The pricing/specs are suspiciously very similar to one of the largest VPS provider.
Amazon LightSail: Simple Virtual Private Servers on AWS
471–480 of 631 posts
Re: Amazon LightSail: Simple Virtual Private Servers on AWS
#472Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yep. I had a personal $400 learning experience with Amazon. They did refund it. My last company had a low-5-figure surprise a few years ago. Some of that could be considered their fault (alerts were sent to someone on vacation), but again, the refusal to allow the option of a "hit a limit, pull the plug" option is what causes this.
Of course, there's also the opposite scenario "So here we were, having the best sales day in our history, and suddenly Amazon pulled the plug on our servers because we went over our authorized limit! We lost 5-figures of sales that day. Sure, they sent us warnings, but the alerts went to someone on vacation... but why wouldn't they let us exceed the limit for a bit before they pull the plug"
nobody says that the hard limit should be there for everybody, but I SHOULD be able to hit a checkbox that says "no matter what happens, runaway CPU, somebody DDOSing me with traffic, runaway disk, I do not want to be responsible for more than $x/month"
Personally this is the main reason why I have never considered using AWS for my small projects, but maybe this is an intentional choice by Amazon, to keep away "hobbyists" and only go after companies where an extra $1k in AWS bills this month is just a blip on the radar...
Re: Amazon LightSail: Simple Virtual Private Servers on AWS
#473http://imgur.com/4iGafDz
hardly
Re: Amazon LightSail: Simple Virtual Private Servers on AWS
#474What is this service? I can't figure out how different it is from Linux on EC2.
Re: Amazon LightSail: Simple Virtual Private Servers on AWS
#475Earlier quoted context omitted.
How many instances did you have at the time you received the email? Usually, when I receive an email like this, the amount is equal to the monthly bill of the instances I have active at the moment.
Yes, but it's still stupid. Cloud hosting companies who are using hourly billing are used to spin instances up and down all the time. Imagine your app has a busy day and you need 500% more resources than usual, with the system of Vultr you will be automatically charged 500% of your regular usage only because of one days spike (obviously only if you are near the $0 balance mark)
> you will be automatically charged 500% of your regular usage
You are not being "charged" per se. The amount is transferred to your account and is there as credit until you spend it.
Sorry for nitpicking, but it is important point.
Re: Amazon LightSail: Simple Virtual Private Servers on AWS
#476Earlier quoted context omitted.
How many instances did you have at the time you received the email? Usually, when I receive an email like this, the amount is equal to the monthly bill of the instances I have active at the moment.
I had one $5 instance, which is what made this seem ridiculous
Yep, it is insane if you only had 1 $5 instance.
Maybe a bug in their billing software or something...
Re: Amazon LightSail: Simple Virtual Private Servers on AWS
#477Just 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).…
Thanks, that's exactly what I was wondering. This makes LightSail a non-starter for little guys like me; I'll stick with Vultr for similar service that charges the actual price listed with no gotchas.
Re: Amazon LightSail: Simple Virtual Private Servers on AWS
#478Earlier quoted context omitted.
From https://amazonlightsail.com/docs/ > Data transfer OUT from a Lightsail instance to another Lightsail instance or AWS resource is also free while the private IP address of the instance is used. It could even be worth it to set Lightsail up as reverse proxy and profit off of very cheap(for AWS) traffic e.g. for S3. I can't really believe they would allow this. Am I missing something?
my thought exactly.... set up a cluster of reverse proxies on lightsail in front of your web tier in the real aws account (making sure to reverse proxy over private IPs, assuming that's possible), build some automation to replace lightsail instances when they get to their bandwidth quota.... profit?
> If you delete your instance early and create another one, the free data transfer allowance is shared between the two instances. Data transfer overages above the free allowance are charged at $0.09/GB.
I think you would still be charged. I think it would just be better to upgrade.
Re: Amazon LightSail: Simple Virtual Private Servers on AWS
#479Re: Amazon LightSail: Simple Virtual Private Servers on AWS
#480Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes, but it's still stupid. Cloud hosting companies who are using hourly billing are used to spin instances up and down all the time. Imagine your app has a busy day and you need 500% more resources than usual, with the system of Vultr you will be automatically charged 500% of your regular usage only because of one days spike (obviously only if you are near the $0 balance mark)
> you will be automatically charged 500% of your regular usage You are not being "charged" per se. The amount is transferred to your account and is there as credit until you spend it. Sorry for nitpicking, but it is important point.
I'm going to nitpick in reverse.
You are being _charged_
- This is a charge against your card
- They are not a bank, so the money in your "account" with them is just an unsecured, general liability to you. If they go bust, they owe you money but you will never see it.
- If you want to withdraw that money from your "account" and they refuse, then your options are pretty limited.
Once they take it from your payment method, it becomes their money, not yours. That's a charge.