[Cialug] Fwd: Announcing Micro Instances for Amazon EC2

[Matthew Nuzum]

Somethign I've still not done on EC2 is run MySQL. I know that Amazon
has a service that makes this easier but I've not played with it yet.
Anyone able to summarize how it works?

On Thu, Sep 9, 2010 at 9:47 AM, Kenneth Younger <kyounger at gmail.com> wrote:
> Wow. I'm at Rackspace right now, because their prices were better, but this
> might just have me switch back.
>
> One of the other benefits that EC2 offers is the high-memory or high-CPU
> instances. Rackspace just gives you a proportionate amount more RAM, Disk,
> and CPU in their next-larger instance size. One of the instances I plan on
> running will be a Memcache server, which I was just going to have co-exists
> with the file server, but this lets me separate those out. Me likey.
>
> On Thu, Sep 9, 2010 at 9:40 AM, Matthew Nuzum <newz at bearfruit.org> wrote:
>>
>> On Thu, Sep 9, 2010 at 9:11 AM, L. V. Lammert <lvl at omnitec.net> wrote:
>> > At 08:48 AM 9/9/2010, you wrote:
>> >>EC2 has been a very cheap way to experiment with servers in the past
>> >>at $0.075 per hour but that ran to $54/mo if you used it full time.
>> >>This new instance brings the price down to $14 /mo for a full time
>> >>instance which puts it into the same ballpark as a linode ($20/mo but
>> >>not an apples to apples comparison).
>> >
>> > Any feel of how the 'per hour' translates to actual usage? For
>> > example, does the cost structure actually product no charge when a
>> > web site is not getting page request? Does a system ever use *more*
>> > than the .02/hr?
>>
>> The fee is per hour that the instance is running. So if it's idle you
>> get charged. There are no partial hours, so if you use it for 1 min or
>> 42 min or 60 min it's one hour.
>>
>> The only additional charges are for bandwidth and storage. Both are
>> ridiculously cheap. I have a few gigs of data on S3 and my cost is
>> pennies a month.
>>
>> EC2 is not like a normal vps though. There is, by default at least, no
>> persistent storage. So if you boot it up, install nagios and then shut
>> it down, when you boot it up again you'll have to install nagios
>> again. You have to deliberately create persistent storage.
>>
>> A common way is to customize your server installation and then create
>> a snapshot of this and in the future, instead of booting a default
>> image, boot your snapshot. This uses some of your storage space so if
>> you have a 2GB snapshot (that's quite big) you'll add $0.30 per month
>> to your cost. The benefit to this is huge, though. If you have a
>> website that scales horizontally (i.e. one server can handle 50 users,
>> two can handle 100 users, three 150 and etc) then you can use EC2 to
>> automatically spawn additional instances when your main server's load
>> reach 70% (or whatever) and then automatically shut them down when the
>> utilization drops. The rule system is quite sophisticated so you have
>> a lot of flexibility.
>>
>> The cost to experiment with these is so piddly that for $5 you can
>> spend a weekend becoming an expert, or less than $1 to give it a quick
>> try.
>>
>> Here are instructions: http://www.ubuntu.com/cloud/public/deploy In
>> the time it takes to download a CD ISO you could have 10 servers up
>> and running.
>>
>> --
>> Matthew Nuzum
>> newz2000 on freenode, skype, linkedin, identi.ca and twitter
>>
>> "Lead, follow or get the hell out of the way." –Robert Nuzum (My dad)
>> summarizing an old military quote
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-- 
Matthew Nuzum
newz2000 on freenode, skype, linkedin, identi.ca and twitter

"Lead, follow or get the hell out of the way." –Robert Nuzum (My dad)
summarizing an old military quote