4 ms·

This is no different that amazon EC2 naming servers "instances"

• tbrownaw 13y ago
  You are in a maze of twisty little rooms, all alike. "Instance" has a very well defined meaning, which leads to some standard implications. It means one particulate <thing> out of several, which are all alike. It implies that your <thing>, and in fact all <thing>s, has (have) no physical reality. It implies that <thing>s can be created and destroyed at will. It is also completely generic. You can have EC2 instances, ${APPLICATION} instances, object instances (in absolutely any object-oriented language, and several that aren't), database instances, etc. A virtual private server is a cheap knock-off of a real physical server. A server instance is something you get from an API instead of having to hire a guy to plug things in.
  • aioprisan 13y ago
    In the context of servers, I have never seen other web hosting platforms use the term "instance," in the context of on-demand server instance vs. just give me a server. While it seems commonplace now, I don't recall reading about other hosting platforms referring to their services as instances. Can you point to literature that does? For instance, from http://aws.amazon.com/ec2/instance-types/ http://aws.amazon.com/ec2/instance-types/ : "You can think of instances as virtual servers that can run applications." That's the AWS context of instances.