Wow. I'm at Rackspace right now, because their prices were better, but this might just have me switch back.<br><br>One of the other benefits that EC2 offers is the high-memory or high-CPU instances. Rackspace just gives you a proportionate amount more RAM, Disk, and CPU in their next-larger instance size. One of the instances I plan on running will be a Memcache server, which I was just going to have co-exists with the file server, but this lets me separate those out. Me likey.<br>
<br><div class="gmail_quote">On Thu, Sep 9, 2010 at 9:40 AM, Matthew Nuzum <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:newz@bearfruit.org">newz@bearfruit.org</a>></span> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); padding-left: 1ex;">
<div class="im">On Thu, Sep 9, 2010 at 9:11 AM, L. V. Lammert <<a href="mailto:lvl@omnitec.net">lvl@omnitec.net</a>> wrote:<br>
</div><div class="im">> At 08:48 AM 9/9/2010, you wrote:<br>
>>EC2 has been a very cheap way to experiment with servers in the past<br>
>>at $0.075 per hour but that ran to $54/mo if you used it full time.<br>
>>This new instance brings the price down to $14 /mo for a full time<br>
>>instance which puts it into the same ballpark as a linode ($20/mo but<br>
>>not an apples to apples comparison).<br>
><br>
> Any feel of how the 'per hour' translates to actual usage? For<br>
> example, does the cost structure actually product no charge when a<br>
> web site is not getting page request? Does a system ever use *more*<br>
> than the .02/hr?<br>
<br>
</div>The fee is per hour that the instance is running. So if it's idle you<br>
get charged. There are no partial hours, so if you use it for 1 min or<br>
42 min or 60 min it's one hour.<br>
<br>
The only additional charges are for bandwidth and storage. Both are<br>
ridiculously cheap. I have a few gigs of data on S3 and my cost is<br>
pennies a month.<br>
<br>
EC2 is not like a normal vps though. There is, by default at least, no<br>
persistent storage. So if you boot it up, install nagios and then shut<br>
it down, when you boot it up again you'll have to install nagios<br>
again. You have to deliberately create persistent storage.<br>
<br>
A common way is to customize your server installation and then create<br>
a snapshot of this and in the future, instead of booting a default<br>
image, boot your snapshot. This uses some of your storage space so if<br>
you have a 2GB snapshot (that's quite big) you'll add $0.30 per month<br>
to your cost. The benefit to this is huge, though. If you have a<br>
website that scales horizontally (i.e. one server can handle 50 users,<br>
two can handle 100 users, three 150 and etc) then you can use EC2 to<br>
automatically spawn additional instances when your main server's load<br>
reach 70% (or whatever) and then automatically shut them down when the<br>
utilization drops. The rule system is quite sophisticated so you have<br>
a lot of flexibility.<br>
<br>
The cost to experiment with these is so piddly that for $5 you can<br>
spend a weekend becoming an expert, or less than $1 to give it a quick<br>
try.<br>
<br>
Here are instructions: <a href="http://www.ubuntu.com/cloud/public/deploy" target="_blank">http://www.ubuntu.com/cloud/public/deploy</a> In<br>
the time it takes to download a CD ISO you could have 10 servers up<br>
and running.<br>
<font color="#888888"><br>
--<br>
</font><div class="im">Matthew Nuzum<br>
newz2000 on freenode, skype, linkedin, <a href="http://identi.ca" target="_blank">identi.ca</a> and twitter<br>
<br>
"Lead, follow or get the hell out of the way." –Robert Nuzum (My dad)<br>
summarizing an old military quote<br>
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