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AWS Ground Station

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Re: AWS Ground Station

#181
post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They do have some impressive "I didn't know anyone would need that!" services. I also love this one: https://aws.amazon.com/snowmobile/ > AWS Snowmobile is an Exabyte-scale data transfer service used to move extremely large amounts of data to AWS. You can transfer up to 100PB per Snowmobile, a 45-foot long ruggedized shipping container, pulled by a semi-trailer truck. (...)

Microsoft has a similar service called Databox, wouldn't be surprised if GCS has something like this as well https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/services/databox/

I actually used this personally (Jan 2019)

You'll get supplied (at least) two SSDs.

With instructions for how to use in both Windows and Linux.

Unfortunately even though it was "GA", it appears that they never really actually tested using it in Linux.

I submitted (and they were merged) a number of documentation bugfixes related to Linux.

Two firmware updates later, one bricked disk, one which failed to verify the copied data -- and 9 months of time all down the drain.

This reason is why I will never use Azure. It wasn't the bugs and device failures that was the problem. Just the sheer work in having to teach Azures' support staff about their own product (after fighting to get them to record the support case -- you normally can't raise one if you don't pay).

Why did I pick Azure for this?

Because (at the time) both GCP and AWS catered for 100Gb+ volumes. And we were (and remain) around 50Gb.

I haven't re-evaluated to see if either GCP or AWS have better options now.

Re: AWS Ground Station

#183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Understandable - could I instead strategically rent time slots for when the satellite passes over a certain location? That's not 24/7, but once a day for basic data science is certainly enough.

I'm actually a bit sorry to derail the grandparent (totally fine !) sales process :) but if what you want is daily imagery of a specific place for data science purpose, check out Planet Labs, they do just that !

Thanks for the mention. I can't seem to find any mention of pricing on the Planet Labs website; do you have any idea what it should come out to if I take a picture of a 3x3 mile square every day for a month?

Re: AWS Ground Station

#184
post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why are they so expensive? German electricity is ~2x as expensive as the cheaper US regions.

A lot of the cheap Hetzner boxes are using consumer hardware. The EX line starting at 40€/month are using 6th generation i7 CPUs. The AX line is using 3rd gen Ryzen CPUs. If you want actual server-grade hardware, you'll end up with around 90€/month, other hosters are more expensive. I'd assume this would explain some of the price difference

Maybe. But honestly AMD server HW is <50% more expensive than their non-server hardware. Also their consumer chips do offer ECC support, and you don't need anything else really for those applications.
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