6 ms·

That's sure nice, but I'm waiting for AWS to switch to automatic sustained use discounts [0] like GCP offers. [0]: https://cloud.google.com/compute/docs/sustai

• jaxbot 9y ago
  I'm waiting for GCP to support preemptible GPU instances. Would love to be able to spend ~50% less on GPU instances when running a batch job that can be stopped and reloaded.
  • doh 9y ago
    Not sure that will happen anytime soon. It's the same with Local SSD. The virtualization of this environment is very challenging, maybe beyond a point where it makes sense for them to do so.
    • williamstein 9y ago
      But GCE already has local SSD’s for preempt instances, and they even cost less.
      • doh 9y ago
        Wasn't aware they added the support. Well, maybe they can figure out GPUs too.
        • jeffmcjunkin 9y ago
          I'd be surprised if it'd be that much additional work, if the local SSD options are NVMe -- which is also PCI-e like GPU's.
          • 0x0 9y ago
            Wait what, would they expose the raw SSD pci device to your vm? What's stopping you from scraping all the leftover data from the previous customer?
            • tylerjd 9y ago
              Probably something along the lines of secure erase. Most modern SSDs/NVMe drives are encrypted by default in firmware. All the firmware needs to do is throw away the old keys and generate new ones. It's better than zeroing the drive as there is no wear to the write cycles and guarantees that the slack space in the SSD is also cleared, which DD'ing to /dev/nvme0 wont be certain of. The nvme-format tool can be used for this: http://manpages.ubuntu.com/manpages/zesty/man1/nvme-format.1.html http://manpages.ubuntu.com/manpages/zesty/man1/nvme-format.1...
              • wtallis 9y ago
                On newer SSDs, the sanitize command would be preferable for this use over the format command. IIRC, the format command doesn't require quite as strong a security guarantee as the sanitize command: the latter ensures that user data is cleaned from both the flash and all buffers, CMBs, etc.
            • wmf 9y ago
              I've seen some hints that GCE uses NVMe emulation not PCI passthrough. This would allow the hypervisor to implement features like live migration.
              • jsolson 9y ago
                I find it interesting to think about virtualization on a spectrum with passthrough at one end and pure emulation at the other. Particularly when applied to I/O peripherals, if the bulk of the I/O can effectively be classed as payload, stepping slightly away from passthrough while maintaining roughly the same layer of abstraction grants the implementer considerable liberties in implementation with very little overhead. If one were to look at storage, specifically, the move to 4k block sizes would seem like a particular boon in terms of increasing the volume of data covered by any given IOP.
  • deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
• _wmd 9y ago
  It wouldn't be a switch, it'd be a new feature. GCP also offers the equivalent of explicit instance reservations
  • zedpm 9y ago
    Good point, poor choice of words on my part.
• mbesto 9y ago
  They would legitimately lose a lot of money if they did this now (and I would argue, wouldn't make up for it in market share). Most companies I work with who switch to AWS think it's a 1:1 conversion in terms of cost from a data center and pretty much just "leave AWS on" not realizing that they are not only paying for computing cost but the hidden cost of being able to scale up more instances quickly.
  • user5994461 9y ago
    It's really really difficult to be able to turn on and off instances as needed, like turn a test instance on in the morning when developers come in and turn it off in the evening when they leave.
    • mbesto 9y ago
      Which is why reserved instances exist.
      • termie 9y ago
        The reserved instance pricing model is really poorly implemented. You have to commit to an instance class and a region, and if you need to change you can, but there is some secondary market. When compared to a sustained use model, it is a disaster. Managing all that in a large org is a real pain in the ass.
        • koolba 9y ago
          Not just region, I think it's per AZ.
          • jsjohnst 9y ago
            It is per region, but you can request a reserved instance be moved between AZs.
        • gijeff 9y ago
• pmelendez 9y ago
  That is cool if you maintain a fixed number of instances but it doesn't seem to be very cost efficient if you are implementing autoscale
  • manigandham 9y ago
    GCP billing is all calculated on a cpus/ram/hours basis. You're basically buying capacity units (and can even commit long-term for more discount) and can use that capacity in whatever way you want. Running 2x 4cpu instances for 1 month is the same as 4x 2cpu instances for 1 month, and will come out the same even if you switch in the middle.