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I moved from AWS EC2 to Google Cloud a few days ago. Google really seems to have beaten AWS, at least in pricing and flexibilty. On AWS (Singapore region) a 2-v

by msravi 10y ago

I moved from AWS EC2 to Google Cloud a few days ago. Google really seems to have beaten AWS, at least in pricing and flexibilty. On AWS (Singapore region) a 2-vCPU, 7.5G RAM instance costs $143/month (not including IOPS and bandwidth costs), while a similar one on GC works out to about $56/month. That's a massive difference. In addition, GC allows me to customize cores and RAM flexibly to a point, which is important for me. Also, AWS's reserved instances are somewhat of a nightmare. There are only certain upgrade paths you can take, and you're locked in to them for a year. And if you're not in the US, you can't even sell the instance.

harshal 10y ago
Yeah, I've seen multiple folks putting off reserved instance commitments and continuing to pay on-demand costs since they don't want to get locked in for a year. Its a serious commitment for smaller companies. The No-Upfront reservation options that AWS last year helped narrow the difference quite a bit - but Google automatic discounts for sustained use are so much better and less complicated for users.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- boulos 10y ago
  And per-minute billing, and the ability to move between zones month to month ("Oh, Haswell zone just launched? I'll be moving there..."). It's night and day, and if I could, I'd happily take the other side of any RI deal ;). Disclosure: I work on Compute Engine.
mkj 10y ago
You can't buy a GC instance in Singapore though? Not quite a fair comparison in that case!
- msravi 10y ago
  It's Taiwan[1]. Close enough for me - actually better, because I'm mostly talking to servers in Hong Kong. 1. https://cloud.google.com/compute/docs/regions-zones/regions-zones#available https://cloud.google.com/compute/docs/regions-zones/regions-...
boulos 10y ago
Don't feel like you're missing out. The RI "resale" market isn't particularly liquid in the US either and there's a 12% fee to do so. Disclosure: I work on Compute Engine (so of course I'm biased against RIs)

by msravi 10y ago

harshal 10y ago

Yeah, I've seen multiple folks putting off reserved instance commitments and continuing to pay on-demand costs since they don't want to get locked in for a year. Its a serious commitment for smaller companies. The No-Upfront reservation options that AWS last year helped narrow the difference quite a bit - but Google automatic discounts for sustained use are so much better and less complicated for users.

deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
boulos 10y ago
And per-minute billing, and the ability to move between zones month to month ("Oh, Haswell zone just launched? I'll be moving there..."). It's night and day, and if I could, I'd happily take the other side of any RI deal ;). Disclosure: I work on Compute Engine.

mkj 10y ago

You can't buy a GC instance in Singapore though? Not quite a fair comparison in that case!

msravi 10y ago
It's Taiwan[1]. Close enough for me - actually better, because I'm mostly talking to servers in Hong Kong. 1. https://cloud.google.com/compute/docs/regions-zones/regions-zones#available https://cloud.google.com/compute/docs/regions-zones/regions-...

boulos 10y ago

Don't feel like you're missing out. The RI "resale" market isn't particularly liquid in the US either and there's a 12% fee to do so. Disclosure: I work on Compute Engine (so of course I'm biased against RIs)