> Every other cloud does this! They all have non-production subscription types with hard spending limits.
They don't. I've looked. They all have some ultra complex scheme for monitoring billing and programmatically shutting down services, which is a favorite recommendation by apologists, but none have a nice, solid "shut down everything" plan that's usable for learning and testing.
AWS does have billing actions which are fairly new, but they're still a bit too difficult to deal with if you also follow the advice for setting up a root account for billing plus sub-accounts / organizations for use.
Azure has been ignoring the request for over 8 years [1]. There's a warning they're moving away from User Voice to a product-by-product solution for feedback, so that request might disappear altogether. I reached out to them and politely asked for an update and they said they'd look into it, but it's been over a month and I don't think there's going to be an update without some pressure. If anyone has a good social media following and would like to see hard caps on spending in Azure, tweet @AzureSupport. Maybe if enough people do they'll actually follow up.
> PLEASE stop making the argument that it's "too hard" or even "impossible" to implement spending limits.
I agree 100% with this because all I really want is something along the lines of the "personal learning" account that's described in the article. I want a dev / testing account where I can learn and test assumptions about billing without risking a massive overage that I wasn't expecting. They don't have to get into the complexities of dealing with production accounts.
AWS, Azure, and GCP have all had close to a decade to figure it out, so I think the only way it'll happen is if we start asking legislators to regulate those providers. It would be relatively simple in my opinion. Cloud infrastructure providers must allow users to indicate a maximum amount of spending per month and may not charge more than the indicated amount.
I think big tech is proving they can't self regulate, so it's time to quit letting them.
Annoyingly, Azure does have this capability! If your company is a Microsoft gold partner (there might be other requirements, I can't remember) then your Azure developer licenses comes with £100 free credit per month. When this money runs out, every service associated with that subscription just shuts down. It doesn't overrun, heck I don't remember even getting an email about it, they just stop until it renews the next month.
They just refuse to implement this system for non dev licenses.
That's exactly the same way that Azure for Students works, which is why I use it instead of AWS Educate (well, that and because Azure doesn't limit what services you can use your $100 on, unlike AWS).
btw. azure has a subscription type where you can put a prepaid amount onto your account. they just do not support it by default. btw. bizspark customers get this of subscription, for 3 years with an free amount of up to 300 USD per month
They don't. I've looked. They all have some ultra complex scheme for monitoring billing and programmatically shutting down services, which is a favorite recommendation by apologists, but none have a nice, solid "shut down everything" plan that's usable for learning and testing.
AWS does have billing actions which are fairly new, but they're still a bit too difficult to deal with if you also follow the advice for setting up a root account for billing plus sub-accounts / organizations for use.
Azure has been ignoring the request for over 8 years [1]. There's a warning they're moving away from User Voice to a product-by-product solution for feedback, so that request might disappear altogether. I reached out to them and politely asked for an update and they said they'd look into it, but it's been over a month and I don't think there's going to be an update without some pressure. If anyone has a good social media following and would like to see hard caps on spending in Azure, tweet @AzureSupport. Maybe if enough people do they'll actually follow up.
> PLEASE stop making the argument that it's "too hard" or even "impossible" to implement spending limits.
I agree 100% with this because all I really want is something along the lines of the "personal learning" account that's described in the article. I want a dev / testing account where I can learn and test assumptions about billing without risking a massive overage that I wasn't expecting. They don't have to get into the complexities of dealing with production accounts.
AWS, Azure, and GCP have all had close to a decade to figure it out, so I think the only way it'll happen is if we start asking legislators to regulate those providers. It would be relatively simple in my opinion. Cloud infrastructure providers must allow users to indicate a maximum amount of spending per month and may not charge more than the indicated amount.
I think big tech is proving they can't self regulate, so it's time to quit letting them.
1. https://feedback.azure.com/forums/170030-signup-and-billing/...