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a. Unless you like throwing money out the window, there is no need to host your stuff on AWS. It's the most expensive of the cloud offerings. Go with Linode o

by jawngee 18y ago

a. Unless you like throwing money out the window, there is no need to host your stuff on AWS. It's the most expensive of the cloud offerings. Go with Linode or Slicehost. b. You'll have to use EBS if you want persistent disk storage with an AWS instance. Otherwise when you reboot, goodbye to everything on your harddisk. But, seriously, reconsider your aims of putting up a 24/7 web hosted up on EC2. You're wasting money.

iamelgringo 18y ago
It is one of the cheapest ways to get a Windows 2003 server slice, if that's your cup of tea, however.
keefe 18y ago
After a cursory googling, it looks like AWS is still the only one where you can programatically modify the number of nodes in your cluster. If your goal is to launch a public facing site and automatically scale up to some limit as you get users, then AWS is a good choice. With AWS you are buying automated scalability and amazon's reliability (not that rackspace doesn't know what they're doing)
- jawngee 18y ago
  You can do it with Slicehost's API. http://articles.slicehost.com/assets/2008/10/3/Slicehost_API-17.pdf http://articles.slicehost.com/assets/2008/10/3/Slicehost_API...
  - keefe 18y ago
    Interesting, I see those entries... I had been looking at this : http://www.slicehost.com/articles/2008/3/26/announcing-the-slicehost-api http://www.slicehost.com/articles/2008/3/26/announcing-the-s... ". Please note that the current iteration allows access to DNS only." I guess they had another iteration since then, thanks for the info!
delano 18y ago
You can do things with EC2 you can't do anywhere else. I've helped companies build deployment processes with EC2 that allows them to launch a staging environment with a single command that includes a complete copy of production data. They run their tests, then cut a release and shutdown the staging environment with another single command. That's not possible without EC2 and EBS.
- jawngee 18y ago
  But he's talking about hosting, not staging. And what you are describing is a good use of EC2. Hosting 24/7 is not.
  - delano 18y ago
    Staging is one aspect of hosting. I will go even further and say that because a staging environment needs to mimic the production environment as close as possible it should be hosted by the same vendor too. You're right that if you compare numbers directly, some aspects of EC2 are more expensive than other vendors. My point is that AWS offers greater value by allowing you to do things you can't do anywhere else. Allocating static IP addresses on the fly for example.
- jawngee 18y ago
  Also, you are wrong. You can do that on slicehost with their API as well. In fact, with the slicehost api, you can take a snapshot of currently running system, and clone a new slice from that snapshot.
  - delano 18y ago
    Can you create, attach, and take snapshots of multiple disks with Slicehost?
jrockway 18y ago
Depends on how much disk space you need. With Amazon, the space is virtually limitless, and transfers to and from S3 are free. With Slicehost and Linode, you get really tiny disks, and you have to pay for bandwidth to S3 if you need more. It's also hard to dynamically scale with Slicehost or Linode. You can't have a script bring an instance up for an hour and then shut it down when the load drops off. (Actually, you probably can, but that's not what it's designed for.) Obviously EC2 is not for everyone, but it is good if you need its features.
enjo 18y ago
Amazon provides a host of support services (Cloudfront CDN anyone??) that are trivial to manage from an existing EBS volume. The extra services that Amazon offers really make the process of going from zero to scale much simpler (albeit not 'easy') than any other host or collection of tools that I've used. That makes it worth the slightly higher costs for me.
kubrick 18y ago
I'd agree, except for all the reasons people gave below. Also, Slicehost is the only other service that provides RAM > 2GB. And EC2 offers more variety of configuration (higher CPU performance versions, larger RAM versions) than anyone else. I really wish Slicehost or Linode or SoftLayer or someone would do something a little closer to what Amazon's doing, and provide some enterprise-level competition. I have clients who would love to move to Slicehost but probably can't, because of the disk space limit and other similar restrictions.

by jawngee 18y ago

iamelgringo 18y ago

It is one of the cheapest ways to get a Windows 2003 server slice, if that's your cup of tea, however.

keefe 18y ago

After a cursory googling, it looks like AWS is still the only one where you can programatically modify the number of nodes in your cluster. If your goal is to launch a public facing site and automatically scale up to some limit as you get users, then AWS is a good choice. With AWS you are buying automated scalability and amazon's reliability (not that rackspace doesn't know what they're doing)

jawngee 18y ago
You can do it with Slicehost's API. http://articles.slicehost.com/assets/2008/10/3/Slicehost_API-17.pdf http://articles.slicehost.com/assets/2008/10/3/Slicehost_API...
- keefe 18y ago
  Interesting, I see those entries... I had been looking at this : http://www.slicehost.com/articles/2008/3/26/announcing-the-slicehost-api http://www.slicehost.com/articles/2008/3/26/announcing-the-s... ". Please note that the current iteration allows access to DNS only." I guess they had another iteration since then, thanks for the info!

delano 18y ago

You can do things with EC2 you can't do anywhere else. I've helped companies build deployment processes with EC2 that allows them to launch a staging environment with a single command that includes a complete copy of production data. They run their tests, then cut a release and shutdown the staging environment with another single command. That's not possible without EC2 and EBS.

jawngee 18y ago
But he's talking about hosting, not staging. And what you are describing is a good use of EC2. Hosting 24/7 is not.
- delano 18y ago
  Staging is one aspect of hosting. I will go even further and say that because a staging environment needs to mimic the production environment as close as possible it should be hosted by the same vendor too. You're right that if you compare numbers directly, some aspects of EC2 are more expensive than other vendors. My point is that AWS offers greater value by allowing you to do things you can't do anywhere else. Allocating static IP addresses on the fly for example.
jawngee 18y ago
Also, you are wrong. You can do that on slicehost with their API as well. In fact, with the slicehost api, you can take a snapshot of currently running system, and clone a new slice from that snapshot.
- delano 18y ago
  Can you create, attach, and take snapshots of multiple disks with Slicehost?

jrockway 18y ago

Depends on how much disk space you need. With Amazon, the space is virtually limitless, and transfers to and from S3 are free. With Slicehost and Linode, you get really tiny disks, and you have to pay for bandwidth to S3 if you need more. It's also hard to dynamically scale with Slicehost or Linode. You can't have a script bring an instance up for an hour and then shut it down when the load drops off. (Actually, you probably can, but that's not what it's designed for.) Obviously EC2 is not for everyone, but it is good if you need its features.

enjo 18y ago

Amazon provides a host of support services (Cloudfront CDN anyone??) that are trivial to manage from an existing EBS volume. The extra services that Amazon offers really make the process of going from zero to scale much simpler (albeit not 'easy') than any other host or collection of tools that I've used. That makes it worth the slightly higher costs for me.

kubrick 18y ago

I'd agree, except for all the reasons people gave below. Also, Slicehost is the only other service that provides RAM > 2GB. And EC2 offers more variety of configuration (higher CPU performance versions, larger RAM versions) than anyone else. I really wish Slicehost or Linode or SoftLayer or someone would do something a little closer to what Amazon's doing, and provide some enterprise-level competition. I have clients who would love to move to Slicehost but probably can't, because of the disk space limit and other similar restrictions.