AWS Pricing

Explaining the confusing AWS/EC2 pricing system

Transcript

1. AWS Pricing
   Why is it so confusing?
   James Singleton
   

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2. EC2 Pricing
   • Instance Size
   • OS
   • Regions
   • Instances
   – On Demand
   – Reserved
   • Light
   • Medium
   • Heavy
   – Spot
   https://aws.amazon.com/ec2/pricing/
   

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3. Operating System
   • Linux vs. Windows
   • Linux is cheaper
   – Unless it’s enterprise (Red Hat / SUSE)
   • SQL costs more
   – Use RDS instead
   – EBS is slow anyway
   – Or don’t use MS SQL
   

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4. Regions
   • EU
   – Dublin (slightly more expensive)
   • US
   – Virginia (slightly cheaper)
   – Oregon (slightly cheaper)
   – California (slightly more expensive)
   • Asia Pacific
   • South America
   

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5. Aside: Availability Zones (AZs)
   • Not to be confused with regions
   • AZ = data centre
   • Multiple AZs in each region
   – E.g. 3 data centres in Dublin
   • Use multiple for resilience
   – E.g. eu-west-1a / eu-west-1b / eu-west-1c
   – NB: zones are not the same between customers
   • I.e. our 1a is not someone else’s 1a
   

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6. Instances
   • On-Demand Instances
   – The default
   – Most expensive option
   • Especially if dedicated as well (not sharing a host)
   – Maximum flexibility
   • Spot Instances
   – Other peoples’ unused reserved instances
   – Open market and the price changes
   – NOT the same as…
   • Reserved Instances…
   https://aws.amazon.com/ec2/purchasing-options/
   

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7. Reserved Instances
   • 3 types of reserved (i.e. 5 types total)
   • Upfront cost & lower hourly rates
   • Light Utilization
   – On some of the time
   • Medium Utilization
   – On most of the time
   • Heavy Utilization
   – On all of the time
   – This is what you want for an always on server
   

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8. How Much Will We Be Charged?
   • It Depends
   • Cost includes other things…
   – S3 (web storage)
   – EBS (instance disks)
   – ELBs (load balancers)
   – Data Transfer (Internet and other AZs)
   • Use the pricing calculator
   • Consider another host that has flat rates
   

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9. Questions?
   

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10. Thanks
    

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