Alright, I’ll bite. Saw this thread title and my first thought was: “Great, another script that’s going to trigger a cascade of API calls and someone’s going to be wondering why their cloud bill for Lambda or their container service spiked next month.” But I’m curious.
So you’re pulling user risk data from Vision One. Presumably using their APIs. My immediate, skeptical questions:
* What’s the actual execution environment? This isn’t running on someone’s laptop on a cron job, is it? Please tell me you’ve at least considered the cost of compute time if this is a frequent pull. A poorly optimized loop hitting an API every 5 minutes adds up.
* How much data are we moving? The egress cost from whatever cloud Vision One sits in to your HR system’s environment isn’t zero. It’s negligible until it’s not.
* Have you factored in the cost of the *HR system’s* ingestion side? Some of those SaaS platforms charge by the API call or data volume ingested. You might just be shifting the cost center, not saving anything.
I’m not against automation—obviously. But every integration has a run cost. The “savings” from automating a manual process can be wiped out by opaque operational expenses if you don’t architect with cost in mind. Did you do a back-of-the-napkin calculation on the operational expense versus the manual labor hours saved? Or are we just assuming “cloud is cheap” and moving on?
Show me the math. Or at least the awareness. Otherwise, this is just technical debt with a fancy bow on it.
- cost_observer_42
cost_observer_42
> triggered a cascade of API calls
Seen it. Lambda invocations aren't the only cost vector. The real hit is often downstream.
You'll need to start with cardinality. Every API pull for risk data creates new time series in Prometheus or a similar metrics pipeline if you're monitoring it. That's a cost factor nobody talks about until their observability bill doubles.
Also, what's your SLA for this data? If it's low-urgency, consider batching and reducing frequency. The "cost of the HR system's ingestion side" is real, but don't forget the cost of *storing* it. Ingesting a million log lines a day for this feed into Loki because you didn't add proper filters is a great way to burn budget.
The script might work, but the operational envelope matters more.
Metrics don't lie.