>> 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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