Really welcome, although per millisecond would be better. It's now possible to boot operating systems in milliseconds and have them carry out a task (for example respond to a web request) and disappear again. Trouble is the clouds (AWS, Google, Azure, Digital Ocean) do not have the ability to support such fast OS boot times. Per second billing is a step in the right direction but needs to go further to millisecond bi…
Just curious here, what OS can do millisecond boot times? How many milliseconds are you talking? And the constant boot time of the OS is so much less than the OS responding to the web request that this is actually worth it?
AWS announces per-second billing for EC2 instances
21–30 of 149 posts
Re: AWS announces per-second billing for EC2 instances
#22Really welcome, although per millisecond would be better. It's now possible to boot operating systems in milliseconds and have them carry out a task (for example respond to a web request) and disappear again. Trouble is the clouds (AWS, Google, Azure, Digital Ocean) do not have the ability to support such fast OS boot times. Per second billing is a step in the right direction but needs to go further to millisecond bi…
If you're concerned about cost, AWS is almost never the right place to host to begin with.
Re: AWS announces per-second billing for EC2 instances
#23That's sure nice, but I'm waiting for AWS to switch to automatic sustained use discounts [0] like GCP offers. [0]: https://cloud.google.com/compute/docs/sustained-use-discount...
I'm waiting for GCP to support preemptible GPU instances. Would love to be able to spend ~50% less on GPU instances when running a batch job that can be stopped and reloaded.
Re: AWS announces per-second billing for EC2 instances
#24Really welcome, although per millisecond would be better. It's now possible to boot operating systems in milliseconds and have them carry out a task (for example respond to a web request) and disappear again. Trouble is the clouds (AWS, Google, Azure, Digital Ocean) do not have the ability to support such fast OS boot times. Per second billing is a step in the right direction but needs to go further to millisecond bi…
If you're concerned about cost, AWS is almost never the right place to host to begin with.
Agreed - just check cloud comparison, AWS is rarely at the top: https://www.cloudorado.com/cloud_server_comparison.jsp
Re: AWS announces per-second billing for EC2 instances
#25Really welcome, although per millisecond would be better. It's now possible to boot operating systems in milliseconds and have them carry out a task (for example respond to a web request) and disappear again. Trouble is the clouds (AWS, Google, Azure, Digital Ocean) do not have the ability to support such fast OS boot times. Per second billing is a step in the right direction but needs to go further to millisecond bi…
Sounds like you're describing AWS Lambda / serverless architecture. But maybe I'm not understanding your use case?
There are a wide range of tiny operating systems that can boot in a matter of milliseconds.
The applications are "whatever you want imagine" but yes one application is building FAAS Function As A Service in which the operating system carries out a single function.
Put anther way, Docker is complex, overweight, and requires re-implementation of much computing infrastructure. You can meet many of the same goals as Docker in much more simple way not by building containers but by building tiny operating systems.
Re: AWS announces per-second billing for EC2 instances
#26Likely due to GCP competition. I believe GCP was always per-second? [Edit: Misremember that, they were always per-minute. Lots of good information below directly form the related parties.] Azure looks to be per-hour [Edit: Wrong again, they are per-minute as well. Oddly enough, I did check their pricing page before, but missed the per-minute paragraph and only saw the hourly pricing] but I'm seeing something about co…
GCP VMs are per-minute, with a minimum of 10 minutes (vs AWS' new minimum of 1 minute). Second resolution is nice, but I doubt it makes much difference in pricing for most workloads. https://cloud.google.com/compute/pricing#billingmodel Azure's containers don't use a full VM-- they're more like AWS Lambda or other serverless frameworks, so they do per-second billing with no minimums. Disclaimer: I work at Google on C…
I would disagree on no minimums and equivalency to lambda et al, as azure container instances charge a create fee (iirc its equivalent to 100 seconds of their minimum configuration) which sits on top of the per-second billing.
Re: AWS announces per-second billing for EC2 instances
#27Really welcome, although per millisecond would be better. It's now possible to boot operating systems in milliseconds and have them carry out a task (for example respond to a web request) and disappear again. Trouble is the clouds (AWS, Google, Azure, Digital Ocean) do not have the ability to support such fast OS boot times. Per second billing is a step in the right direction but needs to go further to millisecond bi…
If you're concerned about cost, AWS is almost never the right place to host to begin with.
You miss the point.
The lifetime of a web request, for example, can be measured in milliseconds.
It is now possible, technically anyway, for operating systems to boot, service the request and disappear.
There needs to be pricing models that reflect computing models like this.
Re: AWS announces per-second billing for EC2 instances
#28Earlier quoted context omitted.
Just curious here, what OS can do millisecond boot times? How many milliseconds are you talking? And the constant boot time of the OS is so much less than the OS responding to the web request that this is actually worth it?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unikernel
Intersting. There's a link to here on the Wikipedia page:
http://zerg.erlangonxen.org/
But if I'm reading things correctly, it still took over two orders of magnitude longer to boot than it did to reply. So what sort of use case does millisecond boot help with? Very sporadic requests?
Re: AWS announces per-second billing for EC2 instances
#29Earlier quoted context omitted.
Just curious here, what OS can do millisecond boot times? How many milliseconds are you talking? And the constant boot time of the OS is so much less than the OS responding to the web request that this is actually worth it?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unikernel
Cold EBS boot will still be super slow...
Re: AWS announces per-second billing for EC2 instances
#30Likely due to GCP competition. I believe GCP was always per-second? [Edit: Misremember that, they were always per-minute. Lots of good information below directly form the related parties.] Azure looks to be per-hour [Edit: Wrong again, they are per-minute as well. Oddly enough, I did check their pricing page before, but missed the per-minute paragraph and only saw the hourly pricing] but I'm seeing something about co…
GCP VMs are per-minute, with a minimum of 10 minutes (vs AWS' new minimum of 1 minute). Second resolution is nice, but I doubt it makes much difference in pricing for most workloads. https://cloud.google.com/compute/pricing#billingmodel Azure's containers don't use a full VM-- they're more like AWS Lambda or other serverless frameworks, so they do per-second billing with no minimums. Disclaimer: I work at Google on C…
The minimum of 1 minute makes a difference... Granted 10min is not that much of a problem :)