6 ms·

I'm going to plug Google Cloud's Preemptible VMs as a simpler alternative to Spot Instances: - Preemptible VMs are sold at a fixed 70% off discount, removing p

by vgt 11y ago

I'm going to plug Google Cloud's Preemptible VMs as a simpler alternative to Spot Instances: - Preemptible VMs are sold at a fixed 70% off discount, removing pricing volatility entirely - Google Cloud's Compute Engine has far fewer VM types, thus making it much easier to construct the resources you want (exception being GPUs, you don't need a "network optimized" instance to get fast network, nor you need a "storage optimized" instance to get fast/large storage - these things are modular on GCE). (disc: work on Google Cloud)

merb 11y ago
Actually it would be great if your lower instances would have more memory. For low cost projects (small companies or society club) it's really odd to pay the server on something like ovh.de (more memory cheaper, nearly same performance) and the storage for GCE or AWS. I mean yeah I just realized that GCE could be cheap, still somehow the Micro instance could've had a little bit more memory. And small is already out of budget. I mean something between Small and Micro would be great, like 1.2 GB Memory with a price of 6.6 USD (which would be 7 USD with a 10 GB persistent disk).
- boulos 11y ago
  Does this mean your target budget is $10/month? (I'm just asking for clarification, and to understand how you think about it). Second, what are you looking to run? A Java-based web app? Does App Engine's free tier not serve you better? Finallty, and it's perhaps poor form to point this out, but we (and AWS) will end up blowing out your budget once you include networking while OVH/Hetzner/Digital Ocean won't. Compute Engine isn't a VPS, we're giving you a small slice of a machine but it's connected to a crazy awesome network that we bill for by the byte. When you compare that to a bundled, heavily-overcommitted across tons of customers VPS networking offering the dollars don't work out. Disclosure: I work on Compute Engine and care a lot about our pricing.
  - Veratyr 11y ago
    Hopefully this comment doesn't sound too stupid but is it at all possible (or likely to be implemented) to get a worse network on GCE and pay less for it? I ask because I don't need a CDN level network like GCE provides but I do need a ton of compute and a ton of bandwidth for batch data processing on data hosted at another provider (and not a candidate for GCS). A pre-emptible network offering would open up the way for me to use compute resources, which is surely a good thing.
    - boulos 11y ago
      Not stupid at all! A cheaper, lesser networking offering is a common request, so you're not alone. Can you describe more about the "data hosted at another provider"? Would one of our interconnect options (https://cloud.google.com/interconnect/ https://cloud.google.com/interconnect/) help? If it's at AWS would a pair of interconnect options help (DirectConnect to Equinix in VA, then Carrier Interconnect to us).
      - Veratyr 11y ago
        Just to say it upfront, I'm nothing like big enough for a lot of the options you have available. > Can you describe more about the "data hosted at another provider"? It's all at OVH and Hetzner. They offer very cheap storage and bandwidth. > interconnect I'm not big enough for those options and regardless, all of your peering/interconnect options are CDN priced for inter-region and only slightly better for intra-region. They just don't make sense. Say I want to store 100TB of data and pump it through some kind of processing pipeline, outputting the same amount of data. At OVH I pay ~$0.0075/GB on storage coming to ~$1.5k/month (since the processing results in double storage). Say my processing is light on memory and can run at 1MB/s/CPU and I want to be finished in a day. I need 1150 CPU cores for 24h and at OVH that would cost me ~$1300 and bandwidth is free and unlimited. At GCE I can run on pre-emptible instances and pay ~$284 for the compute but I have to pay for 100TB of premium egress bandwidth I don't need, which adds 100 * 1000 * 0.04 (generously assuming I can get peering/interconnect) which is $4000. GCE is absolutely unusable for jobs like this in its current state. Sure I could move data to GCS but in that case my $1.5k bill for storage turns into a $5.2k bill per month.
  - merb 11y ago
    Yes the target budget is max 10€/month (so a little bit more than $USD) It's a Java8 Play Framework application currently the App Engine doesn't support that and I had problems setting up the new Engine since my project uses sbt and I didn't had "enough" time to invest. actually the application won't need that much network. it needs 'nearly infinitiv' storage (non durable) and sometimes use preemtive vms to convert them (this could go over budget, but thats ok). it's just that I need at least one vm that serves the web, this will upload the images to the object storage then it will fire premeetive vms and converts them, this will put the images in the real object storage and calls the always on vm to insert something in the database (i.e. image path) actually the one vm needs to contain a small database (we are talking about mb so memory isn't an issue) and a java app. so as said micro is too small and small is too big for that always on vm. my current planned setup is ovh instance -> gcloud object storage -> preemtive vm (if there is one) -> gcloud object storage - ovh instance btw. I made some calculations and with the 3.4 € from ovh and somtimes preemtive vms and something like 30g/10g object storage (which hopefully will raise, but than again no problem on the costs) will cost us less than 7€ + Domain (which is billed per year) btw. the preemtive vms runs something like 48 hours per month (mostly less since the most images will started between november < - > february) Edit: btw i wanted to use the datastore (database) aswell, but I couldn't activate it in a project without a app engine.
  - merb 11y ago
    actually i would use the managed vm's or 'App Engine Flexible Environment' but actually it's not possible inside the EU. I tested that and I get an error on deployment. However after creating a new project everything in gcloud started to work. Does the App Engine free tier apply to 'App Engine Flexible Environment' ? That would be great since that would make the site really really cheap.
gcr 11y ago
I'm still waiting for any serious competitor to come along with GPU instances. Google Cloud doesn't have them, Azure still hasn't made them available despite announcing them over a year ago, and other cloud providers make you call a salesperson to get a quote on a service that's much more expensive than what you could run yourself with a trip down to Best Buy. Amazon is still eating everyone's lunch on the GPU front.
- vgt 11y ago
  Good point on IaaS front. One major use case for GPUs is ML. Google Cloud externalizes its ML through serverless APIs. At that point what matters is your ability to derive value from ML, rather than having exposure to building blocks.
  - lmeyerov 11y ago
    That's an anti-competitive position for an IaaS to take. "We already compete with your kind of software here, so we won't sell you the hardware"? I work on some analytics software that includes GPU ML algorithms & non-ML GPU algorithms, neither of which Google makes. Our peers do a lot of visual computing in AWS. Really weird thing to hear from a Google rep.
    - boulos 11y ago
      Please don't take it that way, Leo! How about: "Yes, we know! Sorry! If you just need some ML things and can use the Cloud ML or Cloud Vision services we've got something to tide you over. If not, we're always excited to get direct 'I want to do X' feedback that we can translate into 'Customers are demanding Y, and willing to pay Z'". Please don't take the comment to mean we're trying to box people out of this space. We're not. We do think (most? many?) people don't want to actually roll their own, but we love everyone. Disclosure: I work on Compute Engine.
      - vgt 11y ago
        what he said :)

by vgt 11y ago

merb 11y ago

Actually it would be great if your lower instances would have more memory. For low cost projects (small companies or society club) it's really odd to pay the server on something like ovh.de (more memory cheaper, nearly same performance) and the storage for GCE or AWS. I mean yeah I just realized that GCE could be cheap, still somehow the Micro instance could've had a little bit more memory. And small is already out of budget. I mean something between Small and Micro would be great, like 1.2 GB Memory with a price of 6.6 USD (which would be 7 USD with a 10 GB persistent disk).

boulos 11y ago
Does this mean your target budget is $10/month? (I'm just asking for clarification, and to understand how you think about it). Second, what are you looking to run? A Java-based web app? Does App Engine's free tier not serve you better? Finallty, and it's perhaps poor form to point this out, but we (and AWS) will end up blowing out your budget once you include networking while OVH/Hetzner/Digital Ocean won't. Compute Engine isn't a VPS, we're giving you a small slice of a machine but it's connected to a crazy awesome network that we bill for by the byte. When you compare that to a bundled, heavily-overcommitted across tons of customers VPS networking offering the dollars don't work out. Disclosure: I work on Compute Engine and care a lot about our pricing.
- Veratyr 11y ago
  Hopefully this comment doesn't sound too stupid but is it at all possible (or likely to be implemented) to get a worse network on GCE and pay less for it? I ask because I don't need a CDN level network like GCE provides but I do need a ton of compute and a ton of bandwidth for batch data processing on data hosted at another provider (and not a candidate for GCS). A pre-emptible network offering would open up the way for me to use compute resources, which is surely a good thing.
  - boulos 11y ago
    Not stupid at all! A cheaper, lesser networking offering is a common request, so you're not alone. Can you describe more about the "data hosted at another provider"? Would one of our interconnect options (https://cloud.google.com/interconnect/ https://cloud.google.com/interconnect/) help? If it's at AWS would a pair of interconnect options help (DirectConnect to Equinix in VA, then Carrier Interconnect to us).
    - Veratyr 11y ago
      Just to say it upfront, I'm nothing like big enough for a lot of the options you have available. > Can you describe more about the "data hosted at another provider"? It's all at OVH and Hetzner. They offer very cheap storage and bandwidth. > interconnect I'm not big enough for those options and regardless, all of your peering/interconnect options are CDN priced for inter-region and only slightly better for intra-region. They just don't make sense. Say I want to store 100TB of data and pump it through some kind of processing pipeline, outputting the same amount of data. At OVH I pay ~$0.0075/GB on storage coming to ~$1.5k/month (since the processing results in double storage). Say my processing is light on memory and can run at 1MB/s/CPU and I want to be finished in a day. I need 1150 CPU cores for 24h and at OVH that would cost me ~$1300 and bandwidth is free and unlimited. At GCE I can run on pre-emptible instances and pay ~$284 for the compute but I have to pay for 100TB of premium egress bandwidth I don't need, which adds 100 * 1000 * 0.04 (generously assuming I can get peering/interconnect) which is $4000. GCE is absolutely unusable for jobs like this in its current state. Sure I could move data to GCS but in that case my $1.5k bill for storage turns into a $5.2k bill per month.
- merb 11y ago
  Yes the target budget is max 10€/month (so a little bit more than $USD) It's a Java8 Play Framework application currently the App Engine doesn't support that and I had problems setting up the new Engine since my project uses sbt and I didn't had "enough" time to invest. actually the application won't need that much network. it needs 'nearly infinitiv' storage (non durable) and sometimes use preemtive vms to convert them (this could go over budget, but thats ok). it's just that I need at least one vm that serves the web, this will upload the images to the object storage then it will fire premeetive vms and converts them, this will put the images in the real object storage and calls the always on vm to insert something in the database (i.e. image path) actually the one vm needs to contain a small database (we are talking about mb so memory isn't an issue) and a java app. so as said micro is too small and small is too big for that always on vm. my current planned setup is ovh instance -> gcloud object storage -> preemtive vm (if there is one) -> gcloud object storage - ovh instance btw. I made some calculations and with the 3.4 € from ovh and somtimes preemtive vms and something like 30g/10g object storage (which hopefully will raise, but than again no problem on the costs) will cost us less than 7€ + Domain (which is billed per year) btw. the preemtive vms runs something like 48 hours per month (mostly less since the most images will started between november < - > february) Edit: btw i wanted to use the datastore (database) aswell, but I couldn't activate it in a project without a app engine.
- merb 11y ago
  actually i would use the managed vm's or 'App Engine Flexible Environment' but actually it's not possible inside the EU. I tested that and I get an error on deployment. However after creating a new project everything in gcloud started to work. Does the App Engine free tier apply to 'App Engine Flexible Environment' ? That would be great since that would make the site really really cheap.

gcr 11y ago

I'm still waiting for any serious competitor to come along with GPU instances. Google Cloud doesn't have them, Azure still hasn't made them available despite announcing them over a year ago, and other cloud providers make you call a salesperson to get a quote on a service that's much more expensive than what you could run yourself with a trip down to Best Buy. Amazon is still eating everyone's lunch on the GPU front.

vgt 11y ago
Good point on IaaS front. One major use case for GPUs is ML. Google Cloud externalizes its ML through serverless APIs. At that point what matters is your ability to derive value from ML, rather than having exposure to building blocks.
- lmeyerov 11y ago
  That's an anti-competitive position for an IaaS to take. "We already compete with your kind of software here, so we won't sell you the hardware"? I work on some analytics software that includes GPU ML algorithms & non-ML GPU algorithms, neither of which Google makes. Our peers do a lot of visual computing in AWS. Really weird thing to hear from a Google rep.
  - boulos 11y ago
    Please don't take it that way, Leo! How about: "Yes, we know! Sorry! If you just need some ML things and can use the Cloud ML or Cloud Vision services we've got something to tide you over. If not, we're always excited to get direct 'I want to do X' feedback that we can translate into 'Customers are demanding Y, and willing to pay Z'". Please don't take the comment to mean we're trying to box people out of this space. We're not. We do think (most? many?) people don't want to actually roll their own, but we love everyone. Disclosure: I work on Compute Engine.
    - vgt 11y ago
      what he said :)