5 ms·

Yep, now that DO has managed DB instances it’s become my go to provider for most setups. Droplets (VPS) have generally worked out cheaper than EC2 (with more r

by 4lun 6y ago

Yep, now that DO has managed DB instances it’s become my go to provider for most setups. Droplets (VPS) have generally worked out cheaper than EC2 (with more resources) for me. The bit that initially sold me on it a while ago was no more worrying about CPU credits, ie consistently maxing the CPU out at 100% then getting throttled, on the small instances (T2). Also the web interface isn’t a mishmash of 1000 services with different UX for each section. If DO isn’t cheap enough for people there’s also Vultr which works out even cheaper ($2.50 a month for 1cpu/512mb) if you want something similar (not baremetal).

PetahNZ 6y ago
Is the bottom of the barrel VM's really what AWS is aiming for though? Or is it the auto scaling, variable, HA workloads...
- closeparen 6y ago
  Depending on the amplitude of your load cycle, it may be cheaper to just stay fully provisioned all the time on another provider.
rozenmd 6y ago
Do you host your entire stack on DO, or split compute and DB (and eat the latency hit)?
sumedh 6y ago
> Vultr which works out even cheaper ($2.50 a month for 1cpu/512mb) I can see that price on the pricing page but when I go the Deploy new server page, I cant see that price, the minimum is $5.
- frafra 6y ago
  New York and Atlanta DC only. I wrote down pros/cons of various ~$5 and below VPS services in a Gist I have been maintaining for a couple of years: https://gist.github.com/frafra/4688b146ca6d55accb768c3557939477 https://gist.github.com/frafra/4688b146ca6d55accb768c3557939...
  - sumedh 6y ago
    Ah ok, I am using a $5 DO server as file server in Singapore, I thought I might save a few more bucks by moving to vultr but its ok $5 is pretty cheap.
  - mmahemoff 6y ago
    Hope you can add Linode here. I've been a long time user and it's a pretty good & popular option imo.
    - frafra 6y ago
      I use Linode, but it was $10 or more, while I've just seen there's also a $5 VPS called "Nanode". I added it to the list and I will test it more in the future. Thank you!
    - jwr 6y ago
      Not if you need any CPU performance to speak of. Given the misleading "vCPUs" that we are sold, I took some time to benchmark several major cloud providers and the results were… worrying: https://jan.rychter.com/enblog/cloud-server-cpu-performance-comparison-2019-12-12 https://jan.rychter.com/enblog/cloud-server-cpu-performance-... BTW, I run my SaaS on real servers from Hetzner. I figured I won't need instant auto-scaling anyway, and if you provision with ansible it doesn't really matter if it's an EC2 instance or a real server. What does matter is the price and the performance: I get servers which are significantly faster than anything you can get on AWS, and for a much better price. To be honest, I do not understand the drive towards AWS. It makes sense in micro-deployments (lightsail and/or lambda, when your usage is sporadic) and in large deployments that need dynamic scaling. But it does not make much sense anywhere in the middle.
      - nrvn 6y ago
        Words of sense are rare to be heard. There has been a lot of comparisons and benchmarks and there will be even more. After some point monthly bills grow to the scale where it makes perfect sense to invest money and time into your own infra. Yet People will still be throwing money into the hype oven.
aficiomaquinas 6y ago
If you are extremely cheap like me, only have to run cronjobs at certain times or only need your instances to be running at predictable times you can also use the [AWS Instance Scheduler](https://aws.amazon.com/solutions/implementations/instance-scheduler/ https://aws.amazon.com/solutions/implementations/instance-sc... ). At my last job we were running SAP on EC2 and we were able to lower our bill like 50% or so by only running the instance 9-5 Mon-Fri. Now I use the Instance Scheduler for running cronjobs every day on a T3a instance and it costs less than a $1 usd per month. You can also configure your cronjob to stop the instance once it ends, that way the scheduler will only need to start it and you'll save the most (./myscript && shutdown -h now)

by 4lun 6y ago

PetahNZ 6y ago

Is the bottom of the barrel VM's really what AWS is aiming for though? Or is it the auto scaling, variable, HA workloads...

closeparen 6y ago
Depending on the amplitude of your load cycle, it may be cheaper to just stay fully provisioned all the time on another provider.

rozenmd 6y ago

Do you host your entire stack on DO, or split compute and DB (and eat the latency hit)?

sumedh 6y ago

> Vultr which works out even cheaper ($2.50 a month for 1cpu/512mb) I can see that price on the pricing page but when I go the Deploy new server page, I cant see that price, the minimum is $5.

frafra 6y ago
New York and Atlanta DC only. I wrote down pros/cons of various ~$5 and below VPS services in a Gist I have been maintaining for a couple of years: https://gist.github.com/frafra/4688b146ca6d55accb768c3557939477 https://gist.github.com/frafra/4688b146ca6d55accb768c3557939...
- sumedh 6y ago
  Ah ok, I am using a $5 DO server as file server in Singapore, I thought I might save a few more bucks by moving to vultr but its ok $5 is pretty cheap.
- mmahemoff 6y ago
  Hope you can add Linode here. I've been a long time user and it's a pretty good & popular option imo.
  - frafra 6y ago
    I use Linode, but it was $10 or more, while I've just seen there's also a $5 VPS called "Nanode". I added it to the list and I will test it more in the future. Thank you!
  - jwr 6y ago
    Not if you need any CPU performance to speak of. Given the misleading "vCPUs" that we are sold, I took some time to benchmark several major cloud providers and the results were… worrying: https://jan.rychter.com/enblog/cloud-server-cpu-performance-comparison-2019-12-12 https://jan.rychter.com/enblog/cloud-server-cpu-performance-... BTW, I run my SaaS on real servers from Hetzner. I figured I won't need instant auto-scaling anyway, and if you provision with ansible it doesn't really matter if it's an EC2 instance or a real server. What does matter is the price and the performance: I get servers which are significantly faster than anything you can get on AWS, and for a much better price. To be honest, I do not understand the drive towards AWS. It makes sense in micro-deployments (lightsail and/or lambda, when your usage is sporadic) and in large deployments that need dynamic scaling. But it does not make much sense anywhere in the middle.
    - nrvn 6y ago
      Words of sense are rare to be heard. There has been a lot of comparisons and benchmarks and there will be even more. After some point monthly bills grow to the scale where it makes perfect sense to invest money and time into your own infra. Yet People will still be throwing money into the hype oven.

aficiomaquinas 6y ago

If you are extremely cheap like me, only have to run cronjobs at certain times or only need your instances to be running at predictable times you can also use the [AWS Instance Scheduler](https://aws.amazon.com/solutions/implementations/instance-scheduler/ https://aws.amazon.com/solutions/implementations/instance-sc... ). At my last job we were running SAP on EC2 and we were able to lower our bill like 50% or so by only running the instance 9-5 Mon-Fri. Now I use the Instance Scheduler for running cronjobs every day on a T3a instance and it costs less than a $1 usd per month. You can also configure your cronjob to stop the instance once it ends, that way the scheduler will only need to start it and you'll save the most (./myscript && shutdown -h now)