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

Re: Amazon LightSail: Simple Virtual Private Servers on AWS

#81

Post by brandur » Wed, Nov 30, 2016, 5:21 PM UTC

Nice: a much needed simplification of the AWS product surface area. While their plethora of functions and features are tremendously useful for big shops, but are a pretty high bar newer entrants.

Now if they could just get to the point where $5 gets you a running Docker container running on the equivalent of the Lightsail VPS (without setting up the backing EC2 infrastructure like ECS), I suspect that's closer to the platform that many users really want to have ...

Re: Amazon LightSail: Simple Virtual Private Servers on AWS

#82

Post by sidcool » Wed, Nov 30, 2016, 5:22 PM UTC

Noob question. How's this different from an EC2 instance in a VPC?

Re: Amazon LightSail: Simple Virtual Private Servers on AWS

#83

Post by KayL » Wed, Nov 30, 2016, 5:22 PM UTC

kohanz wrote: post #6

How much of a threat is this to Digital Ocean, Linode, and others?

Customers (non-tech guys) trust Amazon more than others.

Re: Amazon LightSail: Simple Virtual Private Servers on AWS

#84

Post by Kephael » Wed, Nov 30, 2016, 5:22 PM UTC

jjawssd wrote: post #8

sheraz wrote: post #4

I have a growing list of cloud / vps providers I like to kick the tires on. I'll be adding this to the list as well.

What are your thoughts on Vultr?

I colocated with a sister company of theirs for a year and a half and I found them to be very reliable. Vultr provides free DDoS protection in their piscataway location but if you do not require that I don't see a reason to use them.

Re: Amazon LightSail: Simple Virtual Private Servers on AWS

#85

Post by danso » Wed, Nov 30, 2016, 5:22 PM UTC

Wow, what perfect timing. I just got approved for AWS Educate and was prepared to do the work to batch auto-provision EC2 instances for my students, but this is much easier to deal with. And at $5 a month for the cheapest machine, it's about what I would have paid to set up a t2-nano instance (~$4.70). I didn't need anything fancy, just wanted students to have their own machine to deploy public-facing code (e.g. APIs).

The in-browser SSH also deals with the problem of students who are on Windows machine. You haven't hated PuTTY until you've tried walking a student through it on their Surface Pro.

Re: Amazon LightSail: Simple Virtual Private Servers on AWS

#86

Post by Mindless2112 » Wed, Nov 30, 2016, 5:22 PM UTC

hbosch wrote: post #17

I hate to deviate from the topic, but... is the guy on the front page wearing a red cape?

Sure, after all, it is the "hero" image [1][2].

[1] https://amazonlightsail.com/images/hero/index-6316203d.jpg

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hero_image

Re: Amazon LightSail: Simple Virtual Private Servers on AWS

#87

Post by geostyx » Wed, Nov 30, 2016, 5:22 PM UTC

falcolas wrote: post #48

Worth noting: $0.09 per GB for bandwidth overages. So, your $5 server with 1TB out becomes a $95 if you have 2TB out.

Also worth noting their competition (DO/Linode) only cost $0.02/GB overage.

Re: Amazon LightSail: Simple Virtual Private Servers on AWS

#88

Post by DenisM » Wed, Nov 30, 2016, 5:23 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).…

It would be nice if they offered an option of adaptive bandwidth throttling, so that once you're past 75% of your allotment it starts slowing you down such that you never reach your entire quota, and never get charged for overages.

The Zeno's paradox in action - once you reach half your limit, the speed is cut in half. "Zeno" throttling if you will. :)

Re: Amazon LightSail: Simple Virtual Private Servers on AWS

#89

Post by aioprisan » Wed, Nov 30, 2016, 5:23 PM UTC

ausjke wrote: post #70

anilshanbhag wrote: post #18

Here is a comparison of $20 instances across DO, Linode and LightSail All have 3TB transfer Linode(Best): 4GB RAM, 2 Core, 48 GB SSD DO: 2GB RAM, 2 Core, 40 GB SSD LightSail(Worst): 2GB RAM, 1 Core, 40 GB SSD I use this exact instance on Linode for my site https://dictanote.co ; that one extra core makes a lot of difference when you want to take a backup of db or something intensive like that.

Exactly, Linode still has _much_ better deal. Been using Linode for 10+ years, no reason to jump based on what Lightsail has.

Except they're the only one that's gotten breached a number of times and locked out customers for days and weeks at a time. For me, that's a non-starter, AWS has a much better track record.

Re: Amazon LightSail: Simple Virtual Private Servers on AWS

#90

Post by geostyx » Wed, Nov 30, 2016, 5:24 PM UTC

sheraz wrote: post #73

reacharavindh wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Looks like you can spin up three of these instances as a proxy and pay $15 for 3 TB of bandwidth from AWS.

Is the transfer from the aws instances to the lightsail instances not billed if in the save data center?

Transfer to and from other AWS resources is free (see their FAQ).