🚀 The Race to Exit AWS S3: $5K a Day on the Line! 💰

David Heinemeier Hansson, co-founder of Basecamp and HEY, is making a high-stakes move—migrating nearly six petabytes of data out of AWS S3 before their cloud contract expires on June 30. With an AWS bill running up to $1.5 million a year, the switch to Pure Storage hardware marks the final step in their cloud exit. The numbers are jaw-dropping: if they miss the deadline, they'll be stuck paying $5,000 per day to keep their data in S3—adding up to a whopping $150,000 per month. Luckily, AWS now offers a 60-day free egress window, but moving this massive amount of data still requires a three-week-long transfer over a dedicated 40-Gbit connection. The payoff? Over five years, the company expects to save nearly $5 million on storage costs. But with time ticking, they can't afford a delay—every wasted day is money down the drain! ⏳💸

Key Points:

• Annual AWS S3 costs: $1.5 million per year for Basecamp & HEY.
• Exit deadline: June 30. Missing it costs $5,000/day.
• New storage solution: Pure Storage NVMe racks with S3-compatible API.
• Data transfer challenge: ~6 petabytes to migrate over a 40-Gbit pipe—expected to take three weeks.
• AWS's free egress window: No transfer fees for 60 days, a recent policy change.
• Total savings: Nearly $5 million over five years ($1.5M hardware + <$1M in support costs).

🔥 Final Thought: This is a serious cloud exit with big risks and big rewards. Quote of the day? "If we don't get this done in time, we'll be paying a cool five thousand dollars a day to continue to use S3." 😬 Time is money, and in this case, it’s $35K a week!
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