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Comment by zigzag312 | Hacker News Reader

> A few clicks.

Getting through AWS documentation can be fairly time consuming.

And making sure you're not making a security configuration mistake that will accidentally leak private data to the open internet because of a detail of AWS you were unaware of.

Figuring out how to do db backups _can_ also be fairly time consuming.

There's a question of whether you want to spend time learning AWS or spend time learning your DB's hand-rolled backup options (on top of the question of whether learning AWS's thing even absolves you of understanding your DB's internals anyways!)

I do think there's value in "just" doing a thing instead of relying on the wrapper. Whether that's easier or not is super context and experience dependent, though.

> Figuring out how to do db backups _can_ also be fairly time consuming.

apt install automysqlbackup autopostgresqlbackup

Though if you have proper filesystem snapshots then they should always see your database as consistent, right? So you can even skip database tools and just learn to make and download snapshots.

nah filesystem snapshots may not lead to consistent DB backups. DB backup software usually use a plugin to tell the DB to coalesce data before taking a snapshot.

At least one OS you’ve heard of can quiesce the file system to allow taking a consistent snapshot; I’d be surprised if this wasn’t widely available everywhere.

Databases have to be ready for power loss, don't they? They might not be happy about it, but if that corrupts anything then the design has failed.

And again I'll emphasize proper snapshot, cutting off writes at an exact point in time. A normal file copy cannot safely back up an active database.

> filesystem snapshots may not lead to consistent DB backups

Only if your database files are split across multiple file systems, which is atypical.

Hmmm, I think you have to figure out how to do your database backups anyway as trying to get a restorable backup out of RDS to use on another provider seems to be a difficult task.

Backups that are stored with the same provider are good, providing the provider is reliable as a whole.

(Currently going through the disaster recovery exercise of, "What if AWS decided they didn't like us and nuked our account from orbit.")

aws would never do that :) plus you can also do it in aws with like 75 clicks around UI which makes no sense even when you are tripping on acid

> 75 clicks

Well 2 commands...

  aws rds export-task create \
    --source-arn <SnapshotArn> \
    --s3-bucket-name <Bucket> \
    --iam-role-arn <Role>

Then copy it down

  aws s3 cp \
    <S3 Location> \
    <Local Dir> --recursive

The biggest effort would be then running the Apache Parquet to CSV tool on it.

Plus the s3 bucket creation and definition commands, and the IAM role and attached policy commands. If you do all in the webUI it's not going to be 75 clicks either but 30 for sure.

It could easily be 30 clicks.

But creating an S3 bucket, an IAM role and attaching policies isn't 30 commands.

Those buckets and IAM policies and roles also have to be managed.

There are also turnkeys solutions that allow one to spin up a DB, setup replication and backups inside or outside of big cñoud vendors. That is the point of db kubernetes operators for instance.

most definitely do not want to spend time learning aws… would rather learn about typewriter maintenance

And learning TypeScript and CDK, if we're comparing scripted, repeatable setups which you should be doing from the start.

> repeatable setups which you should be doing from the start

Yes, but not with

> TypeScript and CDK

Unless your business includes managing infrastructure with your product, for whatever reason (like you provision EC2 instances for your customers and that's all you do), there is no reason to shoot yourself in the foot with a fully fledged programming language for something that needs to be as stable as infrastructure. The saying is Infrastructure as Code, not with code. Even assuming you need to learn Terraform from scratch but already know Typescript, you would still save you time compared to learning CDK, figuring out what is possisble with it, and debugging issues down the line.

I think declarative is nicer too, but choosing a non mainstream tech here takes self-confidence in the matter that inexperienced AWSers are unlikely to have.

And learning something arguably better, like Cloudformation / Terraform / SST, is still a hurdle.

gotta say, Amazon Q can do the details for you in many cases.

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