6 ms·

Actually they're even lower, since the 3 year instances are so much cheaper than the 1 year over time. (1820 * 57) + (910 * 23) = $124,670/yr in reservation

by bkrausz 16y ago

Actually they're even lower, since the 3 year instances are so much cheaper than the 1 year over time. (1820 * 57) + (910 * 23) = $124,670/yr in reservation fees Changes to (2800 * 57) + (1400 * 23) = $191,800/3yr in reservation fees Which, when spread over the 3 years, brings the cost down by $5,061.39/mo, making the final cost there actually $17,328.98. Of course this assumes they're doing 3 year reservations, but I don't see any reason not to on their XL instances (I could be wrong though, not sure how open Conde Nast is to logic like this).

masklinn 16y ago
Conde Nast isn't involved in Reddit's operations. Also, > Actually they're even lower Yeah I like that you declare knowing the costs of Reddit's servers.
- bsiemon 16y ago
  I think all the math is based on the known costs of EC2 services at various rate plans. All the people posting dollar figures here and on reddit are drawing from these know costs.
  - masklinn 16y ago
    > All the people posting dollar figures here and on reddit are drawing from these know costs. The others are quite clearly marked as estimates, this one not really, and the second estimate from the top in the reddit thread (yielding an estimate of $22,390.37/mo) got the following comment by one jedberg: > Yes, once again, you are totally accurate. That is almost exactly what it costs to run reddit, as of today. However, with our projected growth, we're looking to be closer to 350K by the end of the year. note that the comment got that estimate based off 1-year reserved servers, which jedberg's comment suggest is broadly correct rather than 3-year reservations.
- bkrausz 16y ago
  1) Conde Nast owns them. To say they don't have some involvement in all of their decisions (even if not directly) is a bit naive. 2) You're right, I mis-spoke and should have said "they may be" instead of "they're". That being said, I would hope any frequent internet dweller wouldn't argue semantics and would give me the benefit of the doubt with respect to tone and inflection.
jedberg 16y ago
We use one year reserved instances because our budgets are done annually.
- axod 16y ago
  Why not just get some dedicated servers? :/ I still don't understand why anyone with any amount of load or traffic would use the most expensive hosting available.
  - jedberg 16y ago
    We had dedicated servers. It saved us 30% a month to move to EC2.
    - axod 16y ago
      I can't understand how that would be the case. Did you run virtualization on the dedi servers so you had multiple 'machines' on them to play with? (If you need that sort of thing for your architecture) What was the limiting factor on dedicated? CPU? ram? bandwidth? Maybe you just had a really bad dedicated server deal? Were they reasonably priced? Even VPSs are cheaper than Amazon. I started out on VPSs and saved a lot moving to dedicated servers once it made sense to. For the dedi servers I use I don't have to pay for RAM monthly, and I get bandwidth at a good price. The kind of money you're paying on servers is just obscene. It wouldn't matter if Reddit had the revenue of course...
      - burningout 16y ago
        There is no point proposing them to use dedicated servers as already many did. They are 100% sure dedicated servers cost more, so let them keep their ec2's and let them fail! I wonder why google, yahoo and facebook don't run their site on ec2... if it's cheaper.
        axod 16y ago
        I think failure is looking more and more likely the more I read of their blog and details of how they run things. It's a very interesting case to analyze though - perhaps acquired too soon, never had enough pressure on monetization until it was too late... Questions over how well the site was architected. Sounds like they're using a lot of 'new' unproven 'hip' things. Casandra? :/ Seems like the founders and YC have been extremely quiet about the problems... It'd be interesting to hear their take on things. Also can't imagine how Conde Naste could be happy with things.

by bkrausz 16y ago

masklinn 16y ago

Conde Nast isn't involved in Reddit's operations. Also, > Actually they're even lower Yeah I like that you declare knowing the costs of Reddit's servers.

bsiemon 16y ago
I think all the math is based on the known costs of EC2 services at various rate plans. All the people posting dollar figures here and on reddit are drawing from these know costs.
- masklinn 16y ago
  > All the people posting dollar figures here and on reddit are drawing from these know costs. The others are quite clearly marked as estimates, this one not really, and the second estimate from the top in the reddit thread (yielding an estimate of $22,390.37/mo) got the following comment by one jedberg: > Yes, once again, you are totally accurate. That is almost exactly what it costs to run reddit, as of today. However, with our projected growth, we're looking to be closer to 350K by the end of the year. note that the comment got that estimate based off 1-year reserved servers, which jedberg's comment suggest is broadly correct rather than 3-year reservations.
bkrausz 16y ago
1) Conde Nast owns them. To say they don't have some involvement in all of their decisions (even if not directly) is a bit naive. 2) You're right, I mis-spoke and should have said "they may be" instead of "they're". That being said, I would hope any frequent internet dweller wouldn't argue semantics and would give me the benefit of the doubt with respect to tone and inflection.

jedberg 16y ago

We use one year reserved instances because our budgets are done annually.

axod 16y ago
Why not just get some dedicated servers? :/ I still don't understand why anyone with any amount of load or traffic would use the most expensive hosting available.
- jedberg 16y ago
  We had dedicated servers. It saved us 30% a month to move to EC2.
  - axod 16y ago
    I can't understand how that would be the case. Did you run virtualization on the dedi servers so you had multiple 'machines' on them to play with? (If you need that sort of thing for your architecture) What was the limiting factor on dedicated? CPU? ram? bandwidth? Maybe you just had a really bad dedicated server deal? Were they reasonably priced? Even VPSs are cheaper than Amazon. I started out on VPSs and saved a lot moving to dedicated servers once it made sense to. For the dedi servers I use I don't have to pay for RAM monthly, and I get bandwidth at a good price. The kind of money you're paying on servers is just obscene. It wouldn't matter if Reddit had the revenue of course...
    - burningout 16y ago
      There is no point proposing them to use dedicated servers as already many did. They are 100% sure dedicated servers cost more, so let them keep their ec2's and let them fail! I wonder why google, yahoo and facebook don't run their site on ec2... if it's cheaper.
      - axod 16y ago
        I think failure is looking more and more likely the more I read of their blog and details of how they run things. It's a very interesting case to analyze though - perhaps acquired too soon, never had enough pressure on monetization until it was too late... Questions over how well the site was architected. Sounds like they're using a lot of 'new' unproven 'hip' things. Casandra? :/ Seems like the founders and YC have been extremely quiet about the problems... It'd be interesting to hear their take on things. Also can't imagine how Conde Naste could be happy with things.