Remove the AWS load balancer. Your web application isn’t horizontally scaled so you don’t need that extra cost. Obviously you’ll still have to pay for bandwidth moving all those images but you remove the ELB hourly usage cost from the equation. If you’re using it for a reverse proxy, simply install a nginx container on the lemmy box. If really want a load balancer, you’ll save money by hosting haproxy on a regular server.
Get off Amazon RDS. You’ll save money by hosting your database on a regular server than using RDS. You’re moving from a fully managed solution to one you have to manage your own. This means managing your own backups and replication if you want HA failover.
Switch to object storage for pictrs. The cost is much lower.
However, you’re right that Amazon prices are high and you’ll likely find cheaper alternatives elsewhere.
I’m not sure I agree with moving from managed to unmanaged for RDS, unless you’re very familiar with databases and keeping them online, RDS (and other managed DB providers) are honestly one of the places I recommend spending more on.
Oh yeah, I agree it’s not the right choice for everyone. There’s a whole lot that can go wrong self managing DBs. Also, you’re losing out on availability as RDS gives you two availability zones for redundancy. It’s a trade off I think based on your experience, budget, and uptime requirements. Just spit balling, but I believe it would be something like a 20% cost reduction for the db hosting.
A few friendly recommendations that may help:
Remove the AWS load balancer. Your web application isn’t horizontally scaled so you don’t need that extra cost. Obviously you’ll still have to pay for bandwidth moving all those images but you remove the ELB hourly usage cost from the equation. If you’re using it for a reverse proxy, simply install a nginx container on the lemmy box. If really want a load balancer, you’ll save money by hosting haproxy on a regular server.
Get off Amazon RDS. You’ll save money by hosting your database on a regular server than using RDS. You’re moving from a fully managed solution to one you have to manage your own. This means managing your own backups and replication if you want HA failover.
Switch to object storage for pictrs. The cost is much lower.
However, you’re right that Amazon prices are high and you’ll likely find cheaper alternatives elsewhere.
I’m not sure I agree with moving from managed to unmanaged for RDS, unless you’re very familiar with databases and keeping them online, RDS (and other managed DB providers) are honestly one of the places I recommend spending more on.
The rest of your points are spot on though.
Oh yeah, I agree it’s not the right choice for everyone. There’s a whole lot that can go wrong self managing DBs. Also, you’re losing out on availability as RDS gives you two availability zones for redundancy. It’s a trade off I think based on your experience, budget, and uptime requirements. Just spit balling, but I believe it would be something like a 20% cost reduction for the db hosting.
Looks like they’ve got experience managing databases and are getting off of RDS as a result 🎉