, but obviously not great if true.
Does it really matter? As long as they are upfront about the price and there is no vendor lock in, what's the big deal? AWS is overpriced - everyone knows that, but i don't think its morally wrong to be overpriced as long as you aren't deceptive about it.
Does it really matter? As long as they are upfront about the price and there is no vendor lock in, what's the big deal? AWS is overpriced - everyone knows that, but i don't think its morally wrong to be overpriced as long as you aren't deceptive about it.
This is addressed in the article. The answer is no.
Nope
> We don’t require you to close your account or change your relationship with AWS in any way. You’re welcome to come back at any time. We will, of course, apply additional scrutiny if the same AWS account applies multiple times for free DTO.
> We don’t require you to close your account or change your relationship with AWS in any way. You’re welcome to come back at any time. We will, of course, apply additional scrutiny if the same AWS account applies multiple times for free DTO.
Then compare that statement with their FAQ,https://aws.amazon.com/ec2/faqs/#Data_transfer_fees_when_mov...
> After your move away from AWS services, within the 60-day period, you must delete all remaining data and workloads from your AWS account, or you can close your AWS account.
> After your move away from AWS services, within the 60-day period, you must delete all remaining data and workloads from your AWS account, or you can close your AWS account.
If you manage to delete everything and make the billing to be zero dollars, then there's no need to close the account...
In many cases, this is way harder than it sounds.
In many cases, this is way harder than it sounds.
Beginner here, but shouldn't `terraform destroy` make this very easy? Assuming you deploy everything with IaC.
Some things are impossible to destroy immediately. KMS keys take 60 days to remove.
You can also start the close account process which takes 60 days and just pay the fees for anything not torn down and then it all gets nuked at the end of that period.
You can also start the close account process which takes 60 days and just pay the fees for anything not torn down and then it all gets nuked at the end of that period.
There can be resources created implicitly, even when using IaC tools. One example, create a lambda, without an explicit log group, one will be automatically created for you outside of the tracked state.
Is this true? I know it's not true when using terraform for things like ECS. I suppose I can just test this myself.
So the lambda function will survive, but billing will still go to zero when the lambda's last execution finishes, right?
I don’t think terraform will recursively delete everything in your S3 bucket.
Iterate over all S3 buckets in your terraform files and add `force_destroy` to them [1], then apply and destroy.
There could probably be an automated tool for this that wouldn't be too complex.
[1] https://registry.terraform.io/providers/hashicorp/aws/latest...
There could probably be an automated tool for this that wouldn't be too complex.
[1] https://registry.terraform.io/providers/hashicorp/aws/latest...
If someone manages that, they're a god.
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> Over 90 percent of our customers already incur no data transfer expenses out of AWS because we provide 100 gigabytes per month free from AWS Regions to the internet.
Damn, that's a lot of tiny customers. 100 GB per month is less than what many use on their phone during a month. So basically, most people using AWS is definitely people who don't need it to scale.
Damn, that's a lot of tiny customers. 100 GB per month is less than what many use on their phone during a month. So basically, most people using AWS is definitely people who don't need it to scale.
My personal AWS account is just for storing some archive files in S3, which incurs a $0.02/month bill and which Amazon can't be bothered to charge.
Its not that they are not bothered to charge its just that cc processing fees are higher than what you are being billed. It will accumulate and they will charge it when it reaches a certain amount
Backblaze must be similar.
I only have ~80 GB stored, and rather than being charged 44 cents per month, I'm being charged 88 cents every 2 months.
I only have ~80 GB stored, and rather than being charged 44 cents per month, I'm being charged 88 cents every 2 months.
You can have terabytes of data for internal purposes, analytics, etc. That never moves out of the data center except when you want to migrate.
The bigger you are the less data you might have to export - because all your tools are inside the fence.
Small companies download reports/analytics/files from X and upload them to Y, etc, big companies do it all inside.
Small companies download reports/analytics/files from X and upload them to Y, etc, big companies do it all inside.
> The bigger you are the less data you might have to export
You're strictly limiting yourself to companies that provide no internet-facing services?
You're strictly limiting yourself to companies that provide no internet-facing services?
I wonder what customer sizes really matter to them. Are the bulk of their revenue a lot of small/medium-sized companies paying a few 10-100k a year, or do they have a few government/bigcorp whales subsidizing the service for the rest?
> So basically, most people using AWS is definitely people who don't need it to scale.
This is what we would expect, right? Surely the huge majority of AWS users are small and wouldn't have the slightest interest in owning/managing their own hardware.
This is what we would expect, right? Surely the huge majority of AWS users are small and wouldn't have the slightest interest in owning/managing their own hardware.
Well the biggest "scalers" have become Cloud providers themselves.
I think there's a good saying about Cloud and scaling, paraphrasing - "if you don't start on Cloud that's unwise and if you (over)stay that's insane". I guess as your solution reaches maturity and stability (no sudden swings in usage or complete changes in the architecture) then you should start thinking about some on-prem solution with maybe the hardware being leased along with maitenance.
I think there's a good saying about Cloud and scaling, paraphrasing - "if you don't start on Cloud that's unwise and if you (over)stay that's insane". I guess as your solution reaches maturity and stability (no sudden swings in usage or complete changes in the architecture) then you should start thinking about some on-prem solution with maybe the hardware being leased along with maitenance.
Isn’t this a bad faith interpretation of the EU law, by providing free egress when exiting AWS (and GCP)?
The law mandates egress costs should either be free or not exceed the costs encountered by the cloud provider.
The law mandates egress costs should either be free or not exceed the costs encountered by the cloud provider.
What do you mean "bad faith"? Can you elaborate?
The law mandates egress to be free or at provider cost when two data processing services are used in parallel; AWS, OTOH, provides it free (better than is minimally required!) and to customers not protected by the law at issue (also more than required!) but only when migrating off of AWS, not when using AWS alongside another service, so (assuming it continues to charge much more than their cost for all other egress) is not actually complying with the law outside of a very narrow subset of the cases where it applies.
This is a particularly meaningless gesture in the direction of compliance from a provider dominant across so many categories of cloud services as AWS is -- the whole point of the "in parallel" requirement in the law is, I would assume, to prevent the mega-cloud providers (AWS, mainly, but also Azure and GCP) from being able to effectively lock customers to monopolize areas of cloud services where their specific offerings are weak by the egress fees of their dominant offerings which would be used alongside them. "Free only when you are transferring out to leave our platform" doesn't address this lock-in at all.
This is a particularly meaningless gesture in the direction of compliance from a provider dominant across so many categories of cloud services as AWS is -- the whole point of the "in parallel" requirement in the law is, I would assume, to prevent the mega-cloud providers (AWS, mainly, but also Azure and GCP) from being able to effectively lock customers to monopolize areas of cloud services where their specific offerings are weak by the egress fees of their dominant offerings which would be used alongside them. "Free only when you are transferring out to leave our platform" doesn't address this lock-in at all.
It’s rare for large companies to immediately comply with the spirit of the law. See EU261 for example - airlines were dragged kicking and screaming through the courts over many years.
Amazon’s behaviour isn’t surprising, but you’re not wrong to call it out
Amazon’s behaviour isn’t surprising, but you’re not wrong to call it out
Part of the problem (and why laws have to be used) is that the companies want all the other companies to do the same change at the same time.
If you do it early, you're at a disadvantage (unless you can market it heavily, which usually only is if you're the small player already).
If you do it early, you're at a disadvantage (unless you can market it heavily, which usually only is if you're the small player already).
Really?
If AWS unilaterally cut egress fees 100x, then a few things might happen:
GCP and Azure customers might migrate to AWS or have very serious phone calls with their account reps. (Hmm, GCP customers might be unable to reach an account rep.)
Third party providers, who are currently stuck in AWS, GCP and Azure because their customers can’t afford egress if they move out, will consider alternative hosting. This is IMO a big one, but it has nothing to do with whether GCP and Azure play along.
Some customers might shut down their colocated systems and move into AWS.
Why is being first a problem?
If AWS unilaterally cut egress fees 100x, then a few things might happen:
GCP and Azure customers might migrate to AWS or have very serious phone calls with their account reps. (Hmm, GCP customers might be unable to reach an account rep.)
Third party providers, who are currently stuck in AWS, GCP and Azure because their customers can’t afford egress if they move out, will consider alternative hosting. This is IMO a big one, but it has nothing to do with whether GCP and Azure play along.
Some customers might shut down their colocated systems and move into AWS.
Why is being first a problem?
Because now all the customers who want to leave, can do so, and the customers you could get from other platforms can't cheaply leave, yet.
Leaving isn’t particularly expensive regardless: compare egress prices to non-Glacier S3 prices. Leaving doesn’t cost more than a couple months of staying.
What is expensive is leaving in part. You can’t offload part of your data pipelines to, say, Digital Ocean or a colo cost-effectively.
What is expensive is leaving in part. You can’t offload part of your data pipelines to, say, Digital Ocean or a colo cost-effectively.
You have an answer of why they think it applies in this case, but since it read to me like you were asking what the phrase itself meant (or in case it helps anyone else): it's most often used as 'arguing in bad faith' meaning wilfully misunderstanding the other party or just generally an insincere argument as a proxy or pretext for something else or with some ulterior motive.
So briefly in this case AWS does something which seems superficially good, but the real reason is to appease a law that it actually doesn't properly comply with. (Is the, not my, claim.) i.e. a good thing done in bad faith.
So briefly in this case AWS does something which seems superficially good, but the real reason is to appease a law that it actually doesn't properly comply with. (Is the, not my, claim.) i.e. a good thing done in bad faith.
Is this AWS feeling pressure from GCP's similar move?
https://www.cnbc.com/2024/01/11/google-vows-not-to-charge-da...
https://www.cnbc.com/2024/01/11/google-vows-not-to-charge-da...
This is GCP and AWS feeling pressure from EU legislation.
AFAIK this is pretty much the moat collapsing on big cloud. That said you still have to contact them for it so not truly free movement. Once it becomes truly free to move data out things will get interesting. The stock market didn’t really seem to care that much which was surprising.
I think AWS doesn't truly care. They've probably internally planned for the day when egress cost billing would be chipped away and have been planning. It is a total cash cow and huge boast on margins for them, but they've been taking that money over the years and diversifying into managed services.
The managed services are expensive, but boy do they work well. Over the last couple years been running +100 each of managed elastic searches, RDS, and firehouse with minimal to no issues.
The managed services are expensive, but boy do they work well. Over the last couple years been running +100 each of managed elastic searches, RDS, and firehouse with minimal to no issues.
Exactly correct. AWS has a giant suite of services, and if they are forced to reduce egress charges, they would raise prices on other services to keep their margins consistent. The market knows this and thus why the market doesn't react to non-news like this.
An interesting question: why does AWS charge so much for egress knowing that it could dissuade some currently-on-prem use cases? It definitely forces optimization, use of CDNs, compression, etc. Previously it likely reduced transfers to another provider, but as the parent alludes to, the use of managed services makes sticking to AWS much more likely. What else?
An interesting question: why does AWS charge so much for egress knowing that it could dissuade some currently-on-prem use cases? It definitely forces optimization, use of CDNs, compression, etc. Previously it likely reduced transfers to another provider, but as the parent alludes to, the use of managed services makes sticking to AWS much more likely. What else?
> they would raise prices on other services to keep their margins consistent. The market knows this and thus why the market doesn't react to non-news like this.
I’m unconvinced. A lot of money is spent on third party services (think Snowflake, but there are a ton) where the third party service is offered in AWS, GCP, and Azure. There is no on-the-Internet option.
If egress fees go away, on-the-Internet becomes appealing, and there goes a lot of revenue. If fees for other services go up, on-the-Internet becomes even more appealing.
I’m unconvinced. A lot of money is spent on third party services (think Snowflake, but there are a ton) where the third party service is offered in AWS, GCP, and Azure. There is no on-the-Internet option.
If egress fees go away, on-the-Internet becomes appealing, and there goes a lot of revenue. If fees for other services go up, on-the-Internet becomes even more appealing.
Because eventually there is no difference in managed service from gcp oci msft, so when data egress cost doesn’t matter you can use any providers service. The margins will get worn away since there’s no longer high switching cost.
AWS internally has a very strong allergy to raising prices. If anything there is generally pressure to reduce prices.
There are all sorts of ways for AWS to raise prices without explicitly raising the price for an r7g.x64:
1) Starting charging legacy fees like the MySQL 5.7 fees 2) Start charging for hits, IO, etc 3) Tier out fees like with Aurora IO optimized to increase revenue 4) Push support levers 5) Stop reducing prices for older instance models
1) Starting charging legacy fees like the MySQL 5.7 fees 2) Start charging for hits, IO, etc 3) Tier out fees like with Aurora IO optimized to increase revenue 4) Push support levers 5) Stop reducing prices for older instance models
Google ostensibly offers this as well. However - I’m in the middle of moving us to Azure and I have more details on the Google deal: you only have 60 days to complete the migration and then you must terminate your billing account. It’s a total window dressing of an offer and completely unrealistic for any reasonably large organization to use. Malicious compliance at its finest and I hope they get sued by the EU for it until they make it a more reasonable offer.
I have still lived in the obviously false belief that AWS charges for every egress byte (regular operation not take out, except Lightsail, which always had rather large quota included.) Now they claim every account has big free tier. When has that changed?
Edit: My search engine found December 2021:
https://aws.amazon.com/about-aws/whats-new/2021/11/aws-price...
Edit: My search engine found December 2021:
https://aws.amazon.com/about-aws/whats-new/2021/11/aws-price...
Replying to myself: Of course these price reductions why they suddenly charge for IPv4 addresses. To my understanding AWS does not suffer from scarcity, they have huge pools.
At least for customers using a lot of egress the charging per address is probably cheaper. For small businesses with relatively little businesses but not so slim deployments with addresses hanging around on many little used or even forgotten resources it's the other way round.
Edit: I had already forgotten the 42% price raise hitting myself on my personal Lightsail instance in May.
At least for customers using a lot of egress the charging per address is probably cheaper. For small businesses with relatively little businesses but not so slim deployments with addresses hanging around on many little used or even forgotten resources it's the other way round.
Edit: I had already forgotten the 42% price raise hitting myself on my personal Lightsail instance in May.
The market price for IPv4 addresses has peaked:
https://www.sidn.nl/en/news-and-blogs/are-we-past-peak-ipv4
Amazon’s move seems to be motivated by pure greed and quasi-monopoly complacency.
https://www.sidn.nl/en/news-and-blogs/are-we-past-peak-ipv4
Amazon’s move seems to be motivated by pure greed and quasi-monopoly complacency.
Maybe, but I don't think so. The market is simply going through a cycle.
With such a high price per IP there are a lot of organizations finally putting in the effort of cleaning up their space and selling off blocks. I know a company that was doing consolidated and clean up for an aggregation of freeing 200k worth of space. They were looking at adding $15-35M to their pockets.
IPv6 support is still not where it needs to be. Look at the clouds. There are many services that still are only IPv4 or partial ipv6 support. Just check back in 1-3 years and the price will have recovered.
With such a high price per IP there are a lot of organizations finally putting in the effort of cleaning up their space and selling off blocks. I know a company that was doing consolidated and clean up for an aggregation of freeing 200k worth of space. They were looking at adding $15-35M to their pockets.
IPv6 support is still not where it needs to be. Look at the clouds. There are many services that still are only IPv4 or partial ipv6 support. Just check back in 1-3 years and the price will have recovered.
Baby steps toward truly free egress.
Good for them, but sounds like there was a gun to their head. I didn’t realize any law like that had passed. I guess it’s nice of them to extend it to the whole world ;)
I suppose its both to look like they're benevolent and to "force" everyone else to follow suit - at least for MS and Google.
If AWS cut most of the egress fees, not only by asking to their support, that would be the greatest thing ever happening in the cloud computing space.
A lot of multi-cloud architectures are unlikely to be designed because the egress fees are killing them. Imagine if we could host some of the infra in AWS, using S3, but keeping some machines on Hetzner, while calling other APIs hosted in azure… one day it will happen :’)
A lot of multi-cloud architectures are unlikely to be designed because the egress fees are killing them. Imagine if we could host some of the infra in AWS, using S3, but keeping some machines on Hetzner, while calling other APIs hosted in azure… one day it will happen :’)
Can you reference where it says that regular, day-to-day egress between clouds is going to be covered by this recent change? All the articles I've found so far imply that this free egress will be granted on a case-by-case basis, for egress that is not considered operational data, but rather explicitly for migrating out of AWS for the purpose of terminating your relationship with AWS.
You dont need to wait for that one day. Right now I’m using cloud servers from hetzner and store data in Backblaze S3 and train models on Lambda or even vast.ai.
You can, but one has to be careful with the transfers. If not you could incur ridiculous costs.
And some architectures are still prohibited - any replicated database across cloud vendors - imagine Cassandra hosted across AWS and Azure to protect against one cloud vendor outage.
And some architectures are still prohibited - any replicated database across cloud vendors - imagine Cassandra hosted across AWS and Azure to protect against one cloud vendor outage.
In reference to the EU legislating, Amazon will just seek/get revenue gains elsewhere. It won’t be immediate, it won’t be obvious, but it will happen.
Take EU261, which caused issues for smaller airlines, leading to less competition, increased fares. There are also claims it’s affecting safety [0]. I’m not against EU261 per se, but it’s healthy to be critical of large institutions like the EU.
People, I find, cheer about new EU legislation but then forget to look think about any consequences a few years down the road.
Where is the EU’s own critical evaluation and performance review of EU261, especially given it’s been heavily revised through case law over the years?
(FWIW, I live in Europe, I’m generally pro EU, but it’s not all roses)
[0] (obviously some bias given it’s the ERAA) https://www.eraa.org/sites/default/files/era_eu261_study_bro...
Take EU261, which caused issues for smaller airlines, leading to less competition, increased fares. There are also claims it’s affecting safety [0]. I’m not against EU261 per se, but it’s healthy to be critical of large institutions like the EU.
People, I find, cheer about new EU legislation but then forget to look think about any consequences a few years down the road.
Where is the EU’s own critical evaluation and performance review of EU261, especially given it’s been heavily revised through case law over the years?
(FWIW, I live in Europe, I’m generally pro EU, but it’s not all roses)
[0] (obviously some bias given it’s the ERAA) https://www.eraa.org/sites/default/files/era_eu261_study_bro...
Right it shifts prices around, but reduced the lock-in. No regulator cares that Mercedes are more expensive than Kia. Regulators will be interested if Mercedes charges 30k to reset the car for resale or some other silly analogy
Before EU261, the passanger took on the risk for delays and cancelations mainly due to the operational performance of the airline. After, the airlines now directly take on some of that risk. I'm of the opinion, that if airlines did this well in general, or the industry had a reasonable solution in place, such regulation would not have been made in the first place.
So, if it caused issues for smaller airlines and generally increase in prices, is that not a clear indication that the smaller airlines do not have sufficiently capability to handle it, and that prices was too low?
So, if it caused issues for smaller airlines and generally increase in prices, is that not a clear indication that the smaller airlines do not have sufficiently capability to handle it, and that prices was too low?
Looks like something they are being forced to do.
Otherwise, if they really cared about their customers, they'd just lower outgoing data transfer pricing at all times and not only when you're leaving.
Otherwise, if they really cared about their customers, they'd just lower outgoing data transfer pricing at all times and not only when you're leaving.
Will this move make providers increase other prices?
So move out to a cloud that doesn’t charge egress.
Unless of course you went all in on IAM, Lambda, API gateway etc etc instead of just running software on Linux.
In which case you’ll need to stay.
Unless of course you went all in on IAM, Lambda, API gateway etc etc instead of just running software on Linux.
In which case you’ll need to stay.
As far as AWS 'koolaid' goes, you picked the stuff that's actually pretty useful and sensible to use. (But also fairly portable anyway? The big ones at least have pretty comparable solutions.)
Tbh,I don't miss a lot from AWS, but IAM is pretty cool for auth between services and I have not found a comparable on premise solution
These aren’t the rates Amazon charges for user hitting their servers right? How do they even get away with charging more for data transfers of a certain type?
“We believe…”
No, you don’t.
No, you don’t.
Cloudflare have always had this. I wonder how this will affect them.
The cynic in me came to the comments to get the real story and was not disappointed.
> The waiver on data transfer out to the internet charges also follows the direction set by the European Data Act and is available to all AWS customers around the world and from any AWS Region.
Thank you, EU, on behalf of the rest of the world
Thank you, EU, on behalf of the rest of the world
Well waddya know... Looks like sometimes regulations do work better than the invisible hand of the free market.
Reality: the invisible hand is simply a fist made up of all members of a cartel.
Reality: the invisible hand is simply a fist made up of all members of a cartel.
Invisible hand works in perfect markets which never exist in reality. It is used as a smokescreen by the people with insane amounts of money who can bend the rules to their will, to convince the rest of the people how the economy works. Like most of economics
Adam Smith himself never claimed it was that simple. He also wrote on ethics (and regarded that book as more important IIRC). He also warned that those is the same trade would inevitably conspire against the public.
Or as John Adams said, "Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other."
I think interpreting this in a modern context, "religious" can be translated as "ethical"
I think interpreting this in a modern context, "religious" can be translated as "ethical"
That is weird, people taking a body of work out of context to advance their agenda.
That’s basically all advocates of Adam Smith. I doubt that most of them have even read it — they’d be shocked by what he actually wrote.
Regulations work with perfect governments that are all knowing, all powerful and only interested in the good of the people. It is used as a smokescreen by the governments who can (literally) bend the rules to their will, to convince the rest of the people how the economy works.
I would say this is ever further from reality than perfect markets.
So we probably need both.
I would say this is ever further from reality than perfect markets.
So we probably need both.
The reality of the US Government is that regulations only happen when sufficiently monied interests are diametrically opposed and then some sort of logic sometimes comes out of it.
At least the US model often feels the need to produce something that appears sensible on the surface, although usually with gotchas in subsection 14 part C paragraph 2.
The EPA, NHTSA, FAA, FCC, SEC, etc go through periods of wax and wane with being undermined, then publicly embarrassed, then reconstructed with legitimate people, then undermined, etc. But they exist and ... eventually ... impose regulation.
I have never heard anyone say credibly as a politician to get rid of them, and goddamn are there a lot of corporate forces that want them gone, so as institutions these regulatory agencies have proven themselves.
The FDA however ... I'm pretty down on.
At least the US model often feels the need to produce something that appears sensible on the surface, although usually with gotchas in subsection 14 part C paragraph 2.
The EPA, NHTSA, FAA, FCC, SEC, etc go through periods of wax and wane with being undermined, then publicly embarrassed, then reconstructed with legitimate people, then undermined, etc. But they exist and ... eventually ... impose regulation.
I have never heard anyone say credibly as a politician to get rid of them, and goddamn are there a lot of corporate forces that want them gone, so as institutions these regulatory agencies have proven themselves.
The FDA however ... I'm pretty down on.
Amazon, Google and Azure are anything but free market; they have been getting subsidies and abatements in the 10s of billions all along.
Invisible hand works in the free market, unfortunately the free market only exists in theory.
The free market was working, in the sense that there are decent options which don't use egress fees as lock-in. The issue was that the invisible hand is too slow and involves too much chaos when strong network effects (and related lock-in) become involved. Such effects weaken the presumption that competitors can be easily switched to.
> Such effects weaken the presumption that competitors can be easily switched to.
Plus, the egress fees were too damn high
Plus, the egress fees were too damn high
Financial markets are some of the most regulated environments anywhere.
It’s way too early to thank them. Wait 5-10 years, see what effect it has on prices, competition etc
GCP, Azure and AWS have been here for more than 10 years, free to do almost whatever they want. Did the prices decrease and competions pop up everywhere ?
Well seeing that according to the CEO of Amazon and former CEO of AWS, Andy Jassy, only 5%-10% of all IT infrastructure spend is on any cloud provider, the three cloud providers can hardly be considered an oligopoly.
https://accelerationeconomy.com/cloud-wars/amazon-ceo-andy-j...
https://accelerationeconomy.com/cloud-wars/amazon-ceo-andy-j...
There are quite a few competitors in the space, yes. Prices haven't gone down as much as I would like, but they have gone down some and the products have improved.
How can the ability to transfer data to another cloud provider or your own server increase price?? Doesn't that mean there is more & fairer competition?
I think they mean that AWS et al will make that margin up somewhere else by either charging for something they didn’t charge for before or increasing prices.
Companies don’t like to have their bottom line affected.
Companies don’t like to have their bottom line affected.
But the real key to Amazon wanting to charge high egres fees was to keep you from moving your data out. If they raise prices elsewhere, there is one less barrier to moving to one of their many competitors.
Do you think that alternate clouds will offer better or worse pricing and incentives to migrate as a result of this?
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Note that this is not free egress to premises, only "out to internet".
on-prem is still “the internet”
I mean this is not fee-free unlimited egress back to prem, but a one-time export of your data with manual approval. This does not let you build big-data workflows around temporary use of EC2.
Nor it is intended for you to.
It’s meant for situations where you intend to leave AWS for good, not spin up another EC2 instance when you need it, generate terabytes of data and then transfer it out for free.
It’s meant for situations where you intend to leave AWS for good, not spin up another EC2 instance when you need it, generate terabytes of data and then transfer it out for free.
EU – actually, it must be free.
Big tech firms – free and open competition is integral to society, and we value freedom of choice over anything else, so of course data transfer is free for our valued customers.