Cloud Computing Costs on Amazon EC2

Portal Home > Knowledgebase > Articles Database > Cloud Computing Costs on Amazon EC2

Posted by marchsl11, 09-21-2011, 06:04 AM
I'd really appreciate some help on this. The situation is that I'm a mostly front-end developer and don't have a systems admin to advise about the relevant aspects of designing an infrastructure for a community networking website. The main question for me was scalability. Assuming that I hit 1-2 mill active users in a very short span of time (read 2-5 months), I wanted to be able to use the Cloud to provide the service. Working out the costings for the Cloud as opposed to a dedicated server is difficult... can anyone help me with this? Essentially, I need to calculate the cost of using EC2 for: - 1-2 million active users with 5+ million page views per day - each user uploading photographs, video, messages, etc. How much would this cost per month approximately? I've seen the cost calculator on Amazon but I'm not in systems, so I'm not sure what my requirements in terms of memory, etc, should be.
Posted by dediserve, 09-21-2011, 08:47 AM
Rather than Amazon, perhaps your best bet is to talk to a cloud / infrastructure provider who can advise and work with you - AWS is notoriously expensive - particularly for your time of work load
Posted by tchen, 09-21-2011, 11:54 AM
You might want to talk to Acquia and run by your requirements. A little background on them: http://aws.amazon.com/solutions/case-studies/acquia/ Or 2bits.com as they've been able to reach 3.4mil/day on a single-server Drupal installation. http://2010.drupalcamptoronto.org/se...ver-and-drupal Unfortunately, it's not a apples-to-apples comparison between dedi's and AWS. And your needs do seem a bit more unique give the media focus. While on face value, you can actually get much cheaper bandwidth out of a series of dedicated servers with Cassandra, the reality is that there's no friction to using CloudFront if you're within the AWS ecosytem. Should you want the same level of service, you have to keep in mind that CloudFront is a highly distributed and has many more edge locations than you'd otherwise be able to duplicate yourself. Attempting to do so would entail raising the dedicated setup to about par/GB. Then again, maybe you don't need a CDN, and additional latency is OK. AWS is expensive but good if you actually NEED all its features. Otherwise, you're subsidizing everyone else. You might also consider a hybrid feature, as in pushing video off to dedis, while serving the smaller files and web from EC2. Really though, the engineering and ops cost are going to be the bulk of your costs. Someone has to manage the memcache and all the other components. It's not a set-it-and-forget-it type of thing.
Posted by dedicatedconnservice, 09-26-2011, 04:00 PM
No matter which sys. admin you speak with, your requirement with no budget constraints, any cloud will the be solution. Now, if you start putting budget constraints and some real requirement, dedicated servers at a colocation facility might be a better solution. Just a quick math on the bandwidth, "1-2 million active users with 5+ million page views per day - each user uploading photographs, video, messages, etc." assume 1megabyter per person, that 1 terabyte which equates to 8 terabits of bandwidth just to upload. Then for 5 million people to view, you just might have priced yourself out of EC2. I'm just guessing here. This is just one aspect. If you have more details, please post to the forum and we will try to get more specific answers to you.
Posted by Website themes, 09-26-2011, 04:39 PM
I see so many posts like this and I have to wonder whether these great websites ever amount to anything? We never really find out. My suggestion is to start with shared hosting or a cheap VPS. If you run out of resources upgrade to a dedicated server. Upgrading/moving hosts is easy. Buying something that you may or may not need is a bad idea and frankly a waste of money. Bottom line is that no one can tell you your hosting requirements until you actually host with them and they see what resources your website is consuming. Yes they will pretend to know and will try to sell you something really expensive. But then they are only preying on your ignorance.
Posted by marchsl11, 10-13-2011, 04:26 AM
Here's the thing: scalability is a huge issue for me. The idea is that due to the nature of the site, we could potentially build up a large user network in a short amount of time. As a result, I wouldn't feel comfortable using a dedicated server that I then would have to manage myself. This would be highly problematic and I don't want the whole structure to fall down in case our growth is really that rapid. Therefore, I'd be more likely to use the Cloud. I'm at the stage where I'm going forward to look for investment now, and I need to build in the direct costs of using the EC2. I'm just not really sure how much I should budget in for say: 125,000 users 250,000 users 500,000 users 1,000,000 users All of them with the capacity to upload media and create their own profiles.
Posted by Website themes, 10-13-2011, 04:50 AM
You don't have to manage or move your site around yourself. You can buy managed hosting and your hosting provider will handle all that for you. There are some big name VPS providers who also do dedicated server hosting. And if you outgrow a single dedicated server you can get another one and another and so on until you have your own private cloud. So better to go with them because you can start small and save money and grow if and when you have to. What's more they do it all for you!
Posted by tchen, 10-15-2011, 09:50 PM
A friendly word of advice, pick *A* peak target and get a quote from a reputable developer. A spread like that above will get a lot of dismissals because they're really different architectures and no one wants to spend the time to spec out so many different variables.
Posted by SanWebBiz, 10-15-2011, 10:23 PM
Does anyone have reasonable midline estimates for "dedicated" semi-dedicated, or VPS Cloud hosting capable for the specifications provided in the 125K-250k user range?

Add to Favourites Print this Article