Amazon LightSail: Simple Virtual Private Servers on AWS • Hacker News Board

Re: Amazon LightSail: Simple Virtual Private Servers on AWS

#111

Post by creullin » Wed, Nov 30, 2016, 5:37 PM UTC

Someone1234 wrote: post #3

Just to be clear: This service is offered by Amazon/AWS themselves, it isn't a third party. That's a question I had when I first clicked, which is why I am answering it here. One big "gotcha" for AWS newbies which I cannot tell if this addresses: Does this set or allow the user to set a cost ceiling? AWS have offered billing alerts since forever. They'll also occasionally refund unexpected expenses (one time thing).…

They say on the FAQ:

>For every Lightsail plan you use, we charge you the fixed hourly price, up to the maximum monthly plan cost.

Wording implies the monthly pricing is a 'maximum' price.

Re: Amazon LightSail: Simple Virtual Private Servers on AWS

#112

Post by blhack » Wed, Nov 30, 2016, 5:38 PM UTC

Someone1234 wrote: post #3

Just to be clear: This service is offered by Amazon/AWS themselves, it isn't a third party. That's a question I had when I first clicked, which is why I am answering it here. One big "gotcha" for AWS newbies which I cannot tell if this addresses: Does this set or allow the user to set a cost ceiling? AWS have offered billing alerts since forever. They'll also occasionally refund unexpected expenses (one time thing).…

This is exactly it. 5-6 years ago (I think), I signed up for an aws account under the "free" or educational or something tier. AWS was newish at the time, and I wanted to learn about it.

Via some accidental clicking in the control panel (trying to get an IP address for the instance, I think?) I ended up getting a bill from them for over $100. Which, to me at the time, was a huge amount of money.

It put me off of AWS forever. I don't ever want something that tells me how much they're going to charge me after I have already given them my credit card information.

edit: they did credit me back when I complained, but that doesn't matter. The risk to me wasn't/isn't worth it.

Re: Amazon LightSail: Simple Virtual Private Servers on AWS

#113

Post by fabian2k » Wed, Nov 30, 2016, 5:39 PM UTC

creullin wrote: post #111

Someone1234 wrote: post #3

Just to be clear: This service is offered by Amazon/AWS themselves, it isn't a third party. That's a question I had when I first clicked, which is why I am answering it here. One big "gotcha" for AWS newbies which I cannot tell if this addresses: Does this set or allow the user to set a cost ceiling? AWS have offered billing alerts since forever. They'll also occasionally refund unexpected expenses (one time thing).…

They say on the FAQ: >For every Lightsail plan you use, we charge you the fixed hourly price, up to the maximum monthly plan cost. Wording implies the monthly pricing is a 'maximum' price.

Traffic is the big item that can add additional charges:

> Data transfer overages above the free allowance are charged at $0.09/GB.

On the $5 instance the second TB (at $90) is 18 times as expensive as the instance itself with the first TB included.

Re: Amazon LightSail: Simple Virtual Private Servers on AWS

#114

Post by zzzcpan » Wed, Nov 30, 2016, 5:40 PM UTC

2bluesc wrote: post #57

Price breakdown vs DigitalOcean, VULTR and Linode. Of course all things are not equal (i.e. CPUs, SSDs, bandwidth, etc). Provider: RAM, CPU Cores, Storage, Transfer ---------- $5/mo LightSail: 512MB, 1, 20GB SSD, 1TB DO: 512MB, 1, 20GB SSD, 1TB VULTR: 768MB, 1, 15GB SSD, 1TB ---------- $10/mo LightSail: 1GB, 1, 30GB SSD, 2TB DO: 1GB, 1, 30GB SSD, 2TB VULTR: 1GB, 1, 20GB SSD, 2TB Linode: 2GB, 1, 24GB SSD, 2TB --------…

Curious, why don't you compare with known "non-cloud" hosting companies too, that provide vps services, like ovh, hetzner, leaseweb, etc.?

EDIT: Anyone cares to explain his reasons behind a downvote?

Re: Amazon LightSail: Simple Virtual Private Servers on AWS

#115

Post by falcolas » Wed, Nov 30, 2016, 5:40 PM UTC

creullin wrote: post #111

Someone1234 wrote: post #3

Just to be clear: This service is offered by Amazon/AWS themselves, it isn't a third party. That's a question I had when I first clicked, which is why I am answering it here. One big "gotcha" for AWS newbies which I cannot tell if this addresses: Does this set or allow the user to set a cost ceiling? AWS have offered billing alerts since forever. They'll also occasionally refund unexpected expenses (one time thing).…

They say on the FAQ: >For every Lightsail plan you use, we charge you the fixed hourly price, up to the maximum monthly plan cost. Wording implies the monthly pricing is a 'maximum' price.

It's not; there are additional possible outbound bandwidth overage costs, and they are not insignificant.

Re: Amazon LightSail: Simple Virtual Private Servers on AWS

#116

Post by bradyd » Wed, Nov 30, 2016, 5:40 PM UTC

AtheistOfFail wrote: post #23

elevensies wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the landing page they say there will be overages for excess data transfer. In terms of how it is different, I think a lot of people here have probably been using AWS for 5+ years and the jargon etc. is familiar, and we can calculate the price and understand what it is, but for people who are just getting started this will be a product that is directly comparable to i.e. Digital Ocean and can serve as a gateway dru…

That's how they get people on Glacier storage. The storage is cheap as balls but the transfer can fuck you.

They changed the way Glacier retrieval costs work a little over a week ago to help address this.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10230937

Re: Amazon LightSail: Simple Virtual Private Servers on AWS

#117

Post by pesfandiar » Wed, Nov 30, 2016, 5:40 PM UTC

tyingq wrote: post #100

I can almost feel the pucker over at DigitalOcean, Linode, etc. It may not be a better product, but that doesn't necessarily matter, given the brand power.

Agreed. Everything else equal, I'd personally go with the more stable IaaS provider as opposed to fringe ones that can go out of business or be acquired out of existence.

Re: Amazon LightSail: Simple Virtual Private Servers on AWS

#118

Post by ghaff » Wed, Nov 30, 2016, 5:40 PM UTC

regularfry wrote: post #52

Veen wrote: post #36

I think a million VPS hosting companies just cried out in terror. The major reason to use a VPS host instead of AWS is that AWS is complicated. This seems to be just as simple as DO or a million other VPS hosts, with the added benefit that it's easy to hook up to Amazon's other services if you need to.

Smaller hosts will make a decent margin on managed services. That's just not a game Amazon want to get into.

There's a lot of managed services on AWS and it's growing rapidly. But they're delivered through partners, not AWS directly. I didn't write down the numbers from this segment of the Re:Invent Global Partner keynote yesterday but, as I recall, "next generation managed service providers" was highlighted as a big growth opportunity.

Re: Amazon LightSail: Simple Virtual Private Servers on AWS

#119

Post by Someone1234 » Wed, Nov 30, 2016, 5:41 PM UTC

creullin wrote: post #111

Someone1234 wrote: post #3

Just to be clear: This service is offered by Amazon/AWS themselves, it isn't a third party. That's a question I had when I first clicked, which is why I am answering it here. One big "gotcha" for AWS newbies which I cannot tell if this addresses: Does this set or allow the user to set a cost ceiling? AWS have offered billing alerts since forever. They'll also occasionally refund unexpected expenses (one time thing).…

They say on the FAQ: >For every Lightsail plan you use, we charge you the fixed hourly price, up to the maximum monthly plan cost. Wording implies the monthly pricing is a 'maximum' price.

That's just referring to the VPS itself. If you keep reading the FAQ you'll see that there are ways to exceed that amount.

Plus there's nothing stopping someone breaking into your account and upgrading it in all kinds of evil ways (which has been a huge hassle with AWS tokens being stolen from e.g. Github).

Re: Amazon LightSail: Simple Virtual Private Servers on AWS

#120

Post by blhack » Wed, Nov 30, 2016, 5:41 PM UTC

ajkjk wrote: post #25

I'm amused by the model they have in their banner: a bearded, tattooed man wearing what appears to be a .. cape? We've come a long way since the stock photos of 'smiling super-normal people wearing ties, huddled around a computer'.

s/rockstar/superhero/g