Tag: Cloud-Exit
Those Who Left the Cloud Made a Killing
Leaving the cloud has never been just about saving money. It is about buying back your freedom. Cost curves move; sovereignty does not. I have spent years urging people to get out. Friends who listened two years ago made a killing. 1. The Best Trade …
Leaving the cloud has never been just about saving money. It is about buying back your freedom. Cost curves move; sovereignty does not. I have spent years urging people to get out. Friends who listened two years ago made a killing. 1. The Best Trade …
If There Was No Impact, Please Ignore This
A reader sent me this story: his RDS MySQL instance underwent two primary/standby failovers in five days. The cloud provider’s explanation was remarkable: its own back-end monitoring had queried the instance to death. The provider then promised to …
A reader sent me this story: his RDS MySQL instance underwent two primary/standby failovers in five days. The cloud provider’s explanation was remarkable: its own back-end monitoring had queried the instance to death. The provider then promised to …
The Data Sovereignty Manifesto
A specter is haunting the digital world—the specter of feudalism. A thousand years ago, a farmer was born on his lord’s estate, tilled his lord’s land, paid his lord’s rents and taxes, and lived his entire life in his lord’s shadow. He was never …
A specter is haunting the digital world—the specter of feudalism. A thousand years ago, a farmer was born on his lord’s estate, tilled his lord’s land, paid his lord’s rents and taxes, and lived his entire life in his lord’s shadow. He was never …
Your SaaS, Someone Else's Kill Switch
What Slack’s withdrawal from Greater China reveals about the digital age’s most overlooked risk April 1, 2026. April Fools’ Day. But for the thousands of Slack-using teams across Hong Kong, Macau, and mainland China, what happened that day was no …
What Slack’s withdrawal from Greater China reveals about the digital age’s most overlooked risk April 1, 2026. April Fools’ Day. But for the thousands of Slack-using teams across Hong Kong, Macau, and mainland China, what happened that day was no …
Drones Took Out Three AWS AZ: Into the Era of Bombable Data Centers
On March 1, 2026, Iranian drones reportedly hit AWS facilities in the UAE and Bahrain. If the public reporting is accurate, this may be the first time a hyperscale cloud provider has suffered direct military damage to physical data-center …
On March 1, 2026, Iranian drones reportedly hit AWS facilities in the UAE and Bahrain. If the public reporting is accurate, this may be the first time a hyperscale cloud provider has suffered direct military damage to physical data-center …
Did RedNote Exit the Cloud?
Original WeChat post Yesterday, I spotted a new article from RedNote’s official tech blog: “Design and Practice of Self-Built Data Centers under Hybrid Cloud Architecture.” I wrote a quick technical commentary on it. What I didn’t expect was the …
Original WeChat post Yesterday, I spotted a new article from RedNote’s official tech blog: “Design and Practice of Self-Built Data Centers under Hybrid Cloud Architecture.” I wrote a quick technical commentary on it. What I didn’t expect was the …
Alipay, Taobao, Xianyu Went Dark. Smells Like a Message Queue Meltdown.
Taobao, Alipay, and Xianyu simultaneously faceplanted on Dec 4. Cards were debited, yet orders sat frozen at “pending.” The story rhymes perfectly with the 2024 Double-11 outage, so the leading suspect is once again the message queue or whatever …
Taobao, Alipay, and Xianyu simultaneously faceplanted on Dec 4. Cards were debited, yet orders sat frozen at “pending.” The story rhymes perfectly with the 2024 Double-11 outage, so the leading suspect is once again the message queue or whatever …
AWS’s Official DynamoDB Outage Postmortem
AWS just released the official postmortem for the Oct 20 us-east-1 meltdown. It’s one of the rare times we get first-hand detail, so I translated it to Chinese and sprinkled in commentary. Here’s the English recap with my notes. Incident page: …
AWS just released the official postmortem for the Oct 20 us-east-1 meltdown. It’s one of the rare times we get first-hand detail, so I translated it to Chinese and sprinkled in commentary. Here’s the English recap with my notes. Incident page: …
How One AWS DNS Failure Cascaded Across Half the Internet
On Oct 20, 2025, AWS’s crown jewel region us-east-1 spent fifteen hours flailing. More than a thousand companies went dark worldwide. The root cause? An internal DNS entry that stopped resolving. From the moment DNS broke, DynamoDB, EC2, Lambda, and …
On Oct 20, 2025, AWS’s crown jewel region us-east-1 spent fifteen hours flailing. More than a thousand companies went dark worldwide. The root cause? An internal DNS entry that stopped resolving. From the moment DNS broke, DynamoDB, EC2, Lambda, and …
Column: Cloud-Exit
People praise the cloud as carefree, with managed services easing every pain. I say clouds are pig-butchering schemes, hundredfold markups with smug disdain. Cyber landlords hold monopolies, hike the price, extract your vein. They outsource ops, …
People praise the cloud as carefree, with managed services easing every pain. I say clouds are pig-butchering schemes, hundredfold markups with smug disdain. Cyber landlords hold monopolies, hike the price, extract your vein. They outsource ops, …
Escaping Cloud Computing Scam Mills: The Big Fool Paying for Pain
This article comes from a real consultation case. Any resemblance to your situation is purely due to cloud vendors’ deep affinity with your wallet. Yesterday a user came to consult, asking if PostgreSQL distributed database extension Citus has any …
This article comes from a real consultation case. Any resemblance to your situation is purely due to cloud vendors’ deep affinity with your wallet. Yesterday a user came to consult, asking if PostgreSQL distributed database extension Citus has any …
Cloud Database: Michelin Prices for Cafeteria Pre-made Meals
Are cloud databases overpriced cafeteria meals The paradigm shift brought by RDS Quality, security, efficiency, and cost analysis, Cloud exit database self-building: how to implement in practice! TL;DR From commercial software to open source software …
Are cloud databases overpriced cafeteria meals The paradigm shift brought by RDS Quality, security, efficiency, and cost analysis, Cloud exit database self-building: how to implement in practice! TL;DR From commercial software to open source software …
Alibaba-Cloud: High Availability Disaster Recovery Myth Shattered
On September 10, 2024, Alibaba-Cloud’s Singapore Availability Zone C data center experienced a fire caused by lithium battery explosion. It’s been a week now and services have not been fully restored yet. According to the monthly SLA availability …
On September 10, 2024, Alibaba-Cloud’s Singapore Availability Zone C data center experienced a fire caused by lithium battery explosion. It’s been a week now and services have not been fully restored yet. According to the monthly SLA availability …
Amateur Hour Opera: Alibaba-Cloud PostgreSQL Disaster Chronicle
In “Are Cloud Databases an IQ Tax”, I evaluated cloud database RDS as: “selling sky-high pre-made meals at five-star hotel prices” — but legitimate pre-made meals from industrial kitchens are at least edible and generally won’t kill you. However, a …
In “Are Cloud Databases an IQ Tax”, I evaluated cloud database RDS as: “selling sky-high pre-made meals at five-star hotel prices” — but legitimate pre-made meals from industrial kitchens are at least edible and generally won’t kill you. However, a …
Blue Screen Friday: Amateur Hour on Both Sides
Recently, due to a configuration update released by cybersecurity company CrowdStrike, countless Windows computers worldwide fell into blue screen death, causing endless chaos — airlines grounded flights, hospitals canceled surgeries, supermarkets, …
Recently, due to a configuration update released by cybersecurity company CrowdStrike, countless Windows computers worldwide fell into blue screen death, causing endless chaos — airlines grounded flights, hospitals canceled surgeries, supermarkets, …
How Ahrefs Saved US$400M by NOT Going to the Cloud
Original: How Ahrefs Saved US$400M in 3 Years by NOT Going to the Cloud Cloud computing has been very popular in the IT infrastructure space recently, with going to the cloud becoming a trend. Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) clouds do have many …
Original: How Ahrefs Saved US$400M in 3 Years by NOT Going to the Cloud Cloud computing has been very popular in the IT infrastructure space recently, with going to the cloud becoming a trend. Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) clouds do have many …
Database Deletion Supreme - Google Cloud Nuked a Major Fund's Entire Cloud Account
Due to an “unprecedented configuration error”, Google Cloud mistakenly deleted UniSuper’s cloud account. The Australian pension fund executive and Google Cloud’s global CEO issued a joint statement apologizing for this “extremely frustrating and …
Due to an “unprecedented configuration error”, Google Cloud mistakenly deleted UniSuper’s cloud account. The Australian pension fund executive and Google Cloud’s global CEO issued a joint statement apologizing for this “extremely frustrating and …
Cloud Dark Forest: Exploding Cloud Bills with Just S3 Bucket Names
The dark forest law has emerged on public cloud: Anyone who knows your S3 object storage bucket name can explode your cloud bill. Imagine this: you create an empty, private AWS S3 storage bucket in your favorite region. What would your AWS bill look …
The dark forest law has emerged on public cloud: Anyone who knows your S3 object storage bucket name can explode your cloud bill. Imagine this: you create an empty, private AWS S3 storage bucket in your favorite region. What would your AWS bill look …
Cloudflare Roundtable Interview and Q&A Record
Last week, I was invited as a roundtable guest to participate in Cloudflare’s Immerse conference in Shenzhen. During the Cloudflare Immerse cocktail party and dinner, I had in-depth discussions with Cloudflare’s APAC CMO, Greater China Technical …
Last week, I was invited as a roundtable guest to participate in Cloudflare’s Immerse conference in Shenzhen. During the Cloudflare Immerse cocktail party and dinner, I had in-depth discussions with Cloudflare’s APAC CMO, Greater China Technical …
What Can We Learn from Tencent Cloud's Major Outage?
Eight days after the outage, Tencent Cloud published a postmortem report for the April 8th major outage. I think this is a good thing, because Alibaba-Cloud’s Double 11 major outage official postmortem is still overdue. If public cloud vendors want …
Eight days after the outage, Tencent Cloud published a postmortem report for the April 8th major outage. I think this is a good thing, because Alibaba-Cloud’s Double 11 major outage official postmortem is still overdue. If public cloud vendors want …
Cloudflare - The Cyber Buddha That Destroys Public Cloud
At today’s 2024 Developer Week, Cloudflare released a series of exciting new features, such as Python Workers and Workers AI, elevating the convenience of application development and delivery to an entirely new level. Compared to Cloudflare’s …
At today’s 2024 Developer Week, Cloudflare released a series of exciting new features, such as Python Workers and Workers AI, elevating the convenience of application development and delivery to an entirely new level. Compared to Cloudflare’s …
Can Luo Yonghao Save Toothpaste Cloud?
Luo Yonghao was once a brilliant digital product manager with decent IT industry credentials. But as they say, there’s a world of difference between industries. Luo selling cloud is like a street vendor simultaneously hawking meat, vegetables, eggs, …
Luo Yonghao was once a brilliant digital product manager with decent IT industry credentials. But as they say, there’s a world of difference between industries. Luo selling cloud is like a street vendor simultaneously hawking meat, vegetables, eggs, …
Analyzing Alibaba-Cloud Server Computing Cost
On Crazy Thursday, February 29, 2024, Alibaba-Cloud staged a major price cut, with promotional content flying everywhere. As the cloud computing mudslide, many followers asked me to comment. The flashy 20%, 50% off banners look impressive, but …
On Crazy Thursday, February 29, 2024, Alibaba-Cloud staged a major price cut, with promotional content flying everywhere. As the cloud computing mudslide, many followers asked me to comment. The flashy 20%, 50% off banners look impressive, but …
Will DBAs Be Eliminated by Cloud?
Two days ago, the ninth episode of Open-Source Talks had the theme “Will DBAs Be Eliminated by Cloud?” As the host, I restrained myself from jumping into the debate throughout, so I’m writing this article to discuss this question: Will DBAs be …
Two days ago, the ninth episode of Open-Source Talks had the theme “Will DBAs Be Eliminated by Cloud?” As the host, I restrained myself from jumping into the debate throughout, so I’m writing this article to discuss this question: Will DBAs be …
Cloud-Exit High Availability Secret: Rejecting Complexity Masturbation
We don’t need Kubernetes masters or fancy new databases — programmers are drawn to complexity like moths to flame. The more complex the system architecture diagram, the greater the intellectual masturbation high. Our steadfast resistance to this …
We don’t need Kubernetes masters or fancy new databases — programmers are drawn to complexity like moths to flame. The more complex the system architecture diagram, the greater the intellectual masturbation high. Our steadfast resistance to this …
S3: Elite to Mediocre
WeChat Object storage (S3) has been a defining service of cloud computing, once hailed as a paragon of cost reduction in the cloud era. Unfortunately, with the evolution of hardware and the emergence of resources cloud (Cloudflare R2) and …
WeChat Object storage (S3) has been a defining service of cloud computing, once hailed as a paragon of cost reduction in the cloud era. Unfortunately, with the evolution of hardware and the emergence of resources cloud (Cloudflare R2) and …
From Cost-Reduction Jokes to Real Cost Reduction and Efficiency
Year-end is performance rush time, but internet giants are having major incidents one after another. They’ve turned “cost reduction and efficiency improvement” into literal “cost reduction jokes” — this is no longer just a meme, but official …
Year-end is performance rush time, but internet giants are having major incidents one after another. They’ve turned “cost reduction and efficiency improvement” into literal “cost reduction jokes” — this is no longer just a meme, but official …
Reclaim Hardware Bonus from the Cloud
Hardware is interesting again, with the AI wave fueling a GPU frenzy. However, the intrigue isn’t limited to GPUs —— developments in CPUs and SSDs remain largely unnoticed by the majority of devs. A whole generation of developers is obscured by cloud …
Hardware is interesting again, with the AI wave fueling a GPU frenzy. However, the intrigue isn’t limited to GPUs —— developments in CPUs and SSDs remain largely unnoticed by the majority of devs. A whole generation of developers is obscured by cloud …
What Can We Learn from Alibaba-Cloud's Global Outage?
A year after the last major incident, Alibaba-Cloud suffered another massive outage, creating an unprecedented record in the cloud computing industry — simultaneous failures across all global regions and all services. Since Alibaba-Cloud refuses to …
A year after the last major incident, Alibaba-Cloud suffered another massive outage, creating an unprecedented record in the cloud computing industry — simultaneous failures across all global regions and all services. Since Alibaba-Cloud refuses to …
Harvesting Alibaba-Cloud Wool, Building Your Digital Homestead
Alibaba-Cloud’s Double 11 offered a great deal: 2C/2G/3M ECS servers with a list price of ¥1500/year for just ¥99/year for three years (¥99 annual renewal available until 2026), plus they’re reportedly giving every Chinese university student a free …
Alibaba-Cloud’s Double 11 offered a great deal: 2C/2G/3M ECS servers with a list price of ¥1500/year for just ¥99/year for three years (¥99 annual renewal available until 2026), plus they’re reportedly giving every Chinese university student a free …
Cloud Computing Mudslide: Deconstructing Public Cloud with Data
Once upon a time, “going to cloud” was almost politically correct in tech circles, but few people use hard data to analyze the trade-offs involved. I’m willing to be this skeptic: let me use hard data and personal stories to explain the traps and …
Once upon a time, “going to cloud” was almost politically correct in tech circles, but few people use hard data to analyze the trade-offs involved. I’m willing to be this skeptic: let me use hard data and personal stories to explain the traps and …
DHH: Cloud-Exit Saves Over Ten Million, More Than Expected!
Author: DHH, “Our Cloud-Exit savings will now top ten million over five years” Feng’s Commentary As a cloud exit advocate, I’m gratified to see DHH’s tremendous success in the cloud exit process. The world always rewards leaders with the wisdom to …
Author: DHH, “Our Cloud-Exit savings will now top ten million over five years” Feng’s Commentary As a cloud exit advocate, I’m gratified to see DHH’s tremendous success in the cloud exit process. The world always rewards leaders with the wisdom to …
FinOps: Endgame Cloud-Exit
At the SACC 2023 FinOps session, I fiercely criticized cloud vendors. This is a transcript of my speech, introducing the ultimate FinOps concept — Cloud-Exit and its best practice. TL; DR Misaligned FinOps Focus: Total Cost = Unit Price x Quantity. …
At the SACC 2023 FinOps session, I fiercely criticized cloud vendors. This is a transcript of my speech, introducing the ultimate FinOps concept — Cloud-Exit and its best practice. TL; DR Misaligned FinOps Focus: Total Cost = Unit Price x Quantity. …
Why Isn't Cloud Computing More Profitable Than Sand Mining?
Public cloud margins worse than sand mining, Why are pig-butchering schemes losing money? Resource-selling models heading toward price wars, Open source alternatives breaking monopoly dreams! Service competitiveness gradually neutralized, Where is …
Public cloud margins worse than sand mining, Why are pig-butchering schemes losing money? Resource-selling models heading toward price wars, Open source alternatives breaking monopoly dreams! Service competitiveness gradually neutralized, Where is …
SLA: Placebo or Insurance?
In the world of cloud computing, Service Level Agreements (SLAs) are seen as a cloud provider’s commitment to the quality of its services. However, a closer examination of these SLAs reveals that they might not offer the safety net one might expect: …
In the world of cloud computing, Service Level Agreements (SLAs) are seen as a cloud provider’s commitment to the quality of its services. However, a closer examination of these SLAs reveals that they might not offer the safety net one might expect: …
EBS: Pig Slaughter Scam
We already answer the question: Is RDS an Idiot Tax?. But when compared to the hundredfold markup of public cloud block storage, cloud databases seem almost reasonable. This article uses real data to reveal the true business model of public cloud: …
We already answer the question: Is RDS an Idiot Tax?. But when compared to the hundredfold markup of public cloud block storage, cloud databases seem almost reasonable. This article uses real data to reveal the true business model of public cloud: …
Refuting "Why You Still Shouldn't Hire a DBA"
Guo Degang has a comedy routine: “Say I tell a rocket scientist, your rocket is no good, the fuel is wrong. I think it should burn wood, better yet coal, and it has to be premium coal, not washed coal. If that scientist takes me seriously, he …
Guo Degang has a comedy routine: “Say I tell a rocket scientist, your rocket is no good, the fuel is wrong. I think it should burn wood, better yet coal, and it has to be premium coal, not washed coal. If that scientist takes me seriously, he …
Paradigm Shift: From Cloud to Local-First
In the previous article, we used data to answer “Are Cloud Databases an Intelligence Tax?"—the exorbitant markups of several to over ten times are undoubtedly a scam for users outside the applicable spectrum. But we can dig deeper: why are public …
In the previous article, we used data to answer “Are Cloud Databases an Intelligence Tax?"—the exorbitant markups of several to over ten times are undoubtedly a scam for users outside the applicable spectrum. But we can dig deeper: why are public …
Are Cloud Databases an IQ Tax?
Winter is coming, tech giants are laying off workers entering cost-reduction mode. Can cloud databases, the number one public cloud cash cow, still tell their story? Recently, an article by DHH, co-founder of Basecamp & HEY, caused a stir【1,2】. The …
Winter is coming, tech giants are laying off workers entering cost-reduction mode. Can cloud databases, the number one public cloud cash cow, still tell their story? Recently, an article by DHH, co-founder of Basecamp & HEY, caused a stir【1,2】. The …
Is DBA Still a Good Job?
Ant Financial had a self-deprecating joke: besides regulation, only DBAs could bring down Alipay. In the digital age, data is the core asset of many enterprises, especially for internet/software service companies. The people responsible for …
Ant Financial had a self-deprecating joke: besides regulation, only DBAs could bring down Alipay. In the digital age, data is the core asset of many enterprises, especially for internet/software service companies. The people responsible for …
Cloud RDS: From Database Drop to Exit
In my previous article “Is DBA Still a Good Job”, I mentioned: Although DBA as a profession is declining, who knows if DBAs might become trendy again after several terrifying large-scale cloud database failures. Well, I recently witnessed a live …
In my previous article “Is DBA Still a Good Job”, I mentioned: Although DBA as a profession is declining, who knows if DBAs might become trendy again after several terrifying large-scale cloud database failures. Well, I recently witnessed a live …