| I realize that many here need to plan for extremely bursty or massively scalable setups, but for 99% of applications AWS seems lousy in terms of SLA and overpriced for what you get. You can get premium colocation for a 1U or 2U server for $200 a month, ie. $2400 per year. This premium colocation comes with phone and email support for most basic Linux and networking tasks, 100% network and power uptime guarantees, etc. AWS does not offer much support unless you pay more, and as we have seen in the past, they do have outages. A server from Aberdeeninc.com (price for 1 server without negotiation or shopping around), far superior to an xlarge, is about $3100 including shipping (Stirling 169 1U, 2x 5504 CPUs (8 cores), 24GB RAM, 2x 500GB Seagate 32MB cache). Meanwhile an xlarge RS will cost almost $4k per year. So, over 3 years:
AWS xlarge: $12K Premium colo + 1U server: $7200 plus $3100 = $10.3K . And that is for just one instance. I would be very interested in hearing real-world testing results of what an AWS compute unit actually ends up being comparable to vs. a relatively modern CPU like the quad core Opterons and Xeons. |
There are pros and cons to each. I've worked in the hosting/colo space for many years. I think there's a time in a companies infrastructure and scaling needs where being able to customize your hardware and software is the right decision. I see a hybrid future, actually it's already here.
AWS Pros: I can fail over to another datacenter pretty quickly (depends on how you manage your infrastructure). With colo, that's not possible without more cost.
I can quickly spin up or down instances as needed (based on traffic patterns). To have a standby server or servers at a colo = $$$ , or maybe have the dedicated server provider boot up a few of their dedicated servers ?
s3 (tons of storage) - If you've built-out clustered storage systems, you know how expensive (hardware/management) that can be.
Ping,Pipe,Power - They've been managing data centers for many years and have the experience to keep the lights on.
AWS Cons:
Needs better support.
Price: They're priced above a usual VPS, but you need to consider the flexibility they provide.(API,ZONES)
I think for startups aws/slicehost/linode can work.