6 ms·

AWS's pricing strategy changed a few years ago. Previously, they'd drop prices aggressively with much fanfare every time they did. Nowadays, they almost never

by luhn 4y ago

AWS's pricing strategy changed a few years ago. Previously, they'd drop prices aggressively with much fanfare every time they did. Nowadays, they almost never drop prices, but release new offerings they say will save money [for certain use cases]: - Gravitron 2 is slightly cheaper than Intel instances, with a greater price/performance ratio—at least for some applications. - m6i is same price as m5, but new generation of CPU and increased network performance. - gp3 is 20% cheaper than gp2 and has better baseline performance. It can also scale performance independently of size, so no more overprovisioning storage to hit a certain IOPS. - S3 has IA, Glacier, Glacier Deep Archive, all offering cheaper storage but more expensive retrieval. Not defending AWS here, just noting that they don't seem to be interested in direct price reductions anymore. (EDIT: Previously I stated gp3 and gp2 were the same price. Thanks zerocrates and maxxam for the correction.)

zerocrates 4y ago
I seemed to remember gp3 being (incrementally) cheaper than gp2... yeah, gp3 is 8 cents per GB-month vs 10 for gp2 in us-east-1. That's actually a reasonably significant price difference, now that I look at it.
- pwarner 4y ago
  There were use cases with gp2 where one would over provision capacity to get IOPS. gp3 let you just dial up IOPS which was much cheaper than over provisioning. This may seem a corner case, but it was moderately common. Also AWS should cut their prices, well in this environment maybe holding them is a cut....
maxxam 4y ago
gp3 are 20% cheaper than gp2 per GB
TimTheTinker 4y ago
This is how every market player is incentivized to behave, apart from regulatory authorities acting to prosecute monopolistic behavior. 1. Price and compete aggressively to grow market share, put competitors out of business, and even transform the market, if possible 2. Once you become the dominant player (i.e. a monopoly), raise prices (or don't lower them) as much as possible without damaging your market position This is why it's so important, especially in the US, for government to begin aggressively enforcing antitrust law again -- something we've failed to do against companies founded since the 1980s. Those laws are there for a reason - not just as a weapon against "evil" (though Standard Oil was admittedly pretty bad) but to keep the market healthy and growing. There are so many positive second- and third-order effects that occur only when competition is healthy and well-regulated, and when prices are transparent.
- toolz 4y ago
  There have been 9 antitrust lawsuits filed against big tech in the past two years, what are you suggesting should there be more of?
  - Dylan16807 4y ago
    How much have they had to pay in penalties, and how many significant structural changes have there been? That's the standard to use, not number of lawsuits or even number of verdicts. Antitrust penalties, more often than not, aren't even as big as the extra profit a company made!
  - wallmountedtv 4y ago
    Acting on splitting up the monopolies. Making Amazon/Google/Meta into multiple smaller companies. As antitrust fines have now just become the exepences one pay to run a monopoly now.
  - winkeltripel 4y ago
    There should be results. Tech giants are too big to fail, as are the big banks and insurers. If we break up the banks and insurers by product offerings, then why not break up big tech? Each company gets split into 3 smaller firms, each with access to all the IP of the mothership. They get to fight for their customers, and barter over business assets, to figure out who owns what.
    - DannyBee 4y ago
      I find it so highly ironic that anyone truly believes this would end up better. They would not fight over customers, in the same way the breakup of AT&T did not result in a fight over customers - only a more complete, nimble, and effective domination of the entire US that lasts to this day. These companies are hamstrung by their size and internal cultural infighting - you will break them into much more effective units than they can culturally achieve themselves. The typical trotted out example of Microsoft is an aberration - Microsoft did not believe anything bad would ever happen, was horribly defiant, and refused to prepare. It still bounced back anyway, to a point of serious domination again. Meanwhile, all of these current tech companies are prepared for this eventuality, as AT&T did.
hinkley 4y ago
It’s noteworthy to me that available memory has not increased in some time. You can find machines with more memory, and perhaps the number of classes has increased, but outside of very narrow envelopes it might be cheaper to have 2 m6i’s with undersubscribed CPUs than to try to increase the amount of cpu per core on something else.
- bushbaba 4y ago
  see the u6tb-1 and x2i machines
  - hinkley 4y ago
    I don’t know what data center u6tb-1 is in but it’s not in the ones I use. X2i is interesting, but may overshoot the mark for the service I’m thinking of, but might be appropriate for another. I may have to try again as to whether I can make the r6i math work.
- wmf 4y ago
  This is mostly due to DRAM stagnation and Intel/AMD staying at 8 channels for a while. Memory capacity should increase with Genoa.

by luhn 4y ago

zerocrates 4y ago

I seemed to remember gp3 being (incrementally) cheaper than gp2... yeah, gp3 is 8 cents per GB-month vs 10 for gp2 in us-east-1. That's actually a reasonably significant price difference, now that I look at it.

pwarner 4y ago
There were use cases with gp2 where one would over provision capacity to get IOPS. gp3 let you just dial up IOPS which was much cheaper than over provisioning. This may seem a corner case, but it was moderately common. Also AWS should cut their prices, well in this environment maybe holding them is a cut....

maxxam 4y ago

gp3 are 20% cheaper than gp2 per GB

TimTheTinker 4y ago

This is how every market player is incentivized to behave, apart from regulatory authorities acting to prosecute monopolistic behavior. 1. Price and compete aggressively to grow market share, put competitors out of business, and even transform the market, if possible 2. Once you become the dominant player (i.e. a monopoly), raise prices (or don't lower them) as much as possible without damaging your market position This is why it's so important, especially in the US, for government to begin aggressively enforcing antitrust law again -- something we've failed to do against companies founded since the 1980s. Those laws are there for a reason - not just as a weapon against "evil" (though Standard Oil was admittedly pretty bad) but to keep the market healthy and growing. There are so many positive second- and third-order effects that occur only when competition is healthy and well-regulated, and when prices are transparent.

toolz 4y ago
There have been 9 antitrust lawsuits filed against big tech in the past two years, what are you suggesting should there be more of?
- Dylan16807 4y ago
  How much have they had to pay in penalties, and how many significant structural changes have there been? That's the standard to use, not number of lawsuits or even number of verdicts. Antitrust penalties, more often than not, aren't even as big as the extra profit a company made!
- wallmountedtv 4y ago
  Acting on splitting up the monopolies. Making Amazon/Google/Meta into multiple smaller companies. As antitrust fines have now just become the exepences one pay to run a monopoly now.
- winkeltripel 4y ago
  There should be results. Tech giants are too big to fail, as are the big banks and insurers. If we break up the banks and insurers by product offerings, then why not break up big tech? Each company gets split into 3 smaller firms, each with access to all the IP of the mothership. They get to fight for their customers, and barter over business assets, to figure out who owns what.
  - DannyBee 4y ago
    I find it so highly ironic that anyone truly believes this would end up better. They would not fight over customers, in the same way the breakup of AT&T did not result in a fight over customers - only a more complete, nimble, and effective domination of the entire US that lasts to this day. These companies are hamstrung by their size and internal cultural infighting - you will break them into much more effective units than they can culturally achieve themselves. The typical trotted out example of Microsoft is an aberration - Microsoft did not believe anything bad would ever happen, was horribly defiant, and refused to prepare. It still bounced back anyway, to a point of serious domination again. Meanwhile, all of these current tech companies are prepared for this eventuality, as AT&T did.

hinkley 4y ago

It’s noteworthy to me that available memory has not increased in some time. You can find machines with more memory, and perhaps the number of classes has increased, but outside of very narrow envelopes it might be cheaper to have 2 m6i’s with undersubscribed CPUs than to try to increase the amount of cpu per core on something else.

bushbaba 4y ago
see the u6tb-1 and x2i machines
- hinkley 4y ago
  I don’t know what data center u6tb-1 is in but it’s not in the ones I use. X2i is interesting, but may overshoot the mark for the service I’m thinking of, but might be appropriate for another. I may have to try again as to whether I can make the r6i math work.
wmf 4y ago
This is mostly due to DRAM stagnation and Intel/AMD staying at 8 channels for a while. Memory capacity should increase with Genoa.