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>> 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.
>
> Impressive. (Cost-wise, I mean.) I guess this is one of the great wins
> of virtualization.
Indeed yes.
>> It is a *virtual* server though - your stuff runs in a virtualisation
>> system. (They claim to guarantee a certain minimum performance level
>> though.)
>
> Same with Amazon, I expect.
Yeah. Although the fact that it takes a minute or two to start up makes
me think it's spending time trying to find a free machine to run it on.
Maybe each physical machine runs up to X virtual machines or something?
(I would imagine transfering a runnin image from place to place would be
infeasieble, even in a datacenter.)
>> 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.
>
> Agreed. It's also designed for you to (for example) spin up more servers
> for your shopping carts during the christmas rush.
Indeed. If you're a company and you're large enough to actually need
*more than one* server at short notice, EC2 totally makes sense. For an
individual user who just wants some POV-Ray time... EC2 does not, even
remotely, make sense.
>> 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".
>
> You pay for the bandwidth, too. Not a lot, but again you have to measure
> how much you need and what it'll cost.
You can easily buy a machine, put it in your kitchen, and leave it
running all day. But you can't easily get seriously low latency to the
Internet. EC2 gives you that. ;-)
>>> 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
>
> Assuming you didn't have one you could render on, of course.
Well, you need to own a PC in order to design it in the first place. ;-)
Plus, as I say, buying a PC works out vastly cheaper than using EC2 if
all you want is computer time.
Now, how does GPGPU change this picture? ;-)
--
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*
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