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EC2 Price Reduction (C4, M4, and T2 Instances)

aws.amazon.com

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Re: EC2 Price Reduction (C4, M4, and T2 Instances)

#11

Post by 0xmohit »

matt4077 wrote: post #7
codecamper wrote: post #3

Has anyone switched to Google cloud & found it cheaper overall? It seems like there was a lot of interest in Google before but not so much as of late.

I'm very happy with them and believe it is cheaper, although it's hard to compare considering the explosion of services on both platforms. I initially chose them because I/O performance on gce was ahead by about factor 10 (may have been workload-specific, may have changed – this was about a year ago, may only apply to the smaller machine types with SSD I tested). I've also had a much easier time getting started, but…

  their lack of sweatshop-warehouses
You are now hitting below the belt.

Re: EC2 Price Reduction (C4, M4, and T2 Instances)

#12

Post by rubber_duck »

elcct wrote: post #6

Software for bare metal is catching up - you can buy couple of dedicated servers, install something like Kubernetes and will be shaking your head in disbelief how much you over paid for AWS.

>you can buy couple of dedicated servers

You can rent them too, like here : https://www.hetzner.de/us/hosting/ (not affiliated, would like to know of other decent hosts too) - I think this is the best of both worlds (don't need to deal with HW, getting bare mettal perf and reasonable prices)

Re: EC2 Price Reduction (C4, M4, and T2 Instances)

#13

Post by TheHydroImpulse »

elcct wrote: post #6

Software for bare metal is catching up - you can buy couple of dedicated servers, install something like Kubernetes and will be shaking your head in disbelief how much you over paid for AWS.

Until you need to add another server, or 10 or 100... Not to mention it's another set of skills you need to have. It's a tradeoff. (I'm not talking about "we may need 100 servers next year because we'll have all this traction by then" -- I'm talking about "our load is growing at 1.5x every month or next month we need X capacity")

I just finished booting up two new clusters with 5 and 15 nodes, respectively and cycled them a couple of times after making changes to the AMI. The clusters are in ASGs and will scale based on resource usage. I can't do that with bare metal.

Re: EC2 Price Reduction (C4, M4, and T2 Instances)

#14

Post by windowsworkstoo »

TheHydroImpulse wrote: post #13
elcct wrote: post #6

Software for bare metal is catching up - you can buy couple of dedicated servers, install something like Kubernetes and will be shaking your head in disbelief how much you over paid for AWS.

Until you need to add another server, or 10 or 100... Not to mention it's another set of skills you need to have. It's a tradeoff. (I'm not talking about "we may need 100 servers next year because we'll have all this traction by then" -- I'm talking about "our load is growing at 1.5x every month or next month we need X capacity") I just finished booting up two new clusters with 5 and 15 nodes, respectively and cycled…

This argument always comes out when someone points out how much bare metal stomps AWS. Here are some counterpoints

a) A large portion of AWS hosted stuff probably doesnt need that level of sudden, burst scaling

b) With something like SoftLayer/IBM you can scale physical servers, usually within 30 - 60 minutes

c) If your burst scaling requirement are temporary, if you are located in a decent DC, you can probably spin up some infra in AWS and access your physical stuff over a private network connection and get the best of both worlds.

As always, use what's best for your environment.

Re: EC2 Price Reduction (C4, M4, and T2 Instances)

#15

Post by dx034 »

TheHydroImpulse wrote: post #13
elcct wrote: post #6

Software for bare metal is catching up - you can buy couple of dedicated servers, install something like Kubernetes and will be shaking your head in disbelief how much you over paid for AWS.

Until you need to add another server, or 10 or 100... Not to mention it's another set of skills you need to have. It's a tradeoff. (I'm not talking about "we may need 100 servers next year because we'll have all this traction by then" -- I'm talking about "our load is growing at 1.5x every month or next month we need X capacity") I just finished booting up two new clusters with 5 and 15 nodes, respectively and cycled…

Most startups hope that they'll suddenly need to increase capacity by 100x, but it nearly never happens. Most vendors can provide dedicated servers within a few minutes (if you don't order too many at once), so scaling is still possible in the vast majority of cases.

Even if you always have to scale up for 1-2 hours per day, using dedicated hardware that's idle the rest of the day is probably cheaper in most cases.

Re: EC2 Price Reduction (C4, M4, and T2 Instances)

#17

Post by matt4077 »

0xmohit wrote: post #11
matt4077 wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm very happy with them and believe it is cheaper, although it's hard to compare considering the explosion of services on both platforms. I initially chose them because I/O performance on gce was ahead by about factor 10 (may have been workload-specific, may have changed – this was about a year ago, may only apply to the smaller machine types with SSD I tested). I've also had a much easier time getting started, but…

their lack of sweatshop-warehouses You are now hitting below the belt.

I admit writing that – if I were at Amazon – I'd spend the rest of the week making sure every future package to "that unfair guy on the internet" gets thrown against the wall an extra four times :)

And, more seriously, I didn't want to imply that Amazon deserves any hate – they're probably a net positive for the world. And Google is no saint. Just that, on balance, I'm still more inclined to be loyal to the latter.

Re: EC2 Price Reduction (C4, M4, and T2 Instances)

#18

Post by dx034 »

rubber_duck wrote: post #12
elcct wrote: post #6

Software for bare metal is catching up - you can buy couple of dedicated servers, install something like Kubernetes and will be shaking your head in disbelief how much you over paid for AWS.

>you can buy couple of dedicated servers You can rent them too, like here : https://www.hetzner.de/us/hosting/ (not affiliated, would like to know of other decent hosts too) - I think this is the best of both worlds (don't need to deal with HW, getting bare mettal perf and reasonable prices)

OVH is another decent host at similar prices. They have a larger range of servers and more datacenters, but are slightly more expensive. But they also offer renting older servers at kimsufi (similar to Hetzner's server bidding).

Re: EC2 Price Reduction (C4, M4, and T2 Instances)

#19

Post by elcct »

rubber_duck wrote: post #12
elcct wrote: post #6

Software for bare metal is catching up - you can buy couple of dedicated servers, install something like Kubernetes and will be shaking your head in disbelief how much you over paid for AWS.

>you can buy couple of dedicated servers You can rent them too, like here : https://www.hetzner.de/us/hosting/ (not affiliated, would like to know of other decent hosts too) - I think this is the best of both worlds (don't need to deal with HW, getting bare mettal perf and reasonable prices)

I actually meant renting - thanks for pointing that out.

Re: EC2 Price Reduction (C4, M4, and T2 Instances)

#20

Post by elcct »

dx034 wrote: post #15
TheHydroImpulse wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Until you need to add another server, or 10 or 100... Not to mention it's another set of skills you need to have. It's a tradeoff. (I'm not talking about "we may need 100 servers next year because we'll have all this traction by then" -- I'm talking about "our load is growing at 1.5x every month or next month we need X capacity") I just finished booting up two new clusters with 5 and 15 nodes, respectively and cycled…

Most startups hope that they'll suddenly need to increase capacity by 100x, but it nearly never happens. Most vendors can provide dedicated servers within a few minutes (if you don't order too many at once), so scaling is still possible in the vast majority of cases. Even if you always have to scale up for 1-2 hours per day, using dedicated hardware that's idle the rest of the day is probably cheaper in most cases.

You can also rent VPS servers that are still cheaper than AWS temporarily and add them to the cluster whilst waiting for dedicated hardware.
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