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You are implying that AWS turns off the machine if this person doesn't spend his $10k. I don't know exactly if that is correct, but it doesn't sound like what a

You are implying that AWS turns off the machine if this person doesn't spend his $10k. I don't know exactly if that is correct, but it doesn't sound like what actually happens. If you run it through AWS Montreal the energy is 100% hydro, so if they did care about that, it's possible to avoid.

shawabawa3 3y ago
> You are implying that AWS turns off the machine if this person doesn't spend his $10k. I don't know exactly if that is correct, but it doesn't sound like what actually happens. That is more or less correct. Machines that aren't running anything are powered off to save money. so if you spend $10k in credits running a bunch of useless compute, that more or less converts into say $3k of wasted electricity (if we say 30% of AWS running costs are electricity, i just made that up, but it will be some non negligible percentage)
- dubcanada 3y ago
  So if you have 100 servers running EC2 at 99% compacity, they turn off all the other machines? That doesn't sound correct. I imagine they have a good buffer and then maybe there is a subset that are powered down. I don't think you can power up a machine, launch the kernal VZ layer, connect to AWS and broadcast yourself, and what ever else it does in the 20 seconds it takes for a EC2 instance to be allocated to you, so there has to be a good buffer for people launching/tearing down EC2s constantly. So basically there may be a few servers difference. So we are talking like a few kws, which is basically like 40 cents power wise using 4 cents a kwh.
  - bdavbdav 3y ago
    Sometimes it does take significantly longer than 20secs.
- tracker1 3y ago
  I don't think they necessarily turn OFF said machines, but most computers for the past half decade will do lower power modes with a lot of efficiency. Most of the mini computers I've seen based on laptop skus (similar for servers, just many more cores) will run around 8-12W in idle state, but 10x or more that under load. I would asume many servers will be at least similar, with a higher top end.

shawabawa3 3y ago

> You are implying that AWS turns off the machine if this person doesn't spend his $10k. I don't know exactly if that is correct, but it doesn't sound like what actually happens. That is more or less correct. Machines that aren't running anything are powered off to save money. so if you spend $10k in credits running a bunch of useless compute, that more or less converts into say $3k of wasted electricity (if we say 30% of AWS running costs are electricity, i just made that up, but it will be some non negligible percentage)

dubcanada 3y ago
So if you have 100 servers running EC2 at 99% compacity, they turn off all the other machines? That doesn't sound correct. I imagine they have a good buffer and then maybe there is a subset that are powered down. I don't think you can power up a machine, launch the kernal VZ layer, connect to AWS and broadcast yourself, and what ever else it does in the 20 seconds it takes for a EC2 instance to be allocated to you, so there has to be a good buffer for people launching/tearing down EC2s constantly. So basically there may be a few servers difference. So we are talking like a few kws, which is basically like 40 cents power wise using 4 cents a kwh.
- bdavbdav 3y ago
  Sometimes it does take significantly longer than 20secs.
tracker1 3y ago
I don't think they necessarily turn OFF said machines, but most computers for the past half decade will do lower power modes with a lot of efficiency. Most of the mini computers I've seen based on laptop skus (similar for servers, just many more cores) will run around 8-12W in idle state, but 10x or more that under load. I would asume many servers will be at least similar, with a higher top end.