The only downside to them, in my opinion, is that disk access is not super fast. This makes running databases on them much slower than a properly set up real m

The only downside to them, in my opinion, is that disk access is not super fast. This makes running databases on them much slower than a properly set up real machine. That said, I fully expect amazon to fix this, just as they have already added high memory and high cpu instances. They seem to take feedback seriously and have addressed most of the major complaints to date. Being able to provision new machines with a simple command is reason enough to use them over more traditional places.