[burningout]

There is no point proposing them to use dedicated servers as already many did. They are 100% sure dedicated servers cost more, so let them keep their ec2's and let them fail!

I wonder why google, yahoo and facebook don't run their site on ec2... if it's cheaper.

[axod]

I think failure is looking more and more likely the more I read of their blog and details of how they run things.

It's a very interesting case to analyze though - perhaps acquired too soon, never had enough pressure on monetization until it was too late... Questions over how well the site was architected. Sounds like they're using a lot of 'new' unproven 'hip' things. Casandra? :/

Seems like the founders and YC have been extremely quiet about the problems... It'd be interesting to hear their take on things.

Also can't imagine how Conde Naste could be happy with things.

[rmc]

Google et al. do essentially run their servers on EC2. However it's their own version of EC2, in their datacentres. They have a whole pile of virtualised servers they can turn on an off by the minutes. They have internal accounting systems so that each team is 'charged' based on what they use. Google are so big, so it's cheaper for them to make their own datacentre than use someone else's (i.e. Amazon's).

EC2 only came about because Amazon run their servers on it, and they had so much spare capacity, so they sell it.

[aphexairlines]

> EC2 only came about because Amazon run their servers on it, and they had so much spare capacity, so they sell it.

False.

http://itknowledgeexchange.techtarget.com/cloud-computing/20...

[ergo98]

>Google et al. do essentially run their servers on EC2.

If by EC2 you mean "bunches of servers", sure.

On GoGrid you can buy cloud servers, or you can rent dedicated servers (and you can intermix the two). The latter are quite a bit less expensive for a given quanta of resources, while the former obviously offer greater dynamic flexibility (with a significant premium).

Actually considering the terrible I/O rate of services like EC2, dedicated often offers a dramatic advantage.

>They have a whole pile of virtualised servers they can turn on an off by the minutes.

But they don't. So they use none of the upside, and have all of the downside. Yay!

[jedberg]

> But they don't. So they use none of the upside, and have all of the downside. Yay!

That's not true at all. We shut down machines when we are over capacity (rarely) and we often have to bring up a bunch of new machines where there is a traffic spike.

[jedberg]

> I wonder why google, yahoo and facebook don't run their site on ec2... if it's cheaper.

Well, for one, they are A LOT bigger than us. But you'd be surprised who DOES run on EC2. The biggest one I'm allowed to tell you about is Netflix. Their entire streaming service is run off EC2. I guess they're idiots too, huh?

[axod]

They have a business model and revenue. It doesn't matter quite so much what they use. $1000 hosting costs vs $10k hosting costs for them is 'meh'.

For startups, and Reddit, the difference does(should) matter.

[eli]

Well that's hardly a fair point. It's going to depend on the scale of your traffic, the type of site, the networking/sysadmin manpower available, tolerance for failure, etc...

EC2 certainly isn't always cheaper, but it also certainly can be cheaper.