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Effectively using AWS Reserved Instances

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Re: Effectively using AWS Reserved Instances

#111

Post by cthalupa »

stephengillie wrote: post #107
cthalupa wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm really confused as to what you're trying to say. AWS has been very open over the years about what their terminology means. When they say datacenter, they mean it in the traditional sense of the word. When they say an AZ is made up of at least one but sometimes multiple datacenters, they mean that that an AZ has multiple physical datacenters. They're not slicing up a server room and calling these multiple datacent…

The confusion is entirely mine. Your clarity is appreciated.

You're welcome!

My apologies if I came across as combative.

Re: Effectively using AWS Reserved Instances

#112

Post by kakwa_ »

not_kurt_godel wrote: post #91
kakwa_ wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How many organizations have the millions of dollars of capex needed to get that off the ground and keep it all running? I think you are exaggerating when talking about "millions". Companies running in old school DC will not build the actual DC. They will rent a 42U cabinet or part of it. You can typically rent 1/4 of a cabinet for a few hundred bucks a month. I you operate at a small scale, you typically don't have…

What kind of specs are you getting for that kind of money? Just played around with AWS pricing calculator and honestly it seems like EC2 is even more cost-effective than I thought, depending on specs... Edit: Try using https://awstcocalculator.com and see what it claims your savings would be (I'm curious how accurate it is)

Doing a quick check with Dell customization. For 6000$ I can get:

CPU: AMD EPYC 7351P (AMD EPYC™ 7351P 2.4GHz/2.9GHz, 16C/32T,

64M Cache (155W/170W) DDR4-2400/2666)

RAM: 64GB

Storage: 2x 800GB NVMe drives

+ dual power suply + Rails with cable management + 5 years support

Over 5 years, it's 6000 / 12 * 5 = 100$ per month.

Something comparable like an i3.2xlarge (less CPUs but more storage) is at 455.52$ per month On Demand price.

3 years full upfront, it's at 192.72$, better but still more expensive.

And i3 are less convenient than your server because they can go down at anytime. This means loosing the local NVMe storage you have to come up with a mix of EBS volume+local NVMe if you want some persistencies, or heavy clustering where loosing a node is not a big deal.

AWS is really expensive if you are using it wrong. And a lot of us are using it wrong ('"move to the cloud" says management' mode). Using it right is quite difficult in fact, it requires a lot of engineering complexity to be resilient when AWS chose to shot the hypervisor under your feet. And truly leveraging the elasticity provided by things like AutoScaling groups or Lambdas, specially at the storage layer, is far from simple. I've seen instance where attempts to build "SERVICE THAT SCALE" ended-up being even worst than in term of costs.

This has been my experience being part of a team managing a large mixed deployment with ~5000 EC2 instances on one side, and, on the other 300 physical servers, each handling ~10 LXC containers in legacy DCs.

Where AWS shines is the fact you get a lot of flexibility. Need more capacity? increase the instance size and you are good to go. Need to create 300 ELB in a rush with some DNS records? it's done in 1 or 2 hours and 80 lines of boto. That level of instrumentation is not maintainable by any companies except Cloud providers and the biggest internet actors.

But if your load is fairly static and/or predictable, if you have the capital to buy the servers upfront, if your customer base is fairly localized, if you can manage the added complexity of having to do some capacity planing and hardware inventorying once or twice a year, then legacy DCs are still cheaper but I know and understand it's a lot of IFs.

Re: Effectively using AWS Reserved Instances

#113

Post by apple4ever »

kakwa_ wrote: post #112
not_kurt_godel wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What kind of specs are you getting for that kind of money? Just played around with AWS pricing calculator and honestly it seems like EC2 is even more cost-effective than I thought, depending on specs... Edit: Try using https://awstcocalculator.com and see what it claims your savings would be (I'm curious how accurate it is)

Doing a quick check with Dell customization. For 6000$ I can get: CPU: AMD EPYC 7351P (AMD EPYC™ 7351P 2.4GHz/2.9GHz, 16C/32T, 64M Cache (155W/170W) DDR4-2400/2666) RAM: 64GB Storage: 2x 800GB NVMe drives + dual power suply + Rails with cable management + 5 years support Over 5 years, it's 6000 / 12 * 5 = 100$ per month. Something comparable like an i3.2xlarge (less CPUs but more storage) is at 455.52$ per month On D…

That has exactly been our experience when deciding to go AWS vs self hosted. For our environment, it makes sense for time and money to go self hosted. I get it may be different than others, but not for use.

Re: Effectively using AWS Reserved Instances

#114

Post by [deleted] »

dominias wrote: post #67
hueving wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>This is terrible advice for all but the largest of organizations. Don't start a conversation with an opening generalization like that if you want something constructive. Especially when the rest of your post is clearly based on the single anecdote of your experience. >Running your own hardware is AWFUL. Maybe for you. Not for any sysadmin with even just a couple of years of experience. >patching operating systems We…

You got to accept that building and maintaining data enters are simply an old and obsolete model of doing IT that will eventually go away.

[deleted]

Re: Effectively using AWS Reserved Instances

#115

Post by apple4ever »

mmt wrote: post #83
hueving wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep, these people are called sysadmins. With AWS they are the ones who manage firewall rules, patching, etc on your instances as well as API keys etc. Some people like to call them devops because they didn't realize sysadmins could write scripts. Maintaining 40 racks of hardware takes a surprisingly trivial amount of time aside from regular OS management. The only products that actually eliminate these folks are thin…

> Maintaining 40 racks of hardware takes a surprisingly trivial amount of time aside from regular OS management. I think it's only surprising to people who have been listening to the "it's awful" mythology or believe in a much higher than reality hardware failure rate. I think the worst I've ever seen was with spinning disks from the time of the Thailand flooding, and even those were only 10-15% AFR and only for cert…

The labor of running your own stuff isn't that bad. And the labor of running AWS is at least the same, if not more.

I really don't see how AWS wins in that argument.

Re: Effectively using AWS Reserved Instances

#116

Post by [deleted] »

chillydawg wrote: post #95
njovin wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve gotten proactive emails from our account manager when they release new/cheaper instances and they offer us the option to transition and get a credit for our existing RIs. We aren’t a huge account (less than 30k/month) so I thought this was a nice gesture on Amazon’s part.

AWS probably want the old less power efficient gear out of their DCs as soon as possible.

[deleted]

Re: Effectively using AWS Reserved Instances

#117

Post by joeharris76 »

scrollaway wrote: post #87
njovin wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve gotten proactive emails from our account manager when they release new/cheaper instances and they offer us the option to transition and get a credit for our existing RIs. We aren’t a huge account (less than 30k/month) so I thought this was a nice gesture on Amazon’s part.

Our 15k/month account did not get such an email when they introduced the dc2 redshift class, despite most of our spend being on Redshift.

Recommend checking who the account emails are configured to be sent to. Often they go to a finance person who may not understand the importance of some communications such as this.

Re: Effectively using AWS Reserved Instances

#118

Post by sonnyblarney »

user5994461 wrote: post #110
sonnyblarney wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think this is like gambling. There is a certain amount of clarity or volatility in a system. Volatility will entail cost that will effectively be passed onto the buyer one way or another. Google can be smart about it and try to do some predictions, but ultimately, the customer should in many cases know much more about what their usage patterns will be. This information reduces volatility and therefore cost ..…

It's gambling, the customer loses money when he bets on the wrong instances.

By that definition, all of business is gambling.

Re: Effectively using AWS Reserved Instances

#119

Post by mmt »

apple4ever wrote: post #115
mmt wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Maintaining 40 racks of hardware takes a surprisingly trivial amount of time aside from regular OS management. I think it's only surprising to people who have been listening to the "it's awful" mythology or believe in a much higher than reality hardware failure rate. I think the worst I've ever seen was with spinning disks from the time of the Thailand flooding, and even those were only 10-15% AFR and only for cert…

The labor of running your own stuff isn't that bad. And the labor of running AWS is at least the same, if not more. I really don't see how AWS wins in that argument.

Only when there's no argument in the first place and the decision is already made.

I don't think I've ever seen AWS (or any public cloud) require more labor in terms of hours/persons, but I routinely see it require labor that's more expensive, since we're back to a market where programmers are paid more than sysadmins.

Re: Effectively using AWS Reserved Instances

#120

Post by yladiz »

user5994461 wrote: post #110
sonnyblarney wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think this is like gambling. There is a certain amount of clarity or volatility in a system. Volatility will entail cost that will effectively be passed onto the buyer one way or another. Google can be smart about it and try to do some predictions, but ultimately, the customer should in many cases know much more about what their usage patterns will be. This information reduces volatility and therefore cost ..…

It's gambling, the customer loses money when he bets on the wrong instances.

What is your definition of gambling?
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