I'm very new to programming and somehow have a job where I have to write Python scripts. Someone on my team mentioned that we use AWS and now I'm scared. Can someone explain how you accidentally rack up such a bill?

[–] sylver_dragon@lemmy.world 4 points 1 day ago

If you spin it up, fucking own it. When you're done with it, shut it down. I have long lost count of the number of times I've reached out to a team to ask about the coin miner they are running on some random EC2 instance only to find out that some jackass spun it up for a test, gave it a public IP, set the VPC to allow any inbound traffic, installed all kinds of random crap and then never updated it. Nor did it get shutdown when the test ended. So, a year and a half later, when the software was woefully out of date, someone hacked it and spun up a coin miner. Oh, and the jackass who set it up didn't bother to enable logging or security monitoring. But, they sure as hell needed the ability to spin stuff up on their own. Because working with IT to get it done right would be too hard for their fragile little ego.

[–] RonSijm@programming.dev 3 points 1 day ago

Can someone explain how you accidentally rack up such a bill?

For example: You can deploy your Python script as a Lambda. Imagine somewhere in the Python script you'd call your own lambda - twice. You basically turned your lambda into a Fork Bomb that will spawn infinite lambdas

[–] Oderus@lemmy.world 25 points 2 days ago (1 children)

It's actually difficult. You can set a budget so AWS will alert you when you hit it.

They have a price calculator that'll calculate costs before you do anything.

Inbound Internet is free. Only outboard costs you anything.

Network transfers between VPC's using private links are free.

AWS accounts are free.

Lambda functions are ultra cheap as you only pay for the time you use it.

S3 is object storage with 11 9's of uptime and it's cheaper than any enterprise NAS.

Basically you'd have to setup something wrong and ignore it for weeks to incur a large bill.

[–] KairuByte@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 points 1 day ago

Or leak your creds and let a crypto miner in. But your point still stands.

[–] JackbyDev@programming.dev 21 points 2 days ago

You're gonna be fine. Honestly, if your team has given you permissions to do something accidental like this then it's on them. You're not gonna get stuck with the bill. You're not gonna get fired. It wouldn't be your fault.

It's really only scary when you're doing it solo with your own back information lol.

[–] adhdplantdev@lemm.ee 12 points 2 days ago

Just make sure whatever resources you spin up you're spitting down. This stuff though tends to happen when people accidentally let a a script that creates and destroys instances run over the weekend and it didn't appropriately clean up instances for you...

Or you thought you would try your hand at training in llm and then realized you spent way too much money on the infrastructure and resources

[–] frezik@midwest.social 3 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

AWS has a multitude of different offerings with confusing pricing structures. They have zero incentive to make them understandable.

That said, chances are your new company has people who understand this already and know how to manage it. Hopefully, they'll put up some guardrails that prevent you and others from running up a big bill. I wouldn't expect a junior programmer to know how to do this, but that's ok as long as the company is managed right. Granted, that can be a big if sometimes.