[JoshTriplett]

What's the smallest size for which those heuristics keep the snapshot cached?

(I'm currently using 1GB snapshots, because my actual disk image is a tiny fraction of that size. But if bumping that to 2GB or 4GB would make it faster, that's a small price to pay.)

[cperciva]

I believe 1 GB is also fast.

[JoshTriplett]

Thanks, that helps to hear!

Do you have any other wisdom regarding mysterious reasons for fast or slow booting? EC2's boot process is deeply opaque, and any insight at all is better than nothing.

[cperciva]

Nothing comes to mind, but if you want to drop me an email I can walk you through some benchmarking.

[richardwhiuk]

At a guess, powers of 2 are fast?

[cperciva]

5 is not a power of 2. ;-)

[messe]

Gotta admit it's pretty close though.