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Agreed. I've heard some people say that those prices are kept high to encourage keeping data locked within the platform; forcing people to use the provider's s

Agreed. I've heard some people say that those prices are kept high to encourage keeping data locked within the platform; forcing people to use the provider's services versus shipping data off to other platforms. I'm not sure if I believe that or not, but it's an interesting theory. Honestly, the high bandwidth costs have killed a number of ideas I would have liked to tinker with on AWS. I find the cost of EC2 to be quite good, and storage cost is tolerable, but $.10/GB of bandwidth-out is horrific.

Vendan 11y ago
Seriously, I pay $20 for a VPS with good stats and 3TB of outbound bandwidth per month. It's with Linode, who have been apparently hard hit, but I've suffered about 10 minutes of downtime over the course of the last 2 years, and all of that was in the past week, when the DDOS crap started. Since then it's been fine.
- noir_lord 11y ago
  Apart from the breach and global password resets today. http://www.zdnet.com/article/cloud-firm-linode-resets-user-passwords-after-suspected-hack/ http://www.zdnet.com/article/cloud-firm-linode-resets-user-p... I have been a big fan of linode in the past, I still have a fair amount with them but honestly at this point I'm seriously considering AWS even at the increased cost (which compared to my time isn't that large really and reputational cost which is).
  - meowface 11y ago
    This is the third time they've had a critical breach in the past 5 or so years, and that's excluding all the DDoS downtime they've had in that time span. I stopped using them after their second breach, and frankly am glad I did. I'm very happy with Digital Ocean.
    - jonathanoliver 11y ago
      I just wish DO hardware has a bit faster (or not so over-subscribed?). All of our tests show Linode beat DO hands down for at similar price points.
      - sauere 11y ago
        True. But DO seems to have more downtimes. I have had several scheduled forced reboots, some network downtime and just plain outages.
        meowface 11y ago
        I've only had one in the past year I've been using them.
  - LeoPanthera 11y ago
    Wow. Disappointing that I found out about this here, 7 hours after it was posted, before hearing anything from Linode.
    - threeseed 11y ago
      I was a Linode customer back when it first happened. I found out on Slashdot/Reddit first and got the email from Linode about 3 days later. I have known ever since then that Linode is the type of provider you don't want to be involved with. A VPS provider has one responsibility above all else: be honest and transparent.
- pritambarhate 11y ago
  Yes, with Linode and other VPS providers we get good amount of bandwidth quota. Also if you have 2 instances running then they combine the monthly quota for you. But, how much network capacity one can use is actually limited by the network connectivity the machine offers. For example, the $20 a month VPS on Linode offers only 250 Mbps connectivity (outgoing bandwidth). So as soon as you saturate that, you need one more VPS to handle the load. So this leaves a lot of bandwidth quota unused. Especially since in the real world traffic tends to come in spikes. AWS is similar, depending on the instance size the network connectivity differs. This makes the calculations for estimating costs for hosting even more difficult.
  - Vendan 11y ago
    yeah, but 250 Mbps will chew up your bandwidth quota in a day or 2... so you already needed more quota anyways... unless your traffic is incredibly spiky.
tacos 11y ago
Common misconception. The prices are highly negotiable. Nobody with significant traffic is paying anything close to book rates.
- soccerdave 11y ago
  What do you consider significant? If you are doing over 10TB then you'll be paying lower and even lower the higher you go. This doesn't help the smaller players doing under 10TB. Do you know of people under 10TB that have negotiated better rates?
  - tacos 11y ago
    I don't consider $900/month in bandwidth significant. And I'm sure Amazon account managers don't either -- but it can't hurt to ask, especially if you've got a growth plan that makes sense.
    - amazon_not 11y ago
      10TB is about $50 worth of high quality bandwidth. I'm glad you don't mind paying an extra $10k a year for that.
    - soccerdave 11y ago
      Right now I use 3 Softlayer virtual servers to serve up 15TB of static files a month. It costs me a whopping $168 a month. The same 15TB on AWS would cost $1325 a month. I consider saving $1157 'significant'. Softlayer no longer includes 5TB on every virtual server and their bandwidth is equally outrageous so I'm still evaluating a plan for new servers.
    - geofft 11y ago
      At that point you're rapidly approaching the scale where cloud-style on-demand provisioning isn't really helping you (unless you prefer AWS's tooling to any "private cloud", which is legit), and you might as well put a bunch of dedicated servers in colo, right? That is to say, the reason you can negotiate a discount once you get well past that point (or if you intend to grow well past that point) is because staying on AWS makes increasingly less sense for you.

Vendan 11y ago

Seriously, I pay $20 for a VPS with good stats and 3TB of outbound bandwidth per month. It's with Linode, who have been apparently hard hit, but I've suffered about 10 minutes of downtime over the course of the last 2 years, and all of that was in the past week, when the DDOS crap started. Since then it's been fine.

noir_lord 11y ago
Apart from the breach and global password resets today. http://www.zdnet.com/article/cloud-firm-linode-resets-user-passwords-after-suspected-hack/ http://www.zdnet.com/article/cloud-firm-linode-resets-user-p... I have been a big fan of linode in the past, I still have a fair amount with them but honestly at this point I'm seriously considering AWS even at the increased cost (which compared to my time isn't that large really and reputational cost which is).
- meowface 11y ago
  This is the third time they've had a critical breach in the past 5 or so years, and that's excluding all the DDoS downtime they've had in that time span. I stopped using them after their second breach, and frankly am glad I did. I'm very happy with Digital Ocean.
  - jonathanoliver 11y ago
    I just wish DO hardware has a bit faster (or not so over-subscribed?). All of our tests show Linode beat DO hands down for at similar price points.
    - sauere 11y ago
      True. But DO seems to have more downtimes. I have had several scheduled forced reboots, some network downtime and just plain outages.
      - meowface 11y ago
        I've only had one in the past year I've been using them.
- LeoPanthera 11y ago
  Wow. Disappointing that I found out about this here, 7 hours after it was posted, before hearing anything from Linode.
  - threeseed 11y ago
    I was a Linode customer back when it first happened. I found out on Slashdot/Reddit first and got the email from Linode about 3 days later. I have known ever since then that Linode is the type of provider you don't want to be involved with. A VPS provider has one responsibility above all else: be honest and transparent.
pritambarhate 11y ago
Yes, with Linode and other VPS providers we get good amount of bandwidth quota. Also if you have 2 instances running then they combine the monthly quota for you. But, how much network capacity one can use is actually limited by the network connectivity the machine offers. For example, the $20 a month VPS on Linode offers only 250 Mbps connectivity (outgoing bandwidth). So as soon as you saturate that, you need one more VPS to handle the load. So this leaves a lot of bandwidth quota unused. Especially since in the real world traffic tends to come in spikes. AWS is similar, depending on the instance size the network connectivity differs. This makes the calculations for estimating costs for hosting even more difficult.
- Vendan 11y ago
  yeah, but 250 Mbps will chew up your bandwidth quota in a day or 2... so you already needed more quota anyways... unless your traffic is incredibly spiky.

tacos 11y ago

Common misconception. The prices are highly negotiable. Nobody with significant traffic is paying anything close to book rates.

soccerdave 11y ago
What do you consider significant? If you are doing over 10TB then you'll be paying lower and even lower the higher you go. This doesn't help the smaller players doing under 10TB. Do you know of people under 10TB that have negotiated better rates?
- tacos 11y ago
  I don't consider $900/month in bandwidth significant. And I'm sure Amazon account managers don't either -- but it can't hurt to ask, especially if you've got a growth plan that makes sense.
  - amazon_not 11y ago
    10TB is about $50 worth of high quality bandwidth. I'm glad you don't mind paying an extra $10k a year for that.
  - soccerdave 11y ago
    Right now I use 3 Softlayer virtual servers to serve up 15TB of static files a month. It costs me a whopping $168 a month. The same 15TB on AWS would cost $1325 a month. I consider saving $1157 'significant'. Softlayer no longer includes 5TB on every virtual server and their bandwidth is equally outrageous so I'm still evaluating a plan for new servers.
  - geofft 11y ago
    At that point you're rapidly approaching the scale where cloud-style on-demand provisioning isn't really helping you (unless you prefer AWS's tooling to any "private cloud", which is legit), and you might as well put a bunch of dedicated servers in colo, right? That is to say, the reason you can negotiate a discount once you get well past that point (or if you intend to grow well past that point) is because staying on AWS makes increasingly less sense for you.