5 ms·

My wish: let me design my own instances. There are so many instance types and subtypes now, and comparing them is not straightforward (even with ec2instances.in

by vosper 5y ago

My wish: let me design my own instances. There are so many instance types and subtypes now, and comparing them is not straightforward (even with ec2instances.info). The hardware can obviously be provisioned into all sorts of configs - that's got to be how these proliferated. Just give me the configurator and show me the price, please don't make me pick through all of these instances...

juliansimioni 5y ago
Agreed. Google Cloud seems to do a better job of this, you can simply pick how many CPUs your VM will have. For me personally, it's the jump from c5d.4xlarge (16 core) to c5d.9xlarge (36 core) that's a bit hard to work around, but there are surely others.
foxyv 5y ago
I think that the way these instances are classified is based on the bare metal they run on. So for instance an r4.xlarge is a single VM in an r4.metal server acting as a host. So only r4 virtual instances (r4.xlarge, r4.2xlarge, etc...) divide up nicely on these r4.metal hosts. (RAM, CPU, Instance Stores, etc...) If they made fully customizable instances then they could be using 100% of the host machine's RAM, CPU or whatever but only a fraction of the other factors. This causes a metal instance to be occupied entirely by a single VM which would make it cost a TON! So in order to make customizable instances they would have to make a ton of differently shaped metal instances to match all the possible types of custom instances and make a best fit. In the end they end up with what they have now anyways. What would be cool is if Amazon would let you order custom hardware for bare metal to go in their racks. They acquire and set up the server and load their host image. (Sort of an EC2 Colocation service.) Then let you divide it up as you see fit into virtual machines. Sort of a (Build your own instance class) thing.
- Spivak 5y ago
  For that last bit it’s not as crazy as you might think since you can already buy dedicated hardware and you can manage your own hardware on-prem with Outpost. If you smush them together you get something kinda neat.

by vosper 5y ago

juliansimioni 5y ago

Agreed. Google Cloud seems to do a better job of this, you can simply pick how many CPUs your VM will have. For me personally, it's the jump from c5d.4xlarge (16 core) to c5d.9xlarge (36 core) that's a bit hard to work around, but there are surely others.

foxyv 5y ago

I think that the way these instances are classified is based on the bare metal they run on. So for instance an r4.xlarge is a single VM in an r4.metal server acting as a host. So only r4 virtual instances (r4.xlarge, r4.2xlarge, etc...) divide up nicely on these r4.metal hosts. (RAM, CPU, Instance Stores, etc...) If they made fully customizable instances then they could be using 100% of the host machine's RAM, CPU or whatever but only a fraction of the other factors. This causes a metal instance to be occupied entirely by a single VM which would make it cost a TON! So in order to make customizable instances they would have to make a ton of differently shaped metal instances to match all the possible types of custom instances and make a best fit. In the end they end up with what they have now anyways. What would be cool is if Amazon would let you order custom hardware for bare metal to go in their racks. They acquire and set up the server and load their host image. (Sort of an EC2 Colocation service.) Then let you divide it up as you see fit into virtual machines. Sort of a (Build your own instance class) thing.

Spivak 5y ago
For that last bit it’s not as crazy as you might think since you can already buy dedicated hardware and you can manage your own hardware on-prem with Outpost. If you smush them together you get something kinda neat.