The high steal% is intentional, as the CPU is allowed to burst to take advantage of unused resources: http://docs.aws.amazon.com/AWSEC2/latest/UserGuide/concep

The high steal% is intentional, as the CPU is allowed to burst to take advantage of unused resources: http://docs.aws.amazon.com/AWSEC2/latest/UserGuide/concepts_micro_instances.html http://docs.aws.amazon.com/AWSEC2/latest/UserGuide/concepts_... I don't find my cheap t1.micro based IRC bouncer / VPN / reverse SSH endpoint / static-content generation box to be an awful joke at all. They're quite useful for many things.