NASA: Bad Math for Data Return
March 23, 2020
DarkCyber continues to monitor the Amazon Web Services drive train for the Bezos bulldozer. “NASA to Launch 247 Petabytes of Data into AWS – But Forgot about Eye-watering Cloudy Egress Costs before Lift-Off” reports that it is easy to get into the AWS orbit but the payload return may incur some interesting costs.
The Register article states:
“Specifically, the agency faces the possibility of substantial cost increases for data egress from the cloud,” the Inspector General’s Office wrote, explaining that today NASA doesn’t incur extra costs when users access data from its DAACs. “However, when end users download data from Earth data Cloud, the agency, not the user, will be charged every time data is egressed. “That means EDSIS wearing cloud egress costs. Ultimately, ESDIS will be responsible for both cloud costs, including egress charges, and the costs to operate the 12 DAACS.”
Simplifying: Easy in, expensive out.
The Register did some math, which apparently is unfamiliar to certain NASA professionals and consultants. The Register reports:
The Register used Amazon’s cloudy cost calculator to tot up the cost of storing 247PB in the cloud giant’s S3 service. The promised pay-as-you-go price for us on the street was a staggering $5,439,526.92 per month, not taking into account the free tier discount of 12 cents. The audit, meanwhile, suggests an increased cloud spend of around $30m a year by 2025, on top of NASA’s $65m-per-year deal with AWS. The existence of data egress costs are not obscure nor arcane knowledge. Which left The Register wondering how an agency capable of sending stuff into orbit or making marvelously long-lived Mars rovers could also make such a dumb mistake.
Net net: The Bezos bulldozer grinds forward with some clever cost wiring; that is, a 21st century variant of the IBM lock in strategy.
Stephen E Arnold, March 23, 2020
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