4 ms·

That assumes that Digital Ocean doesn't improve their offering via a hardware upgrade or price discount in the next 3 years.

lelf 12y ago
You can be pretty sure Amazon will do that too
- _delirium 12y ago
  They will, but only for people who didn't lock in a reserved instance. Amazon doesn't typically upgrade instance types, but rather introduces new ones. So if you lock in a t2.micro instance for a 3-year reserved period, you are stuck with exactly those specs for 3 years. If they introduce a t3.* instance class next year, you don't get a free upgrade to the new specs.
  - arturhoo 12y ago
    A year or so ago, they introduced the ability to change the instance type between the same family type [1]. [1] http://docs.aws.amazon.com/AWSEC2/latest/UserGuide/ri-modifying.html http://docs.aws.amazon.com/AWSEC2/latest/UserGuide/ri-modify...
    - _delirium 12y ago
      That increases the flexibility, but afaict doesn't help with the upgradeability angle. When Amazon passes along the technological dividend by creating new instances with a better price/performance profile, it's usually as new family types. So your reserved t2.* instance can swap with other t2.* instances, but won't be able to take advantage of any t3.* instance that's introduced in the future. It's not a huge deal, just something to take into account when projecting out costs: the 3-year reserved instances are locking in today's prices until 2017, in return for a discount over today's non-reserved prices. Whether this produces long term gains requires some assumptions about how the market will change over the next 3 years.
- lsc 12y ago
  The interesting thing about Amazon (vs the VPS market, where DigitalOcean, Linode, and I live) is that when amazon lowers prices, they lower prices for existing customers who don't make changes to their accounts. When a VPS provider like Linode lowers their prices, they usually charge existing customers the same amount, and simply give them more resources. Just an observation. I'm not criticizing either way of doing things; obviously, lowering prices straight out is better for the customer, and keeping revenue stable while just upgrading hardware is better for the provider. Last time I lowered prices, I lowered prices directly, and just took the revenue hit. I'm planning my next upgrade now, and instead of lowering prices, I plan on giving everyone more ram/disk/ssd, while holding prices steady. It is something I've thought about... the problem is that I'm going to have to go down by more than half, and it's way easier to lease enough hardware to more than double everyone's allocations than it is to double my customer base to make up for the lost revenue.
  - jwn 12y ago
    Perhaps I have selective memory, but I've never seen Linode lower prices, they just keep upping the specs on the lowest tier. It reminds me of something I learned while working for Comcast years ago - never lower prices, just keep adding "value".
    - lsc 12y ago
      >Perhaps I have selective memory, but I've never seen Linode lower prices, they just keep upping the specs on the lowest tier. Yes, exactly. I'm saying that is the standard way to do it in the VPS market, in part because until D.O. most of us were self-funding, and it's way easier to pay for double the compute resources than to deal with a 50% cut in revenue. In the "cloud" market where amazon is, the standard way to do it is to directly lower prices.
  - koko775 12y ago
    As one of your customers, I've already committed $X to my instance. I would be delighted to get 2x resources compared to .5x cost.
- asharpe 12y ago
  Be careful here. Despite announcing 42 price reductions over the 7 years of AWS existence, the M1 tier was only reduced for the first time in 3 years after Google/Azure dropped their pricing. They push through a huge number of price drops, but sometimes (actually often) their headline drop is one very small, unique charge, leaving everything else unaffected.

lelf 12y ago

You can be pretty sure Amazon will do that too

_delirium 12y ago
They will, but only for people who didn't lock in a reserved instance. Amazon doesn't typically upgrade instance types, but rather introduces new ones. So if you lock in a t2.micro instance for a 3-year reserved period, you are stuck with exactly those specs for 3 years. If they introduce a t3.* instance class next year, you don't get a free upgrade to the new specs.
- arturhoo 12y ago
  A year or so ago, they introduced the ability to change the instance type between the same family type [1]. [1] http://docs.aws.amazon.com/AWSEC2/latest/UserGuide/ri-modifying.html http://docs.aws.amazon.com/AWSEC2/latest/UserGuide/ri-modify...
  - _delirium 12y ago
    That increases the flexibility, but afaict doesn't help with the upgradeability angle. When Amazon passes along the technological dividend by creating new instances with a better price/performance profile, it's usually as new family types. So your reserved t2.* instance can swap with other t2.* instances, but won't be able to take advantage of any t3.* instance that's introduced in the future. It's not a huge deal, just something to take into account when projecting out costs: the 3-year reserved instances are locking in today's prices until 2017, in return for a discount over today's non-reserved prices. Whether this produces long term gains requires some assumptions about how the market will change over the next 3 years.
lsc 12y ago
The interesting thing about Amazon (vs the VPS market, where DigitalOcean, Linode, and I live) is that when amazon lowers prices, they lower prices for existing customers who don't make changes to their accounts. When a VPS provider like Linode lowers their prices, they usually charge existing customers the same amount, and simply give them more resources. Just an observation. I'm not criticizing either way of doing things; obviously, lowering prices straight out is better for the customer, and keeping revenue stable while just upgrading hardware is better for the provider. Last time I lowered prices, I lowered prices directly, and just took the revenue hit. I'm planning my next upgrade now, and instead of lowering prices, I plan on giving everyone more ram/disk/ssd, while holding prices steady. It is something I've thought about... the problem is that I'm going to have to go down by more than half, and it's way easier to lease enough hardware to more than double everyone's allocations than it is to double my customer base to make up for the lost revenue.
- jwn 12y ago
  Perhaps I have selective memory, but I've never seen Linode lower prices, they just keep upping the specs on the lowest tier. It reminds me of something I learned while working for Comcast years ago - never lower prices, just keep adding "value".
  - lsc 12y ago
    >Perhaps I have selective memory, but I've never seen Linode lower prices, they just keep upping the specs on the lowest tier. Yes, exactly. I'm saying that is the standard way to do it in the VPS market, in part because until D.O. most of us were self-funding, and it's way easier to pay for double the compute resources than to deal with a 50% cut in revenue. In the "cloud" market where amazon is, the standard way to do it is to directly lower prices.
- koko775 12y ago
  As one of your customers, I've already committed $X to my instance. I would be delighted to get 2x resources compared to .5x cost.
asharpe 12y ago
Be careful here. Despite announcing 42 price reductions over the 7 years of AWS existence, the M1 tier was only reduced for the first time in 3 years after Google/Azure dropped their pricing. They push through a huge number of price drops, but sometimes (actually often) their headline drop is one very small, unique charge, leaving everything else unaffected.