[Eclyps]

When you reserve an instance, it doesn't entirely eliminate the hourly cost to run it. What you are essentially doing is paying a large chunk up-front in exchange for a heavily discounted hourly rate, which ends up saving you money by the end of your 1 - 3 year contract.

[ealexhudson]

Isn't that what I'm saying? That the cost should increase, albeit at a much more gradual rate, from the start of the term to the end?

[promptcloud]

Heavy utilization reservation is different. See this page http://docs.aws.amazon.com/AWSEC2/latest/UserGuide/InstanceS...

Quote from the page above " Light and Medium Utilization Reserved Instances also are billed by the instance-hour for the time that instances are in a running state; if you do not run the instance in an hour, there is zero usage charge. Partial instance-hours consumed are billed as full hours. Heavy Utilization Reserved Instances are billed for every hour during the entire Reserved Instance term (which means you’re charged the hourly fee regardless of whether any usage has occurred during an hour). "

[ealexhudson]

Full marks for demonstrating that the AWS pricing schedule can continue to hold surprises :-)

[msmith]

Wow, that certainly is surprising. I've looked at the EC2 pricing page many times and never noticed that.

I think you pasted the wrong link, though. Here's the page which contains that quote: http://aws.amazon.com/ec2/pricing/#reserved