5 ms·

The question I'm left with: What happens if/when Amazon changes what you're given with an EC2 instance? EC2 was launched in August 2006 offering the same specs

by mdasen 18y ago

The question I'm left with: What happens if/when Amazon changes what you're given with an EC2 instance? EC2 was launched in August 2006 offering the same specs for the same price that they're offering now. Since we're coming upon the three year anniversary, I don't think it's outrageous to believe that upgrades to what we're given might come within a year or so. If I commit to a small instance (1.7GB) for 3 years and in 9 months they have a new 2009 small instance which is 2.5GB, would I get that upgrade? I hate to be as simplistic as moore's law, but server capacity is increasing when you look at what you can get in a dedicated box. Amazon will have to keep parity over the long term and if you're committing to a 3-year period, you might miss out on the upgrades. In fact, this could be a way for Amazon to roll out newer, better hardware onto their network while not seeing older hardware just disused. And I guess you can't complain about getting a 1.7GB server for $35/mo (which is the three year commitment price).

rgrieselhuber 18y ago
I think this is actually a key motivator behind many of the cloud computing vendors. Hopefully some better competition will continue to keep pushing things forward.
TimothyFitz 18y ago
We might not see upgrades any time soon, they may try to push the price of their slowest instances down. Imagine if you could get an instance for $10/mo? $5/mo? They're just buying faster hardware and figuring out how many instances they can effectively run per-machine.
- timf 18y ago
  http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=513601 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=513601
- lsc 18y ago
  if you are willing to pay per month, there is a lot of competition in that arena. I'm one of the cheaper offerings... see http://prgmr.com/xen/ http://prgmr.com/xen/ but then, I don't have the cool provisioning system ec2 has. In fact, I need to finish up my next server before putting people on it. But yes, competition will force ec2 prices down. 4gb dual-rank registered ecc ddr2 is almost cheap enough for me to move to 64GB servers (meaning I'll be able to lower prices again.) - how much cheaper would I need to be before a service like mine became compelling vs. ec2?
  - mdasen 18y ago
    None of this is meant to sound harsh, but I would like to detail out my impressions: Mosso is announcing 256MB Xen instances for 1.5 cents per hour (under $11/mo). You're at $8/mo and only have 1 rack. Mosso is backed by Rackspace. You're offering 6GB of space while Mosso is offering 10GB, but you're throwing in 40GB of transfer. So, maybe you're a bit cheaper (considering Mosso's 22cents/GB bandwidth), but if one of the server boxes dies, can you replace it within an hour or do you need to have one shipped from Dell? You probably don't have a lot of spare capacity lying around. Likewise, if I need to scale up, it might take a while for you to provision hardware. There's very little information on your service in some ways. Like, is the storage RAID? What if I need an OS reload? Is there a nice control panel for things like that? Heck, do you even provide DNS? Form an LLC. I don't like dealing with some guy. The LLC makes me feel happy. . .even if it's just some guy. You could be the next Slicehost. From what I know, they didn't start off too differently. I'd simplify the pricing a little (or at least get rid of the 64MB one - it simply isn't enough memory, especially considering the $1/mo cost savings). In fact, start at the $20 level. At that price, you're offering 1GB of RAM and that's a nice level to be offering for $20. All the lower levels just make the service look cheap and unreliable. I mean, how much can you make on $5/mo considering the potential for things like chargebacks? I see that the $8 plan is your most popular (and that you mirror - from your profile). Maybe keep it starting at 256, but for $4 more people could get the 512. Create an auto-provisioning system. This is a must. It's the difference between looking awesome and looking cheap. It's why Slicehost did so well - a couple minutes and you were up, faster than EC2 oftentimes. Offer backups, they make people feel warm and fuzzy. If you're really in it, get a second rack and more equipment. That will make people feel a lot more safe. It also means you could start offering HA setups. I'm not stupid, but sometimes I just like a simple control panel. I don't want to learn a new API if I don't have to. The issue kinda is that your service would be cool for personal stuff, but I couldn't launch production stuff on it. For production stuff, I like having HA setups with IP failover which means having instances on different machines in different racks. If I'm going to go Xen, I might as well get the benefits of instant (or near instant) provisioning from Slicehost/Linode/EC2. Sure, let's say they're twice as expensive or more. They're still cheap. Offer the ability to snapshot an image and then launch another instance of it. That's really popular with IT managers. And you don't have to be so cheap. In fact, I'd have to say that's your biggest flaw - you underestimate how valuable you are. Make some money, put time into it. I haven't looked into it, but there's a decent chance that RAM prices follow a predictable decline in price over several years. So, if you find that RAM halves its price every 2 years, maybe offer customers 25% more RAM every 6 months - predictably. That sure beats the nebulousness of Slicehost and others. I'd definitely pay $20 for a 512MB server with the knowledge that I'd be getting regular RAM increases as hardware costs go down. Although you probably know what your costs are better than anyone. Sorry for the length of this. It's just really cool to get to talk to someone running a service like this. Oh, idea, for backups you could possibly integrate tarsnap which would compress the images before storage and so for people who didn't use much space it wouldn't cost much - yet people pay for good backups. I currently use both Slicehost and Linode and I'm considering that your service might be a nice alternative, but it's still hard to commit to such a young service with so few resources. I know that Slicehost also lamented the lack of resources to spend on new machines. To an extent, you're not entering the market at a time that will accept a waitlist like how people waited for Slicehost. Well, it's late. Sorry for lacking eloquence in this post, but I'm half asleep. Might try to contact you through your site if I have other suggestions. I really, really hope you become a fourth entrant onto the scene to make sure prices stay nice. Good Luck!

by mdasen 18y ago

rgrieselhuber 18y ago

I think this is actually a key motivator behind many of the cloud computing vendors. Hopefully some better competition will continue to keep pushing things forward.

TimothyFitz 18y ago

We might not see upgrades any time soon, they may try to push the price of their slowest instances down. Imagine if you could get an instance for $10/mo? $5/mo? They're just buying faster hardware and figuring out how many instances they can effectively run per-machine.

timf 18y ago
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=513601 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=513601
lsc 18y ago
if you are willing to pay per month, there is a lot of competition in that arena. I'm one of the cheaper offerings... see http://prgmr.com/xen/ http://prgmr.com/xen/ but then, I don't have the cool provisioning system ec2 has. In fact, I need to finish up my next server before putting people on it. But yes, competition will force ec2 prices down. 4gb dual-rank registered ecc ddr2 is almost cheap enough for me to move to 64GB servers (meaning I'll be able to lower prices again.) - how much cheaper would I need to be before a service like mine became compelling vs. ec2?
- mdasen 18y ago
  None of this is meant to sound harsh, but I would like to detail out my impressions: Mosso is announcing 256MB Xen instances for 1.5 cents per hour (under $11/mo). You're at $8/mo and only have 1 rack. Mosso is backed by Rackspace. You're offering 6GB of space while Mosso is offering 10GB, but you're throwing in 40GB of transfer. So, maybe you're a bit cheaper (considering Mosso's 22cents/GB bandwidth), but if one of the server boxes dies, can you replace it within an hour or do you need to have one shipped from Dell? You probably don't have a lot of spare capacity lying around. Likewise, if I need to scale up, it might take a while for you to provision hardware. There's very little information on your service in some ways. Like, is the storage RAID? What if I need an OS reload? Is there a nice control panel for things like that? Heck, do you even provide DNS? Form an LLC. I don't like dealing with some guy. The LLC makes me feel happy. . .even if it's just some guy. You could be the next Slicehost. From what I know, they didn't start off too differently. I'd simplify the pricing a little (or at least get rid of the 64MB one - it simply isn't enough memory, especially considering the $1/mo cost savings). In fact, start at the $20 level. At that price, you're offering 1GB of RAM and that's a nice level to be offering for $20. All the lower levels just make the service look cheap and unreliable. I mean, how much can you make on $5/mo considering the potential for things like chargebacks? I see that the $8 plan is your most popular (and that you mirror - from your profile). Maybe keep it starting at 256, but for $4 more people could get the 512. Create an auto-provisioning system. This is a must. It's the difference between looking awesome and looking cheap. It's why Slicehost did so well - a couple minutes and you were up, faster than EC2 oftentimes. Offer backups, they make people feel warm and fuzzy. If you're really in it, get a second rack and more equipment. That will make people feel a lot more safe. It also means you could start offering HA setups. I'm not stupid, but sometimes I just like a simple control panel. I don't want to learn a new API if I don't have to. The issue kinda is that your service would be cool for personal stuff, but I couldn't launch production stuff on it. For production stuff, I like having HA setups with IP failover which means having instances on different machines in different racks. If I'm going to go Xen, I might as well get the benefits of instant (or near instant) provisioning from Slicehost/Linode/EC2. Sure, let's say they're twice as expensive or more. They're still cheap. Offer the ability to snapshot an image and then launch another instance of it. That's really popular with IT managers. And you don't have to be so cheap. In fact, I'd have to say that's your biggest flaw - you underestimate how valuable you are. Make some money, put time into it. I haven't looked into it, but there's a decent chance that RAM prices follow a predictable decline in price over several years. So, if you find that RAM halves its price every 2 years, maybe offer customers 25% more RAM every 6 months - predictably. That sure beats the nebulousness of Slicehost and others. I'd definitely pay $20 for a 512MB server with the knowledge that I'd be getting regular RAM increases as hardware costs go down. Although you probably know what your costs are better than anyone. Sorry for the length of this. It's just really cool to get to talk to someone running a service like this. Oh, idea, for backups you could possibly integrate tarsnap which would compress the images before storage and so for people who didn't use much space it wouldn't cost much - yet people pay for good backups. I currently use both Slicehost and Linode and I'm considering that your service might be a nice alternative, but it's still hard to commit to such a young service with so few resources. I know that Slicehost also lamented the lack of resources to spend on new machines. To an extent, you're not entering the market at a time that will accept a waitlist like how people waited for Slicehost. Well, it's late. Sorry for lacking eloquence in this post, but I'm half asleep. Might try to contact you through your site if I have other suggestions. I really, really hope you become a fourth entrant onto the scene to make sure prices stay nice. Good Luck!