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

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151–156 of 156 posts

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

#151

We're about to launch a service that allows comparison of benchmarks from cloud providers (UnixBench/IO & BW), would love to run it on your plans to compare against Amazon etc. http://serverbear.com/benchmarks

They’re not EC2 alternative. Benchmarking GridSpot makes absolutely no sense.

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

#152
post #97

What happens when the contributor abruptly cuts out?

I'm also curious, what happens if all your host contributors decided to stop?

Have fallback to EC2 if GridSpot can’t provide capacity you need at the moment. The same is true for any other cloud service, actually. E.g. Amazon was having problems issuing new instances in some regions following the most recent power outage. In theory you should try falling back to other regions/other clouds. It remains to be seen how much of a problem this will be in practice.

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

#153
post #144

What kind of tools are on the VM ? Do I get gcc and some python installation, for example ? I would imagine that I would have to reinstall my tools whenever a new instance starts.

It seems to be vanilla Ubuntu 11.10 server. And yes, you’d use something like puppet[1].

[1] http://puppetlabs.com/

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

#154
post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you pay for everything else online? Do you mail Amazon checks or something?

I use pay-pal or debit card, if I actually buy something online. Credit-card culture isn't so great where I live, and I personally don't have one - hence the question.

AFAIK, credit cards are just debit cards using credit instead of balance. You need to have CVV2 for online processing, that’s it.

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

#155
post #150

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…

They'd have to download your custom image, probably hundred of megabytes or gigabytes, each time upon starting new instance. This makes no sense on WAN. It’s much better for both contributors (less stuff to download) and clients (less time wasted waiting) to only download your application stack. It’s not EC2 alternative, this is a different kind of service.

I think you miss my point. Currently (AFAIK) the provider/dom0 must download and run a windows executable. Many people have no windows hosts, but do have existing xen/kvm dom0s running. If grid spot provided their service as a xen/kvm client image I would be able to host it.

There's no requirement for the host to download the client image multiple times. I'd imagine you have something like ephemeral domu disk and use kmods to provide a control plane and network tunnel.

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

#156
post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They'd have to download your custom image, probably hundred of megabytes or gigabytes, each time upon starting new instance. This makes no sense on WAN. It’s much better for both contributors (less stuff to download) and clients (less time wasted waiting) to only download your application stack. It’s not EC2 alternative, this is a different kind of service.

I think you miss my point. Currently (AFAIK) the provider/dom0 must download and run a windows executable. Many people have no windows hosts, but do have existing xen/kvm dom0s running. If grid spot provided their service as a xen/kvm client image I would be able to host it. There's no requirement for the host to download the client image multiple times. I'd imagine you have something like ephemeral domu disk and use…

> Many people have no windows hosts, but do have existing xen/kvm dom0s running. If grid spot provided their service as a xen/kvm client image I would be able to host it.

They should provide their image instead of the binary. Theirs, rather than their clients. Got you know!

But I don’t think their audience will have much use for it. Well it’s unlikely to be a priority, anyway.

> Don't get suckered in to providing 1:1 IPv4 with your proxy model.

BTW, he doesn’t. It’s all proxied through single IP on different ports. E.g. this is what I got:

    ssh gridspot_user@69.4.239.76 -p 25502
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