[illumin8]

This is just factually incorrect. AWS hard partitions all instance types, except T2 (which are overcommitted, and clearly advertised as such: "burstable").

So, if you provision an x1.32xlarge with 128 vCPU and 1.92TB of RAM, you get a single, dedicated host with that much CPU and memory. Nobody else gets it - it's dedicated to you 100%.

The profit AWS is making is purely due to datacenter efficiency and being able to automate their operations at scale.

[hueving]

>The profit AWS is making is purely due to datacenter efficiency and being able to automate their operations at scale.

That's what they want you to think, but a lot of it comes in the form of ripping you off for bandwidth to actually get data out of EC2.

[dexterdog]

I've been with AWS for about 10 years now on a number of projects. Bandwidth pricing has always been my major gripe. Almost everything else I consider fairly priced for what I get and how hands-off I get to be.

[patrickg_zill]

The instant you wrote "128vCPU" you undermined your own argument.

What is a vCPU?

[brianwawok]

It's early defined in the docs. The machine also has a physical core count that is yours.

[patrickg_zill]

There is nothing stopping Amazon from having a machine that is double that config, and renting you half of it, however.

As soon as 32GB DIMMs drop enough in price, I would expect them to do exactly that. You can configure a Dell R930 with e7 Haswell CPUs online, if you want to double-check it. Not sure if the R930 can go to 8 CPUs (which the e7 Haswells CPUs support).

[dexterdog]

But as soon as they double the size of the machine there is no reason for them to not have an instance type that is the size of the machine minus the host layer.