To answer your question about the http://course.fast.ai http://course.fast.ai MOOC: the course provides an AMI that has everything you need pre-installed. Just

To answer your question about the http://course.fast.ai http://course.fast.ai MOOC: the course provides an AMI that has everything you need pre-installed. Just follow the directions in the setup video, which includes a script that sets up the instance for you. To save around 80% (but slightly less convenient) there are two ways to use spot instances provided on http://forums.fast.ai http://forums.fast.ai that are largely automated and work well. In part 2 of the course you'll learn how to set up your own server. As others have mentioned that's much better value if you're using deep learning somewhat regularly. (I'm the founder/teacher of this course.)