Cloud-Exiter
Ruohang Feng @Vonng
Stop paying the cloud tax and self-host like a pro — deep dives, cost analyses and incident write-ups.
Alicloud “Borrowed” Supabase, the giant free loader
Founders here get asked the same question over and over: what if Alibaba builds the same thing? Alicloud RDS just launched Supabase as a managed service. Exhibit A.
Baidu Cloud Billed 20 Million RMB for 261 KB of Traffic
A billing bug in Baidu Object Storage (BOS) left users waking up owing the cloud 50 million RMB.
AWS’s Official DynamoDB Outage Postmortem
AWS finally published the Oct 20 us-east-1 postmortem. I translated the key parts and added commentary on how one DNS bug toppled half the internet.
How One AWS DNS Failure Cascaded Across Half the Internet
us-east-1’s DNS control plane faceplanted for 15 hours and dragged 142 AWS services—and a good chunk of the public internet—down with it. Here’s the forensic tour.
Column: Cloud-Exit
A whole generation of developers has been told “cloud-first.” This column collects data, case studies, and commentary on the real economics—and traps—of public cloud rental models.
KubeSphere: Trust Crisis Behind Open-Source Supply Cut
Deleting images and running away - this isn't about commercial closed-source issues, but supply cut problems that directly destroy years of accumulated community trust.
Alicloud’s rds_duckdb: Tribute or Rip-Off?
Does bolting DuckDB onto RDS suddenly make open-source Postgres ‘trash’? Business and open source should be symbiotic. If a vendor only extracts without giving back, the community will spit it out."
Escaping Cloud Computing Scam Mills: The Big Fool Paying for Pain
A user consulted about distributed databases, but he wasn't dealing with data bursting through server cabinet doors—rather, he'd fallen into another cloud computing pig-butchering scam.
OpenAI Global Outage Postmortem: K8S Circular Dependencies
Even trillion-dollar unicorns can be a house of cards when operating outside their core expertise.
WordPress Community Civil War: On Community Boundary Demarcation
When open source ideals meet commercial conflicts, what insights can this conflict between open source software communities and cloud vendors bring? On the importance of community boundary …
Cloud Database: Michelin Prices for Cafeteria Pre-made Meals
The paradigm shift brought by RDS, whether cloud databases are overpriced cafeteria meals. Quality, security, efficiency, and cost analysis, cloud exit database self-building: how to implement in …
Alibaba-Cloud: High Availability Disaster Recovery Myth Shattered
Seven days after Singapore Zone C failure, availability not even reaching 8, let alone multiple 9s. But compared to data loss, availability is just a minor issue
Amateur Hour Opera: Alibaba-Cloud PostgreSQL Disaster Chronicle
A customer experienced an outrageous cascade of failures on cloud database last week: a high-availability PG RDS cluster went down completely - both primary and replica servers - after attempting a …
What Can We Learn from NetEase Cloud Music's Outage?
NetEase Cloud Music experienced a two-and-a-half-hour outage this afternoon. Based on circulating online clues, we can deduce that the real cause behind this incident was...
Blue Screen Friday: Amateur Hour on Both Sides
Both client and vendor failed to control blast radius, leading to this epic global security incident that will greatly benefit local-first software philosophy.
How Ahrefs Saved US$400M by NOT Going to the Cloud
After Alibaba-Cloud's epic global outage on Double 11, setting industry records, how should we evaluate this incident and what lessons can we learn from it?
Database Deletion Supreme - Google Cloud Nuked a Major Fund's Entire Cloud Account
Due to an "unprecedented configuration error," Google Cloud mistakenly deleted trillion-RMB fund giant UniSuper's entire cloud account, cloud environment and all off-site backups, setting a new record …
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.
Cloudflare Roundtable Interview and Q&A Record
As a roundtable guest, I was invited to participate in Cloudflare's Immerse conference in Shenzhen. During the dinner, I had in-depth discussions with Cloudflare's APAC CMO, Greater China Technical …
What Can We Learn from Tencent Cloud's Major Outage?
Tencent Cloud's epic global outage after Double 11 set industry records. How should we evaluate and view this failure, and what lessons can we learn from it?
Cloudflare - The Cyber Buddha That Destroys Public Cloud
While I've always advocated for cloud exit, if it's about adopting a cyber bodhisattva cloud like Cloudflare, I'm all in with both hands raised.
Can Luo Yonghao Save Toothpaste Cloud?
Luo Yonghao's livestream first spent half an hour selling robot vacuums, then Luo himself belatedly appeared to read scripts selling "cloud computing" for forty minutes — before seamlessly …
Analyzing Alibaba-Cloud Server Computing Cost
Alibaba-Cloud claimed major price cuts, but a detailed analysis of cloud server costs reveals that cloud computing and storage remain outrageously expensive.
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 …
Alicloud “Borrowed” Supabase, the giant free loader
Founders here get asked the same question over and over: what if Alibaba builds the same thing? Alicloud RDS just launched Supabase as a managed service. Exhibit A.
Baidu Cloud Billed 20 Million RMB for 261 KB of Traffic
A billing bug in Baidu Object Storage (BOS) left users waking up owing the cloud 50 million RMB.
AWS’s Official DynamoDB Outage Postmortem
AWS finally published the Oct 20 us-east-1 postmortem. I translated the key parts and added commentary on how one DNS bug toppled half the internet.
How One AWS DNS Failure Cascaded Across Half the Internet
us-east-1’s DNS control plane faceplanted for 15 hours and dragged 142 AWS services—and a good chunk of the public internet—down with it. Here’s the forensic tour.
Column: Cloud-Exit
A whole generation of developers has been told “cloud-first.” This column collects data, case studies, and commentary on the real economics—and traps—of public cloud rental models.
KubeSphere: Trust Crisis Behind Open-Source Supply Cut
Deleting images and running away - this isn't about commercial closed-source issues, but supply cut problems that directly destroy years of accumulated community trust.
Alicloud’s rds_duckdb: Tribute or Rip-Off?
Does bolting DuckDB onto RDS suddenly make open-source Postgres ‘trash’? Business and open source should be symbiotic. If a vendor only extracts without giving back, the community will spit it out."
Escaping Cloud Computing Scam Mills: The Big Fool Paying for Pain
A user consulted about distributed databases, but he wasn't dealing with data bursting through server cabinet doors—rather, he'd fallen into another cloud computing pig-butchering scam.
OpenAI Global Outage Postmortem: K8S Circular Dependencies
Even trillion-dollar unicorns can be a house of cards when operating outside their core expertise.
WordPress Community Civil War: On Community Boundary Demarcation
When open source ideals meet commercial conflicts, what insights can this conflict between open source software communities and cloud vendors bring? On the importance of community boundary …
Cloud Database: Michelin Prices for Cafeteria Pre-made Meals
The paradigm shift brought by RDS, whether cloud databases are overpriced cafeteria meals. Quality, security, efficiency, and cost analysis, cloud exit database self-building: how to implement in …
Alibaba-Cloud: High Availability Disaster Recovery Myth Shattered
Seven days after Singapore Zone C failure, availability not even reaching 8, let alone multiple 9s. But compared to data loss, availability is just a minor issue
Amateur Hour Opera: Alibaba-Cloud PostgreSQL Disaster Chronicle
A customer experienced an outrageous cascade of failures on cloud database last week: a high-availability PG RDS cluster went down completely - both primary and replica servers - after attempting a …
What Can We Learn from NetEase Cloud Music's Outage?
NetEase Cloud Music experienced a two-and-a-half-hour outage this afternoon. Based on circulating online clues, we can deduce that the real cause behind this incident was...
Blue Screen Friday: Amateur Hour on Both Sides
Both client and vendor failed to control blast radius, leading to this epic global security incident that will greatly benefit local-first software philosophy.
How Ahrefs Saved US$400M by NOT Going to the Cloud
After Alibaba-Cloud's epic global outage on Double 11, setting industry records, how should we evaluate this incident and what lessons can we learn from it?
Database Deletion Supreme - Google Cloud Nuked a Major Fund's Entire Cloud Account
Due to an "unprecedented configuration error," Google Cloud mistakenly deleted trillion-RMB fund giant UniSuper's entire cloud account, cloud environment and all off-site backups, setting a new record …
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.
Cloudflare Roundtable Interview and Q&A Record
As a roundtable guest, I was invited to participate in Cloudflare's Immerse conference in Shenzhen. During the dinner, I had in-depth discussions with Cloudflare's APAC CMO, Greater China Technical …
What Can We Learn from Tencent Cloud's Major Outage?
Tencent Cloud's epic global outage after Double 11 set industry records. How should we evaluate and view this failure, and what lessons can we learn from it?
Cloudflare - The Cyber Buddha That Destroys Public Cloud
While I've always advocated for cloud exit, if it's about adopting a cyber bodhisattva cloud like Cloudflare, I'm all in with both hands raised.
Can Luo Yonghao Save Toothpaste Cloud?
Luo Yonghao's livestream first spent half an hour selling robot vacuums, then Luo himself belatedly appeared to read scripts selling "cloud computing" for forty minutes — before seamlessly …
Analyzing Alibaba-Cloud Server Computing Cost
Alibaba-Cloud claimed major price cuts, but a detailed analysis of cloud server costs reveals that cloud computing and storage remain outrageously expensive.
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 …
Alicloud “Borrowed” Supabase, the giant free loader
Chinese founders hear the nightmare scenario constantly: “What happens when Alibaba shows up?” Well, Alicloud RDS just shipped Supabase as a first-party feature. This is what it looks like when a hyperscaler parachutes into your niche. Supabase in a …
Chinese founders hear the nightmare scenario constantly: “What happens when Alibaba shows up?” Well, Alicloud RDS just shipped Supabase as a first-party feature. This is what it looks like when a hyperscaler parachutes into your niche. Supabase in a …
Baidu Cloud Billed 20 Million RMB for 261 KB of Traffic
Someone in a group chat shared an entertaining case today: a developer storing a few hundred megabytes on Baidu Cloud Object Storage (BOS) generated 261.8 KB of outbound download traffic—and got billed 20,374,385.48 RMB (~$2.8 million USD). The …
Someone in a group chat shared an entertaining case today: a developer storing a few hundred megabytes on Baidu Cloud Object Storage (BOS) generated 261.8 KB of outbound download traffic—and got billed 20,374,385.48 RMB (~$2.8 million USD). The …
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, …
KubeSphere: Trust Crisis Behind Open-Source Supply Cut
KubeSphere Sudden Supply Cut: When Open-Source Trust Gets “Unplugged” A “Run” That Shocked the Cloud Native Circle The day before yesterday, QingCloud announced KubeSphere open source edition stops downloads and support, requiring users to migrate …
KubeSphere Sudden Supply Cut: When Open-Source Trust Gets “Unplugged” A “Run” That Shocked the Cloud Native Circle The day before yesterday, QingCloud announced KubeSphere open source edition stops downloads and support, requiring users to migrate …
Alicloud’s rds_duckdb: Tribute or Rip-Off?
A viral post titled “Heavenly ‘PostgreSQL’ Calls Earthly Postgres ‘Little Trash’” hyped up Alicloud RDS’s new rds_duckdb plugin for OLAP and declared that managed RDS PG is noble while open-source Postgres is garbage. That take is ridiculous. I know …
A viral post titled “Heavenly ‘PostgreSQL’ Calls Earthly Postgres ‘Little Trash’” hyped up Alicloud RDS’s new rds_duckdb plugin for OLAP and declared that managed RDS PG is noble while open-source Postgres is garbage. That take is ridiculous. I know …
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 …
OpenAI Global Outage Postmortem: K8S Circular Dependencies
On December 11th, OpenAI experienced a global service outage affecting ChatGPT, API, Sora, Playground, and Labs. The outage lasted from 3:16 PM to 7:38 PM PT, spanning over four hours with significant impact. According to OpenAI’s incident report …
On December 11th, OpenAI experienced a global service outage affecting ChatGPT, API, Sora, Playground, and Labs. The outage lasted from 3:16 PM to 7:38 PM PT, spanning over four hours with significant impact. According to OpenAI’s incident report …
WordPress Community Civil War: On Community Boundary Demarcation
“I want to be blunt: for years, we’ve been like fools while they made a fortune off what we developed.” — This famous quote from Redis Labs CEO Ofer Bengal has become a vivid footnote to the WordPress community civil war and the conflict between open …
“I want to be blunt: for years, we’ve been like fools while they made a fortune off what we developed.” — This famous quote from Redis Labs CEO Ofer Bengal has become a vivid footnote to the WordPress community civil war and the conflict between open …
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 …
What Can We Learn from NetEase Cloud Music's Outage?
This afternoon around 14:44, NetEase Cloud Music experienced an outage, recovering at 17:11. The rumored cause was infrastructure/cloud/ disk storage related issues. Incident Timeline During the outage, NetEase Cloud Music clients could normally play …
This afternoon around 14:44, NetEase Cloud Music experienced an outage, recovering at 17:11. The rumored cause was infrastructure/cloud/ disk storage related issues. Incident Timeline During the outage, NetEase Cloud Music clients could normally play …
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 …