Go to the cloud, it's cheap. And when it's not you just turn off parts of your system.
I am somewhat suspicious that that's not really the solution.
I am somewhat suspicious that that's not really the solution.
You trade "waste", and high up-front cost, for a significantly hightened sustained cost.
You trade setting up systems and proper prior planning for understanding proprietary interfaces and understanding cost systems.
It's too far to say it's a scam: it's a trade-off.
There are much cheaper on-prem solutions and there are cheaper cloud systems.
The difference is that the cloud ones TCO is only lower at either absurdly small volumes or absurdly spiky loads (IE; a website that only operates at full load for 3hrs a day and is otherwise under 1 request per hour)
The tradeoff is that if you have a sudden hit event you may simply not have the raw horsepower to handle the influx, but you also can't be hit with surprise $100k+ bills for a configuration mistake.