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In the Works – AWS Region in Canada
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- axelfontaine 11y agoHow is this affected by the case between Microsoft and the US Justice department regarding U.S. warrants for data stored on foreign servers? (See: http://europe.newsweek.com/does-us-warrant-apply-data-stored-foreign-server-332236 http://europe.newsweek.com/does-us-warrant-apply-data-stored...)
- ihsw 11y agoProbably unrelated. Many companies that work with Canadian data are required to keep it within Canada as mandated by the Canadian government, as has been for a fairly long while. This allows those companies to use AWS rather than moving over to local hosting/compute/etc providers, and personally I have found the domestic hosting environment to be quite poor. This is a great day for Canadian developers.
- matdrewin 11y agoIt is related. Even though you are hosting data in Canada, the US government may still have access to the data via Amazon (because it is a U.S. based company) depending on the outcome of that case. Canadian companies are not required to keep data in Canada - http://blog.privacylawyer.ca/2011/04/cloud-computing-and-privacy-faq.html http://blog.privacylawyer.ca/2011/04/cloud-computing-and-pri...
- staticint 11y agoI imagine it is being primarily driven by the recent vast decline in the Canadian dollar. Just about all of the costs involved are going to be about 30% cheaper compared to a couple of years ago.
- pmalynin 11y agoEspecially energy, and if you host a server in Edmonton (where I live) you could also save money on cooling, it was -27C a few days ago...
- acveilleux 11y agoNot to mention that hydro quebec has some of the lowest electrical rates around and as a crown corporation (owned by provincial gov.), political considerations can bring the cost down substantially. OVH is also near Montreal, in Beauharnois next to a large (1900 MW) run-of-the-river hydro plant.
- dgemm 11y agoI doubt long term infrastructure investments are affected much by short term currency fluctuations. Quebec has cheap hydro power and a cool climate which are probably more important factors.
- z0r 11y agous-north-1?
- eistrati 11y ago+1 :) But to be politically correct, it should be ca-east-1 ;)
- cperciva 11y agoJust hope Quebec doesn't have another referendum - qc-central-1 anyone?
- emptybits 11y agoAs a western Canadian, it's fun (?) to joke about Quebec separation. (Indifference/irrelevance, right or wrong, is a common western view on it, I think.) I had to look this up but it seems the last big poll of Quebecois on this was in 2011: 41% voted in favour of sovereignty. http://www.ledevoir.com/politique/quebec/323376/sondage-leger-marketing-le-devoir-l-appui-a-la-souverainete-ne-flechit-pas http://www.ledevoir.com/politique/quebec/323376/sondage-lege... That's actually way higher than I thought. But if support for the Bloc Quebecois is any indication, the sovereignty movement was dealt a big blow in our fall 2015 election. They lost a lot of federal seats and smaller polls suggest popular support for sovereignty might be around 31% now. https://ca.news.yahoo.com/blogs/canada-politics/quebec-independence-movement-a-big-election-loser-203722455.html https://ca.news.yahoo.com/blogs/canada-politics/quebec-indep... Still, it's fun/interesting to talk about. As a westerner. ;-)
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- peterb 11y agoyou mean us-nord-1 :-)
- gmfawcett 11y agoÉU-nord-1 (the US is États-Unis)! But I hope it would be ca-.
- werdnapk 11y agoDigital Ocean also has a new Canadian datacenter... https://www.digitalocean.com/company/blog/introducing-our-new-canadian-datacenter-tor1/ https://www.digitalocean.com/company/blog/introducing-our-ne...
- crandycodes 11y agoAs is Microsoft: http://reimagine.microsoft.ca/en-ca/ http://reimagine.microsoft.ca/en-ca/
- azmenak 11y agoDoes this mean AWS will now start charging sales tax in Canada? My costs increased by 13% when Digital Ocean opened up in Toronto and had to charge me HST.
- amscanne 11y agoCan't you claim that as HST input tax credits though? It's not really fair to claim your costs went up 13% when it's all refundable.
- kitcar 11y agoTrue - short-term cashflow requirements increased by 13% is more accurate, due to the delay in getting the HST rebate cheque
- cperciva 11y agoThat is very short-term, though -- small businesses are only required to file GST/HST returns annually, but you can elect to file quarterly or even monthly, and I've always had a cheque in my hands within two weeks.
- cperciva 11y agoI'm sure your Canadian usage would be subject to GST (which may be why Amazon opted for Montreal target than Toronto) but I think they arrange the subsidiaries so that you don't pay taxes on your usage in other countries. It doesn't matter for businesses of course, since GST/HST is a reclaimable VAT.
- sebbul 11y agoI think they chose Montréal for cheap electricity rather than sales tax issues. My residential rates more than doubled when I moved to Toronto. Looks like business rates follow a similar pattern: http://www.hydroquebec.com/business/rates-and-billing/rates/comparison-of-electricity-prices/ http://www.hydroquebec.com/business/rates-and-billing/rates/...
- davefp 11y agoI wonder if/how Quebec's laws on language will apply to content hosted there. My guess is that unless your business is actually in Quebec then you should be OK, but it's an interesting topic.
- raverbashing 11y agoYour data is your data, the issue is hosting a website to Quebec customers, which then might have a complaint from the OQLF
- Globz 11y agoIf you target Quebec customers then you will have to comply.
- jjoe 11y agoIt's great AWS is expanding. Here's to hoping they fix the dire reliability issues they've been facing every now and then. I looked really hard at using AWS for ELB and other services but GCP won me over because they solved the ELB and scalability pre-warm up issue(s).
- BillinghamJ 11y ago> dire reliability issues Source?
- jedberg 11y agoTechnically the French announcement should be first if they want to follow language laws. :) I'm glad to hear this, as it was rather silly that a whole bunch of companies in Canada couldn't use AWS because of requirements around where their data must be stored. Now they will be able to.
- dorfsmay 11y agoSilly? You are ok with a judicial system from a different country ruling over who can access your health or tax records?
- matdrewin 11y agoBeing on Amazon in Canada may not help you depending on the outcome of this: http://europe.newsweek.com/does-us-warrant-apply-data-stored-foreign-server-332236 http://europe.newsweek.com/does-us-warrant-apply-data-stored... (as mentioned by @axelfontaine below) And the requirements pertaining to Canadian data actually staying in Canada are largely overblown: http://blog.privacylawyer.ca/2011/04/cloud-computing-and-privacy-faq.html http://blog.privacylawyer.ca/2011/04/cloud-computing-and-pri...
- jedberg 11y agoOh I meant it the other way around. That Amazon was foolish for not doing this sooner.
- nikon 11y agoIn Quebec? Everything else at least in Ontario is English first.
- SoulMan 11y agoLohri gift ;)
- matdrewin 11y agoSweet! Been waiting a long time for this one :)
- ArnoldP 11y agoAre they actually going to put it in mtl? It'd be more likely that they build a centre in beauharnois and benefit from cheap hydro like OVH
- dgemm 11y agoIf it's anything like the other regions they will be building DCs scattered around the Montreal metro, not necessarily on the island.
- api 11y agoLots of cheap hydro electricity up there.
- josaka 11y agoThis will have interesting effects for US patents that are practiced on AWS machines in Canada to serve client devices in the US. All the steps of a method claim in a patent must be performed in the US to infringe, so choosing to use machines in Canada will create defenses for many extant US patent claims. This only works for method claims, though. Device claims in patents are a different beast. And of course, this isn't new, but a AWS region in Canada will make the issue more prevalent.
- falsedan 11y ago> a AWS region in Canada will make the issue more prevalent How on earth will it? The EU region launched 9 years ago & AP 6 years ago. Would the prevalence be in Canadian businesses who weren't aware of these other regions and the legions of other hosting providers available outside of the USA?
- caissy 11y agoSince the provincial government is already giving huge tax credits to the video game industries, I'm wondering the government will be giving Amazon any financial incentives to implement that in Montréal.
- rsync 11y agoWe (rsync.net) should have our Montreal location up and running any month now. We chose Montreal because that's where I want to hang out and tour in the off hours between building cabinets and burning disks in. When Montreal is live, people with .ca-only requirements can run their VMs on EC2 and transfer disk images, S3 data and Glacier data between Amazon and rsync.net using 's3cmd': ssh user@rsync.net s3cmd get s3://rsync/mscdex.exe Our HN readers rate[1] OR our petabyte rate[1] OR our non-profit/student rate[1] makes this very cost effective, relative to current S3 pricing. [1] email us.
- netcraft 11y agoThis is the first Ive heard about an ohio data center, that will be good news for us in the midwest - wish it was a bit further west than that but still better than East.
- jonathanoliver 11y agoI think Ohio will be called us-east-2. It's not that far from their Virginia data center. Midwest for me would be more like Chicago or Kansas.
- netcraft 11y agomakes sense. any latency decrease though will be welcome.
- guiomie 11y ago"This region will be carbon-neutral and powered almost entirely by clean, renewable hydro power." ... Like anyone living in that province. Considering the low Canadian dollar and the low cost of electricity, will the pricing be different for people hosting in this zone?
- Coincoin 11y agoI also saw that as taking undeserved credit at first, but the fact is, this region will be carbon-neutral and they are right to advertise it as such for those who would be interested in hosting in a carbon-neutral environment.
- notatoad 11y agoBut they chose to put their datacentre in that province, possibly because of the accessible clean power. Why shouldn't they be allowed to advertise it? Hydro power is a legitimate draw to get businesses into Quebec.
- newobj 11y agoWonder how the CAD/USD exchange rate will affect pricing in the region.
- atomic77 11y agoMoreover I am curious about whether they will charge in USD or CAD. If USD, then a Canadian firm still has to deal with currency exposure as with the US AZs If CAD, it might be interesting if a lot of US load heads up to Canada chasing lower prices.
- falsestprophet 11y agoThat's not how exchange rates work.
- atomic77 11y agoPlease do enlighten me.
- globalgoat 11y agoI'm intrigued to see when someone launches in Africa.
- sandstrom 11y agoYes, at least an edge location (for CloudFront CDN etc) in Africa would be useful.
- discodave 11y agoGiven that the team who originally built EC2 are based in Cape Town, it seems crazy that there is zero AWS presence in Africa.
- globalgoat 11y agothe closest to anything really mainstream I'm aware of currently is CloudFare in Kenya. When I saw this last year it gave me some hope that the bigger players may start to look at Africa seriously in the near future. https://blog.cloudflare.com/mombasa-kenya-cloudflares-43rd-data-center/ https://blog.cloudflare.com/mombasa-kenya-cloudflares-43rd-d...
- corry 11y ago"...in the coming year". They've been claiming that the Canada datacenter is coming for awhile now... disappointed there are no details on launch date. Anyone have insight into the timing?
- Globz 11y agoThis is good news for Quebec, hopefully this won't take too long!