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Show HN: Gridspot, 10x cheaper cloud compute using distributed computing

gridspot.com

121–130 of 156 posts

Re: Show HN: Gridspot, 10x cheaper cloud compute using distributed computing

#121
post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fake it till you make it? I don't know for sure, but could they be subsidising the launch by running instances on EC2? ... When they get enough hosts signed up, switch over to their distributed model, or even run a hybrid combination to handle demand spikes.

Google shows results for "gridspot.exe" on ID-this-process sites dating from mid-March. So it's out there and has been for a few months. The question is whose machines it's running on.

Google also has this link as the #1 link ... well for me anyways.

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20120329124823AA...

It does in bring into question whether or not gridspot.exe was installed nefariously.

Re: Show HN: Gridspot, 10x cheaper cloud compute using distributed computing

#122
post #33

This seems too good to be true, but it's working great for me! With no credit card, I got an instance with 3 GB RAM running in less than 60 seconds. It costs $0.002 per hour. One glitch: Both the UI and the API say there are 2 instances running, but they both have the same IP address and port. If there really are 2 instances, how do I ssh to the second one?

[deleted]

Re: Show HN: Gridspot, 10x cheaper cloud compute using distributed computing

#124

Here's how you sustain this model: package the VM with free software just like the toolbar guys do. You pay the software guys a cut of the profit for every setup they have running (referral fee) and users get a new way to "pay" for software. I like this idea much better than all the spyware/crapware software vendors have to package into their product to earn a living. Consumers don't care about $2/month but a busines…

I disagree. I don't think many companies that have 1000 computers would do this for $2/mo per node. That's like $22,000, also known as a rounding error for those kinds of companies. Besides, those companies tend to frown on these suspect applications.

Re: Show HN: Gridspot, 10x cheaper cloud compute using distributed computing

#125
Facilities management is the worst part of "cloud" services. Getting this outsourced for low/no cost is brilliant. Check out the OnAPP CDN implementation.

Please provide a standardish xen/kvm/vmware/vagrent client image. Being win32 exe only is probably costing you a lot of resource provides (like me). Clients running xen/kvm/vmware are also more likely to be providing higher value resources, like a colo'd host.

Move your API to a different (sub)domain ASAP. At some point you'll need to change your DNS architecture. Having your API tied to your zone apex is going to cause no end of grief. If it's in a (sub)domain you can easily delegate control to another authoritative name server. You might want to use a directional DNS product, CNAME to another resource, add another product api, add another API endpoint, etc.

Provide some sort of initialization hook. Every node I launch should be able to auto configure my stack without a "push" action, ssh or otherwise. I much prefer when each node can bootstrap and poll my instance/config management stack. For example EC2 provides this functionality through the UserData param of RunInstances.

"Sign in" doesn't have an option or link to "Sign up". From the docs I had to go back to the home page to find the sign up.

Support payment other than credit card. Paypal etc is nice in that I can create a balance without extending as much trust to an unknown party.

Don't get suckered in to providing 1:1 IPv4 with your proxy model. If the product's successful you'll quickly discover that even a /16 is expensive/unpossible. A 1:1 mapping with IPv6 is operationally plausible. As a bonus you'll get PR for a "shiny" feature.

Stay away domU egressing through the dom0 IPv4 for now. I guarantee you'll attract bad actors. A chinese gambling/porn site hosted on those domUs is going get DDOS'd all the little long day. If that takes out the dom0 internet connectivity you'll have a revenue generating customer who's upset.

Terminate long running domU instances. You can use this to shape customer expectations about the ephemeral nature of your product. Expose this to the instance owner the same way as a dom0 going offline. Try something like max(mean dom0 availability || 12 hours) + weighted random to get each domUs lifetime.

Provide a way to request & inspect network locality or latency. Three use case here I think. 1) Launch instances near $foo. Get decreased latency to a centralized endpoint, like a scheduler. 2) What is the location of $instance. I can determine the nearest S3 region for faster GET/PUTs. 3) Launch instances within $n ms of each other. If instances have shared state or messages during compute phase this can increase throughput

Re: Show HN: Gridspot, 10x cheaper cloud compute using distributed computing

#127
post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a surprising behavioral economics result that says people will do things for free that they won't do for small amounts of money. A check in the mail for a dollar or two every month isn't as compelling as being part of a group effort. And empirically, it seems to be working. The number of contributing machines is currently in the six figures. The main risk right now is on the demand side, i.e. whether or not p…

Your "giving back" paragraph about what motivates your users is completely dishonest. You know your users are clueless and installed your client because it was bundled with an application they actually wanted to use.

Care to elaborate? What programs bundle this?

Re: Show HN: Gridspot, 10x cheaper cloud compute using distributed computing

#130
post #70
post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

reminds me of skype, but the differnce is that with skype I only want one good connection, so find the best one through the forest... but this one?

The difference is that most Skype users don't even know they are carrying traffic for the network. The client silently punches a whole in their router and makes itself a pain to close (for example by reconfiguring what the red X does) without ever explaining why it wants to keep running so badly.

My understanding is that after MSFT acquisition, they don't use their customer devices as supernodes anymore [1]. For "silent hole punching" with UPnP, that is very much business as usual for any VoIP application as well as other applications, such as Windows' Teredo IPv6 thingy.

[1]: Ars Technica seems to confirm: http://arstechnica.com/business/2012/05/skype-replaces-p2p-s...

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