[ww520]

That's the EC2 on-demand price. Getting a dedicated box means going long term; comparing to EC2's reserved pricing is more compatible in need.

Here are the EC2 rates for reserved instance (total including hourly fee plus reservation fee):

$375/month for reserving 1 year

$282/month for reserving 3 years

It's not too bad compared to Hetzner. On-demand instance is for spinning it up on very short notice and shutting it down after the work is done.

[moonboots]

Reserved instance pricing brings the monthly price down, but for me it's not making ec2 look more appealing. The 3 year price is still 2.5 times the hetzner monthly price after initial setup fees, you lose the ability to autoscale this box, and you are locked-in for 3 years. I would argue a Hetzner box is more like ec2 on demand than reserved because it can be canceled at the end of any month. You can't spin it down immediately and stop paying, but you are definitely not locked in.

[rehack]

> I would argue a Hetzner box is more like ec2 on demand than reserved because it can be canceled at the end of any month.

Don't agree with this, unless there is hourly billing. As if you just want to try out some thing, say a large instance instead of medium, to just see how it changes something, won't be possible here.

edit: would love to know why the down vote?

[moonboots]

I'm not arguing that a monthly dedicated server is equal to ec2 on-demand. I'm arguing that it's closer to on-demand than a 3 year plan.

[rehack]

Can agree with that. 1 month vs 3 years.

In fact we ourselves, have not been able to go for a reserved instance yet. Although have been thinking about it for an year or so. As there is always a likeliness of going to a bigger configuration in the near future (small->medium or medium->large etc.). So you are not sure if reserving is a good idea.

So you settle for the gains of the on-demand e.g. having more instances in the day

[sorenbs]

Reserved instances are not tied to a specific machine. If you buy say 5 reserved instances of a specific server type, you have a pool of servers that can run at a discount. IE if you decide your DB needs to go on a bigger box you can apply the reserved instance discount to some of your application servers or whatever.

[taligent]

They are tied to the availability zone though.

Not a big deal if you are from the US but if you are from Australia for example then you wouldn't be able to take advantage of a Sydney availability zone if it become available (as it is rumored).