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Comparing Bandwidth Costs of Amazon, Google and Microsoft Cloud Computing

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Re: Comparing Bandwidth Costs of Amazon, Google and Microsoft Cloud Computing

#221

Post by garyclarke27 »

slackingoff2017 wrote: post #190
mbesto wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Before all these cloud providers websites were not noticeably less reliable than they are now. Before all of these providers existed: 1) The volume of internet traffic that exists today didn't exist then. Mobile devices didn't exist. Mobile devices that aren't always connected to the internet and consume hours of our day didn't exist. Large downloads (1GB) didn't exist. They couldn't exist because the infrastructur…

As we've gotten more device computers have gotten more powerful. Server software has gotten better. HTTP has Keepalive and multiplexing now. Encryption and networking are offloaded to hardware and we have a lot more cores. I would guess a single server can handle thousands of times as many users as it could handle years ago. HAProxy, Netty, Nginx, and others can handle over a million (simple) HTTP requests per second…

Thanks for the info very useful, I didn't realise how unreliable AWS is for database servers. You're correct random unannounced shutdowns of db servers is just not acceptable for critical data. I will be launching a new business based on Postgres soon and the thought of this is terrifying. I'm not keen on the RDS type services or CoLo so this is an unexpected problem I need to overcome. Do you know whether VPS provider such as Digital Ocean or CloudSigma would be more reliable?

Re: Comparing Bandwidth Costs of Amazon, Google and Microsoft Cloud Computing

#222

Post by orra »

kyledrake wrote: post #138
Lazare wrote: post #106

Meh. The big cloud platforms offer a rich selection of different offerings, which (just like in every other industry) cross subsidize each other. When I go to a restaurant, I don't expect that they will be making the same profit margin on every item on the final bill, and in fact, they almost never do. Drinks tend to have a very high profit margin, some labour intensive items may be a break even at best, and the comp…

There's a site on Neocities we host for free that would cost $560/mo to host on Amazon's CDN. It costs me less than $5 with my current configuration (which is also a global CDN). It's way over our "soft limit", but it's an awesome site so I don't care. The important part is, I don't have to care. This isn't about slightly more expensive tacos. It's about spending $560 on tacos instead of $5. "Meh" wouldn't exactly be…

I look forward to your promised blog posts on how you've affordably built your scalable infrastructure.

Is the basic principle to use cheap cloud VPSes or dedicated hosting (e.g. of the Digital Ocean, Hetzner, or OVH ilk)? And then you can afford lots of servers, and have then geographically distributed?

Re: Comparing Bandwidth Costs of Amazon, Google and Microsoft Cloud Computing

#223

Post by rdtsc »

MBCook wrote: post #218
rdtsc wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh I believe you. I've heard of it before. Was trying to say that if that's an issue, it should be an HR fix more than an infrastructure fix. But I also imagine often that person also convinced management the are an "11x rockstar programmer"...

They were one of the hardest working people in the company. Partially that's because they worked on nonsense projects they made up, and partially that's because they were always putting out fires caused by the fact they did things poorly in the first place.

That's scares me cause I've seen that bit way too many times. There are huddled over the terminal in the evening as all managers leave "Oh look so and so is working so hard" and I am thinking "they are fixing the bug they put in just last week because they didn't bother testing it enough".

Re: Comparing Bandwidth Costs of Amazon, Google and Microsoft Cloud Computing

#224

Post by wmf »

mmalone wrote: post #33
PedroBatista wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

4 to 5 times more expensive?

I'm not an expert, but it's possible... from what I understand amazon does SDN on CPUs in Dom0, Microsoft uses FPGAs, and Google has burnt their own ASICs... those are all expensive options. Much more expensive than generic networking gear. Possibly 4-5x, but idunno...

Amazon and Google's custom NICs should be no more expensive than standard NICs. Microsoft's FPGA frankenNIC is definitely expensive though.

Still, recouping the cost of the NIC by making internal bandwidth free and Internet transfers really expensive is kind of a weird way to do it.

Re: Comparing Bandwidth Costs of Amazon, Google and Microsoft Cloud Computing

#225

Post by late2part »

meatmanek wrote: post #204
late2part wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An m4.16xl has 8 physical cores; what hypervisor does AWS buy that only has 8 physical cores? My smallest physical servers have 8 physical cores.

An m4.16xl has 32 cores / 64 threads.

okay, my error - thanks!

Re: Comparing Bandwidth Costs of Amazon, Google and Microsoft Cloud Computing

#226

Post by jrochkind1 »

FTA wrote: post #124
jrochkind1 wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The cloud pricing model has, I would say, definitely been set for ecommerce uses, not scientific computing. Ecommerce uses use a lot less data, and if they are using a huge amount of data they are likely to have a corresponding amount of revenue to pay the high prices. Scientific computing -- you've probably got a ton of data, and your 'revenue' from project-based grants doesn't really scale with the amount of data a…

Yeah I suppose my argument is a bit moot given Amazon probably makes plenty of money in the private sector without having to worry about academia. But if they could get the cost down to be on the level of buying and running your own hardware, they could see an emergent market. In fact, the federal government in its current business-oriented mindset may even lean towards a contractor handled machine to replace ones li…

It would make a lot of sense if grants covered such costs, even at current AWS prices.

Currently, I suspect a lot of IT-heavy grant-funded projects are basically relying on university infrastructure being provided without full (or in some cases any) project-based cost recoup, which universities are increasingly loathe to do. The indirect/overhead margin probably doesn't always really cover it. (And it's not like a university is going to let you use 'overhead' dollars for AWS, _even if_ it would actually be a cost savings compared to the local IT you are using instead!)

It's not really rational economic decisions being made all around.

Proper professional IT is expensive. People still think automating is supposed to save them money, but turns out, nope. Many industries are still relying on unprofessionally provided IT instead of paying for professional IT.

Re: Comparing Bandwidth Costs of Amazon, Google and Microsoft Cloud Computing

#227

Post by dbenhur »

mod wrote: post #180
paulddraper wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. Olive Garden is $10 for a pasta plate. I could have bought the ingredients for less than $2. It takes times and skill to turn the ingredients into something useful. Amazon, Google, and Microsoft are IaaS/PaaS, not ISPs.

Want to disrupt the restaurant industry? Sell food at cost! /s

Restaurants operate on pretty thin margins. You're confusing the cost of raw materials with the cost of prepared and served meals.

Re: Comparing Bandwidth Costs of Amazon, Google and Microsoft Cloud Computing

#228

Post by paulddraper »

mattmaroon wrote: post #172
paulddraper wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's the drinks that are expensive, not the tacos. And soda has a 1,150% markup [1], so it actually is like that. [1] http://www.businessinsider.com/products-high-markups-2014-7 P.S. You could host it on Github for even less, if you were really price conscious.

I realize this is far away from the point, but that infographic starts off stupid. Painting has a 6,000% markup? That could only possibly be true if you don't count the painter's time. Just because it's all labor doesn't mean it's high markup; the painter isn't selling you the paint he's selling you the service. And mixed drinks are more like a 4x markup. Lower at the high end even. Not sure where they pulled that nu…

Agreed. 3,900% for snow removal?

Re: Comparing Bandwidth Costs of Amazon, Google and Microsoft Cloud Computing

#229

Post by late2part »

jfoutz wrote: post #207
late2part wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh my goodness man, have you managed Amazon instances? Setting up VPCs, IGW, IAM, DNS, EBS Snapshots (and deletions until recent lifecycle), custom metric in coudwatch, and Security Groups is a seriously challenging task just to learn the basics, much less do it right, much less automate it. It's not a bed of roses in the physical world either, but you're simply wrong to say it's easy in the "Cloud" and hard in a DC/…

(it was a joke.) There are a zillion things to think about if you're going to have even one machine public on the internet, regardless of the hosting solution. At a small organization there's always that one programmer that's like half sysadmin. I find it amusing that people pretend without bare metal, you'll get all of that person's time back.

I missed it. Thanks.

Re: Comparing Bandwidth Costs of Amazon, Google and Microsoft Cloud Computing

#230

Post by MBCook »

rdtsc wrote: post #223
MBCook wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They were one of the hardest working people in the company. Partially that's because they worked on nonsense projects they made up, and partially that's because they were always putting out fires caused by the fact they did things poorly in the first place.

That's scares me cause I've seen that bit way too many times. There are huddled over the terminal in the evening as all managers leave "Oh look so and so is working so hard" and I am thinking "they are fixing the bug they put in just last week because they didn't bother testing it enough".

Tons of that. Each server was a literal copy of a previous one then modified to fit its new role. So we never got two servers that were the same. They'd have extra junk on them too.

Just basic docker use (or something similar) would have made a HUGE difference. Parts of the department were sent to training but it didn't happen because it would have made him less indispensable.

At one point someone higher up (but not high enough) asked how many servers we had in Amazon and the answer like 10x our physical set.

"And only one of you manages them?"

"On the side, we don't usually have to touch them."

"Then why does it take 4 people for the other servers?"

(Collectively) "Yeah. Why IS that?"

Change control was a big problem too. "Random" changes, things that didn't change at all (even when we could prove it), stuff like that causes SO MANY issues, basically all avoidable.

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