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>> Well now... It seems that even if you store some absurd amount of data
>> like 1GB (think how many years that would take to upload...) it costs
>> less than 50p/month. Which is nothing. (I currently pay £5/month.)
>
> Yep. I think my last bill was seventeen cents.
To quote the bitch from Friends, "ooo, that's *interesting*!"
>> On the other hand, 30 days of instance time on EC2 is almost 80$.
>> Exchange rates vary, but this compares wildly unfavourably with my
>> current hosts' demands of £15/month.
>
> Is that for a machine where you can install your own OS and such? Or is
> that for just a web host, where you're (for example) sharing an Apache
> server with others?
That's for root SSH access to a Linux box that you can install whatever
you want on. (Although presumably you can't change the OS - how would
you talk to it while you're installing it?) Several flavours of Linux
availbable.
It is a *virtual* server though - your stuff runs in a virtualisation
system. (They claim to guarantee a certain minimum performance level
though.)
If you want a *dedicated* server (i.e., a real physical box that's just
for you) it's drastically more expensive - like £90/month or something.
>> The verdict: EC2 is absurdly expensive.
>
> It's also designed for you to rent it briefly, not for a long time.
As with any kind of renting, there will always be a point where renting
becomes more expensive than buying. The question is only where that
point is.
If you just want to *run* stuff, EC2 sets the tipping point really,
really low. (E.g., the POV-Ray thing I'm currently trying to do will
probably take at least a week, more likely a month. And I want to do a
whole series of others afterwards. For the price EC2 want, I could
probably buy a killer PC several times over.)
The advantace of EC2 is either
- You only want it for a little while.
- You want to do something that requires massive amounts of Internet
bandwidth.
Buying a PC which out-performs EC2 in compute terms only isn't
expensive. Beating the connectivity EC2 is likely to have would be...
uh... "expensive".
> If you want to rent a machine for three hours to do a
> render, it makes a lot of sense.
It does? Surely it would make more sense to just run it on my own PC for
3 hours, while I go watch TV or something. Costs £0. :-P
>> For about £200 you could *buy* a half-decent PC. If you leave it
>> running for 1 year, it will have cost you [slightly more than] £200.
>
> Well, you would need the connectivity too, which I understand is pretty
> expensive where you are. :-)
Maybe that's it: Rendering stuff doesn't require gigabit Internet access!
--
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*
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