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You are right about nginx and it's performance. The only problem is that micro instances don't only have low cpu power. But also only a cpu boost. If it's get h

You are right about nginx and it's performance. The only problem is that micro instances don't only have low cpu power. But also only a cpu boost. If it's get hit with multiple request after each other, the cpu boost is exhausted and the requests will pile up. For a static page, S3 hosting of the html file is way more efficient.

bhauer 13y ago
I don't disagree that S3 is superior for hosting static content; I'm just concerned with the question of micro instances' capacity. To continue that particular line of thinking... For the "CPU boost" point you bring up, do you understand the throttling as literally reducing the CPU capacity to zero when the boost is "exhausted"? Or simply dramatically reduced? For the sake of argument again, let's say the Micro instance that is not being throttled by the Amazon hypervisor can handle 0.5% the sustained load of a i7 2600K. That is, 1,000 static requests per second from nginx. Then, just by conjecture, let's say the throttling algorithm smashes the CPU allocation to 10% of its nominal maximum, thereby reducing our throttled micro instance's capacity to 0.05% that of an i7 2600K. We can still process 100 static requests per second from nginx. That is still more than enough to handle the few dozen requests per second that come in at #1 on the HN home page. Like I said, it's theoretically possible that they throttle the CPU to literally zero but that seems extraordinarily punitive.
- rallison 13y ago
  I agree with this on a general level, but I wonder if bandwidth at some level becomes an issue. If you have a page that weighs in at 1MB - not unlikely - and you are averaging, let's say, three dozen visitors per second for at least a little while, you are talking 288Mbps of traffic. Would amazon allow that throughput, for a micro instance, at least briefly? Maybe, but I'd just be speculating. This I would guess is a more likely issue than CPU usage.
  - rallison 13y ago
    Edit: Never mind the above. By the time I got around to that first reply, I had forgotten the rather important fact that the assets were coming from a cdn.
- Wouter33 13y ago
  And that is indeed the case. You only get a limited time of CPU, after that it's powers goes to somewhat like zero.

bhauer 13y ago

I don't disagree that S3 is superior for hosting static content; I'm just concerned with the question of micro instances' capacity. To continue that particular line of thinking... For the "CPU boost" point you bring up, do you understand the throttling as literally reducing the CPU capacity to zero when the boost is "exhausted"? Or simply dramatically reduced? For the sake of argument again, let's say the Micro instance that is not being throttled by the Amazon hypervisor can handle 0.5% the sustained load of a i7 2600K. That is, 1,000 static requests per second from nginx. Then, just by conjecture, let's say the throttling algorithm smashes the CPU allocation to 10% of its nominal maximum, thereby reducing our throttled micro instance's capacity to 0.05% that of an i7 2600K. We can still process 100 static requests per second from nginx. That is still more than enough to handle the few dozen requests per second that come in at #1 on the HN home page. Like I said, it's theoretically possible that they throttle the CPU to literally zero but that seems extraordinarily punitive.

rallison 13y ago
I agree with this on a general level, but I wonder if bandwidth at some level becomes an issue. If you have a page that weighs in at 1MB - not unlikely - and you are averaging, let's say, three dozen visitors per second for at least a little while, you are talking 288Mbps of traffic. Would amazon allow that throughput, for a micro instance, at least briefly? Maybe, but I'd just be speculating. This I would guess is a more likely issue than CPU usage.
- rallison 13y ago
  Edit: Never mind the above. By the time I got around to that first reply, I had forgotten the rather important fact that the assets were coming from a cdn.
Wouter33 13y ago
And that is indeed the case. You only get a limited time of CPU, after that it's powers goes to somewhat like zero.