Time To Reevaluate Reserved Instances

With the latest Amazon Web Services price list update one important aspect has been lost in the whole buzz about dropping cloud prices – the profit point between on-demand and reserved instances has moved significantly. Therefore you should reevaluate reserved instances if you are using on-demand now, or check if you are still using the best suiting reservation option.

It hasn’t been said directly but the clue was in the Amazon’s post “Reserved Instance prices dropping by as much as 37%, and On-Demand instance prices dropping up to 10%”. The relation between on-demand and reserved instance prices was not kept and it means the switch point between them has moved as well.

The point when it is more cost effective to use reserved instances differs between instance types but in general it was about 30% utilization during one year reservation period, which is equivalent to 2630 hours. For standard and high CPU instances it was 31.8% (2786 hours), while 29.2% (2559 hours) for high memory instances. These are the points where you should switch from on-demand to one year light reserved instances in US East

With the new price lists the most affected were standard and high memory instances. The profitability point of the standard reserved instances moved from 31.8% to 19.2% (1683 hours). For high memory instances the change was from 29.2% to 17.5% (1535 hours). High CPU instances had just minor update from 31.8% to 31.3%. Cluster compute and GPU instances did not change the relation, but keep in mind Cluster Compute Eight Extra Large is still the winner with just 13.4% utilization (1178 hours) for the light reserved instance to be profitable. The profitability points for other types of reservations also changed but not that much. The maximum is from 76.9% to 65.2% for high memory medium utilization reserved instance. The heavy utilization changed by 2% at most.

The graph shows the change for High Memory XXL. The upper part shows price of various reservation types according to utilization with previous price list, the lower with current price list. The green areas indicate change of best reservation option – either from on-demand to light reserved instances or to higher reservation option.

But what does it mean to me? If you were below the threshold so far and you use on-demand instances, you should definitely check if now it isn’t cheaper to take light reserved ones. If your server runs for more than 4 hours 12 minutes a day – check reserved instances. If you know your server will run at least 2 months and 1 week all the time, you are again in the reserved instances zone. Similarly for 9 months of 8 hours per business day, or any other pattern in which you would exceed the required number of computing hours. Similarly you should also check if a higher reservation wouldn’t provide a better deal. If you use the cloud computing comparison engine, it will tell if and which reservation is most appropriate in a given case.

To get maximum of the cloud economics you should always check if you use the best option. Currently many users will find profitable to either switch from on-demand to light reserved instances or going to higher reservation level. Check if you are one of them.

Profitability points for 1 year reservations in US East:

	Light Reservation		Medium  Reservation		Heavy Reservation
	Old	New	Old	New	Old	New
Standard	31.8% 2,786h	19.2% 1,683h	74.2% 6,500h	69,3% 6,067h	85.2% 7,466h	83.3% 7,299h
High Memory	29.2% 2,559h	17.5% 1,535h	76.9% 6,740h	65.2% 5,713h	85.2% 7,467h	81.6% 7,150h
High CPU	31.8% 2,786h	31.3% 2,739h	74.2% 6,500h	67.6% 5,925h	85.3% 7,474h	82.8% 7,257h
Cluster Compute Quadruple XL	29.7% 2,599h	29.7% 2,599h	71.8% 6,288h	71.8% 6,288h	85.6% 7,502h	85.6% 7,502h
Cluster Compute Eight XL	13.4% 1,178h	13.4% 1,178h	74.8% 6,550h	74.8% 6,550h	84.9% 7,438h	84.9% 7,438h
Cluster GPU Quadruple XL	31.8% 2,783h	31.8% 2,783h	74.4% 6,519h	74.4% 6,519h	85.3% 7,470h	85.3% 7,470h

Two cloudy days in London

London is definitely one of the cloudiest places in the world. But one week it was even cloudier. There were two cloud events which I attended to – Cloud Expo Europe and CloudCamp.

Cloud Expo Europe is a two-day trade show which took place in Olympia National Hall on January 25-26. This is probably the biggest purely cloud event in Europe. There were about 100 exhibitors and 7 theaters with total of 130 speakers. Not so surprisingly the subject of cloud provider selection was topic of at least 3 talks. Moreover there was significant number of people visiting those talks. This shows how important aspect has been addressed by Cloudorado. One major inconvenience was virtually lack of any sound barrier between exhibit hall and speak theaters. They were just separated by walls as other stands so the noise from exhibit part was definitely disturbing. But this obviously does not lower any value of the speeches themselves.

The show was also a great opportunity to meet multiple people and companies involved in cloud computing. But Cloud Camp, which was held in the evening of the first day in Clerkenwell was a great opportunity meet the cloud computing community and “celebrities” in an informal atmosphere. It starts with a number of 5 minute lightning speeches where many different subjects are virtually just flashed out for further expansion later. The next part is in form of a panel, where anyone can ask a question to experts who were selected from the attendees. So, as there are virtually all involved in cloud computing virtually anyone could speak out their opinions on many cloud related subject. And finally, the most informal part – pizza, beer and talk to anyone.

It was great both events had synchronized schedules so that you can participate in both during a single visit. It is really a great opportunity get in touch with the cloud. I’ll definitely be back next time.

Cloudorado Wins Second Prize in Startup Contest!

We are proud to announce Cloudorado has beaten over 700 other startups and won the second prize in “Business Concept” (Polish “Pomysł na Firmę”) contest by Raiffeisen Bank. Startup contests are a great opportunity for verification of a service. Winning the prize confirms the direction taken and becomes an important milestone. We believe it also proves the value we bring to our users.

The contest constituted of three parts. Firstly participants had to send their business plans, which were the input to select 12 finalists. The finals happened 1.5 month later in Warsaw, were participants had to present their idea in 10 minute pitch followed by 20 minutes of questions. A week later the winners were announced during an event in Warsaw.

We really hope it is not the last contest we win!

JoyentCloud now available in Cloudorado

Today we have added a new provider to Cloudorado – JoyentCloud. JoyentCloud is positioning itself as a high performance provider. Interesting feature to mention is vertical scaling without any down time.  From cost perspective noticeable aspect is 20TB transfer included per month per account and overage at the level of 8 cents per GB.

Check with the cloud computing price comparison engine if JoyentCloud offers best deal for your needs.

VPS.NET added to Cloudorado

Today we have added one more provider – VPS.NET. VPS.NET provides cloud servers in multiple locations in US (Chicago, Atlanta and Salt Lake City), Europe (London and Amsterdam) and Japan (Tokyo). They allow you to create servers that constitue of 1 to 45 blocks of 376MB RAM, 10GB storage and 600MHz dedicated CPU. Moreover each block comes with boundled 1TB tranfer. In addition to that you can extend server with 25GB SAN storage blocks or fast SSD storage in 2GB chunks.

Check VPS.NET offer with the cloud computing price comparison engine.

eApps added to Cloudorado

Today we have added a new cloud hosting provider to the Cloudorado – eApps. eApps is a hosting provider since 1996. Cloud server resources can be chosen in range of 256MB to 16GB RAM, 1 to 12 CPU cores and 8 to 500 GB storage. Servers are billed in monthly periods. The cloud servers are located in Atlanta data center.

Check with the cloud hosting price comparison service if eApps best serve your needs.

Amazon adds Windows support for Cluster instances

Today Amazon has added Windows support for their biggest instance types – Cluster Compute and Cluster GPU - see AWS Blog. These are the most powerful instances available in Amazon EC2, providing 8 Xeon Nehalem cores and 23 GB RAM, 10 Gigabit Ethernet and NVIDIA Tesla for the GPU instance. These instances weren’t so far available with Windows, what was limiting Amazon’s offer for CPU intensive applications running on Windows. Now the gap was closed. Obviously Cloudorado is already reflecting the change.