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The amount you pay for a "small" instance on EC2 is the same price as a machine you can get with gigenet that is more powerful than the "Large" instance. That

by moe 17y ago

The amount you pay for a "small" instance on EC2 is the same price as a machine you can get with gigenet that is more powerful than the "Large" instance. That is simply false. No idea what kind of beef you have with amazon but please get your facts straight. You seem to consequently ignore that with amazon you not only pay for a piece of hardware but also for the flexibility and infrastructure that comes with it. Yes, your cheapo host might give you a gig more RAM and a few more megahertz for your dollar - but it doesn't have equivalents to EBS, S3, CloudFront, instant provisioning and all the other goodies that make EC2 worthwhile. It will probably also not give you means to recover within minutes when your shiney, dedicated pizza box decides to blow a fuse.

DanBlake 17y ago
Cheapo host? Theplanet and others have significantly more servers and datacenters than amazon. Most servers sold from either provider come with 1-2TB of bandwidth. How much does 2TB of bandwidth cost on amazon again? Right. I already said /multiple times/ that the other amazon services are well worth it. I only said EC2 /in my mind/ is not worth it, unless its for your overflow. If you have a static need for a server- As in, a webserver that will always be on, Then you are better off getting a dedicated. The bandwidth will cost less. The server itself will cost less. You will get more processing power.. You will get more RAM. You will not get instant provisioning. But then again, I dont randomly change the specs on my webservers now either way.
- moe 17y ago
  Most servers sold from either provider come with 1-2TB of bandwidth. How much does 2TB of bandwidth cost on amazon again? Right. 340 dollars. If 340 dollars matter in your equation then I think we're talking about different things here. I only said EC2 /in my mind/ is not worth it Actually you come across like talking ultimo, just like in your next sentence... If you have a static need for a server- As in, a webserver that will always be on, Then you are better off getting a dedicated. See? That sentence simply doesn't work in that general form. If you have a need for a single webserver then yes, EC2 is probably not cost effective (although it can be even there, depending on the use-case). Once you're talking about a deployment with multiple servers the picture changes. Not always in the favor of Amazon but often enough to refute such a general statement. Looking at it again it seems like all your arguments come from the angle of renting a single server. - In that light you make some sense. But please also see that amazon starts to make a lot of sense in the mid-range and up, in many situations.
  - DanBlake 17y ago
    You might want to go over your figures there. Bandwidth is only 10 cents a gigabyte if you have done 150TB in transfer already. For common folk, its 17 cents a GB. == 170$ per TB I did a rundown a few posts up where I price out the need for a fairly common php/mysql website that would cost 600$ a month on ec2 to run, yet it only costs 200$ on dedicated. Also, Im not talking about single server setups only. Show me a scenario where its cheaper to run your entire business on EC2 than a mix of Dedicated + EC2. Seriously, I want to know of one situation where it would cost LESS money to run my entire 24/7 business on amazon then on dedicated or a mix of dedicated and EC2.
    - moe 17y ago
      You might want to go over your figures there. Bandwidth is only 10 cents a gigabyte if you have done 150TB in transfer already. For common folk, its 17 cents a GB. == 170$ per TB Thanks for pointing that out, my bad. Edited it as to not collect karma for false figures. I stand by my point, be it $140 more or less. Also, Im not talking about single server setups only. Show me a scenario where its cheaper to run your entire business on EC2 than a mix of Dedicated + EC2. Please see my first comment in this discussion where I said exactly that. It's exactly this mix which makes the most sense in most cases. Also, Im not talking about single server setups only. Show me a scenario where its cheaper to run your entire business on EC2 than a mix of Dedicated + EC2. I never claimed that - but yes, even those scenarios exist. If your business is number crunching then EC2 might be a good deal. Likewise if your business is strongly saisonal (e.g. ticket sales for sports events or such). Moreover there are many scenarios where EC2 enables things you could not realistically afford otherwise; do you think dropbox could have realized their storage and scalability needs on conventional hardware? While traffic might be "ridiculously" expensive on AWS, storage happens to be riciculously cheap. You don't get $.10/GB "infinitely" scalable random access storage elsewhere. And finally, closer to your usual PHP/MySQL shop, in many companies the savings due to flexibility and availability simply outweigh the markup on the hosting bill. You keep throwing figures in the 3 digit range. Sorry man, but your admins burn that per hour while they reinvent all the little infrastructure things that amazon already has. Trust me, not all of amazon's customers running those 1mio-or-something instances are idiots.

by moe 17y ago

DanBlake 17y ago

Cheapo host? Theplanet and others have significantly more servers and datacenters than amazon. Most servers sold from either provider come with 1-2TB of bandwidth. How much does 2TB of bandwidth cost on amazon again? Right. I already said /multiple times/ that the other amazon services are well worth it. I only said EC2 /in my mind/ is not worth it, unless its for your overflow. If you have a static need for a server- As in, a webserver that will always be on, Then you are better off getting a dedicated. The bandwidth will cost less. The server itself will cost less. You will get more processing power.. You will get more RAM. You will not get instant provisioning. But then again, I dont randomly change the specs on my webservers now either way.

moe 17y ago
Most servers sold from either provider come with 1-2TB of bandwidth. How much does 2TB of bandwidth cost on amazon again? Right. 340 dollars. If 340 dollars matter in your equation then I think we're talking about different things here. I only said EC2 /in my mind/ is not worth it Actually you come across like talking ultimo, just like in your next sentence... If you have a static need for a server- As in, a webserver that will always be on, Then you are better off getting a dedicated. See? That sentence simply doesn't work in that general form. If you have a need for a single webserver then yes, EC2 is probably not cost effective (although it can be even there, depending on the use-case). Once you're talking about a deployment with multiple servers the picture changes. Not always in the favor of Amazon but often enough to refute such a general statement. Looking at it again it seems like all your arguments come from the angle of renting a single server. - In that light you make some sense. But please also see that amazon starts to make a lot of sense in the mid-range and up, in many situations.
- DanBlake 17y ago
  You might want to go over your figures there. Bandwidth is only 10 cents a gigabyte if you have done 150TB in transfer already. For common folk, its 17 cents a GB. == 170$ per TB I did a rundown a few posts up where I price out the need for a fairly common php/mysql website that would cost 600$ a month on ec2 to run, yet it only costs 200$ on dedicated. Also, Im not talking about single server setups only. Show me a scenario where its cheaper to run your entire business on EC2 than a mix of Dedicated + EC2. Seriously, I want to know of one situation where it would cost LESS money to run my entire 24/7 business on amazon then on dedicated or a mix of dedicated and EC2.
  - moe 17y ago
    You might want to go over your figures there. Bandwidth is only 10 cents a gigabyte if you have done 150TB in transfer already. For common folk, its 17 cents a GB. == 170$ per TB Thanks for pointing that out, my bad. Edited it as to not collect karma for false figures. I stand by my point, be it $140 more or less. Also, Im not talking about single server setups only. Show me a scenario where its cheaper to run your entire business on EC2 than a mix of Dedicated + EC2. Please see my first comment in this discussion where I said exactly that. It's exactly this mix which makes the most sense in most cases. Also, Im not talking about single server setups only. Show me a scenario where its cheaper to run your entire business on EC2 than a mix of Dedicated + EC2. I never claimed that - but yes, even those scenarios exist. If your business is number crunching then EC2 might be a good deal. Likewise if your business is strongly saisonal (e.g. ticket sales for sports events or such). Moreover there are many scenarios where EC2 enables things you could not realistically afford otherwise; do you think dropbox could have realized their storage and scalability needs on conventional hardware? While traffic might be "ridiculously" expensive on AWS, storage happens to be riciculously cheap. You don't get $.10/GB "infinitely" scalable random access storage elsewhere. And finally, closer to your usual PHP/MySQL shop, in many companies the savings due to flexibility and availability simply outweigh the markup on the hosting bill. You keep throwing figures in the 3 digit range. Sorry man, but your admins burn that per hour while they reinvent all the little infrastructure things that amazon already has. Trust me, not all of amazon's customers running those 1mio-or-something instances are idiots.