3 ms·

Micros are great if you want a very large EBS volume mounted on a 64-bit machine. The next cheapest 64-bit is $350/mo, and a TB of EBS is $100/mo.

bravura 16y ago
Which begs the question, why doesn't Amazon offer 64-bit at an intermediate price point?
- mechanical_fish 16y ago
  My coworkers and I have often wondered this. My own best guess is that it's that classic bugaboo: Historical reasons. They've got a big installed base of hardware, software, and ops procedures to support 32-bit small and medium instances, and thus the marginal cost of continuing to run that hardware is lower. Given the choice between (a) a big program to compel all their existing 32-bit customers to migrate to 64-bit infrastructure, and then writing off all the racks full of 32-bit equipment; or (b) maintaining and building out the datacenters and infrastructure that they've already got established, they tend to choose option (b). Of course, given that the price of compute hardware continues its inexorable fall, in three years Amazon will offer 64-bit at an intermediate price point: The expensive 64-bit large instance of today will be the cheap 64-bit large instance of tomorrow, and people who want real power will be paying for 32xlarge instances.
  - duskwuff 16y ago
    64-bit hardware is perfectly capable of running a 32-bit OS, though. There's really no obvious reason that Amazon would be trying to phase out 32-bit guests.
- mechanical_fish 16y ago
  My coworkers and I have often wondered this. My own best guess is that it's that classic bugaboo: Historical reasons. They've got a big installed base of hardware to support 32-bit small and medium instances, and thus the marginal cost of continuing to run that hardware is lower. Given the choice between (a) a big program to compel all their existing 32-bit customers to migrate to 64-bit infrastructure, and then mothballing all the racks full of 32-bit equipment; or (b) maintaining and building out the datacenters and infrastructure that they've already got established, they choose option (b). Of course, given that the price of compute hardware continues its inexorable fall, in three years Amazon will offer 64-bit at an intermediate price point: The expensive 64-bit large instance of today will be the cheap 64-bit large instance of tomorrow, and people who want real power will be paying for 32xlarge instances.
- jashkenas 16y ago
  Keep in mind that 32-bit instances are highly advantageous for many web applications that use interpreted dynamic languages (Ruby, Python, JavaScript). Almost everything in those languages is an object, and every object is a pointer to a value, and pointers on 32-bit machines are half the size of pointers on 64-bit boxes. In a Rails app (for instance), the overall performance of an application is often constrained by how many instances you are able to run in parallel. If a 32-bit box can run 50% (or 100%) more instances of your application than the equivalent 64-bit box with the same RAM, that's great.
- deleted 16y ago
  [deleted]

bravura 16y ago

Which begs the question, why doesn't Amazon offer 64-bit at an intermediate price point?

mechanical_fish 16y ago
My coworkers and I have often wondered this. My own best guess is that it's that classic bugaboo: Historical reasons. They've got a big installed base of hardware, software, and ops procedures to support 32-bit small and medium instances, and thus the marginal cost of continuing to run that hardware is lower. Given the choice between (a) a big program to compel all their existing 32-bit customers to migrate to 64-bit infrastructure, and then writing off all the racks full of 32-bit equipment; or (b) maintaining and building out the datacenters and infrastructure that they've already got established, they tend to choose option (b). Of course, given that the price of compute hardware continues its inexorable fall, in three years Amazon will offer 64-bit at an intermediate price point: The expensive 64-bit large instance of today will be the cheap 64-bit large instance of tomorrow, and people who want real power will be paying for 32xlarge instances.
- duskwuff 16y ago
  64-bit hardware is perfectly capable of running a 32-bit OS, though. There's really no obvious reason that Amazon would be trying to phase out 32-bit guests.
mechanical_fish 16y ago
My coworkers and I have often wondered this. My own best guess is that it's that classic bugaboo: Historical reasons. They've got a big installed base of hardware to support 32-bit small and medium instances, and thus the marginal cost of continuing to run that hardware is lower. Given the choice between (a) a big program to compel all their existing 32-bit customers to migrate to 64-bit infrastructure, and then mothballing all the racks full of 32-bit equipment; or (b) maintaining and building out the datacenters and infrastructure that they've already got established, they choose option (b). Of course, given that the price of compute hardware continues its inexorable fall, in three years Amazon will offer 64-bit at an intermediate price point: The expensive 64-bit large instance of today will be the cheap 64-bit large instance of tomorrow, and people who want real power will be paying for 32xlarge instances.
jashkenas 16y ago
Keep in mind that 32-bit instances are highly advantageous for many web applications that use interpreted dynamic languages (Ruby, Python, JavaScript). Almost everything in those languages is an object, and every object is a pointer to a value, and pointers on 32-bit machines are half the size of pointers on 64-bit boxes. In a Rails app (for instance), the overall performance of an application is often constrained by how many instances you are able to run in parallel. If a 32-bit box can run 50% (or 100%) more instances of your application than the equivalent 64-bit box with the same RAM, that's great.
deleted 16y ago
[deleted]