Cheap VM cluster (software, storage) ideas

[Ghiora Drori]

Hi,
s3 is not used for block storage!! local ec2 instances storage or EBS drives
are used.

I have instances running for 485 days. These are from the time we started
using Amazon which was in beta.
The fact that during the beta they some issued is not a big surprise.

As to cost if you are using 4 servers it really does not matter. If you are
you are using a 100 and
there number can drop to 50 or go up depending on what you are doing the
savings are significant.
Being able to setup more servers to test a large new installation and then
discard them paying only for actual usage
gives you a lot of flexibility.



On Thu, Mar 5, 2009 at 10:25 AM, Ira Abramov <Lists-Linux-IL at ira.abramov.org
> wrote:

> Quoting Ghiora Drori, from the post of Wed, 04 Mar:
> > Hi,
> > Why would s3 bother you ? Its there it does not cost money if you do not
> use
> > it it cost fairly little when you do
> > and it works ok.
>
> Well, I was told it's not accassible as a simple filesystem, which means
> it won't work as shared storage for my current set of apps (various PHP
> and other tools expecting to find plain files in the directories they
> put them in...
>
> > The only thing you will need s3 for is to store images of systems you
> want
> > to launch, you could use public images
> > but the cost of keeping private onse in s3 is negligible and this gives
> much
> > more flexiblity in creating custom servers.
>
> Well, the hosting guy has 5 very different servers hosted right now. a
> winXP for Marcom, a couple of production Debian LAMPs, a test LAMP and a
> spare
> machine for sensitive sites. I think we are talking about too many
> details to try and just dump them P2V on a cloud and hope for the
> best...
>
> > You do have to learn how to handle it aka instances can die and then
> > you loose their disk this has been rare lately, was more common a few
> > month ago. The EBS drives however do not die with the machine so data
>
> are you trying to cheer me up? :) I have machines with 500-600 days of
> uptime here, I don't need to move a bunch of Israeli sites to a far away
> cloud that occasionally has a lightning storm as well.
>
> > You can put mysql, or any other software in images or load them when
> > the instance is up.  You can run RedHat, Gentoo, Ubuntu or even
> > Windows...  You can scale up and down the number of your servers and
> > EBS disks as needed.
>
> If your servers were built for clustering in the first place, maybe.
> This is not a case of "Drag'n'drop", as you can understand :)
>
> > Make an account and play with it!!  A small machine/instance (32 bits)
> > is 10 cents an hour. If you cannot afford that you are not really
> > commercial :) A few minor calculations should give you the correct
> > cost numbers.
>
> 10 cents an hour are $2.4 a day or about $75 a month. this is more or
> less what the guy is paying in Israel now, and he gets less latency (all
> Hebrew sites and wanted only by Israelis), more disk space, etc.
>
> I guess the only real plus of histing the apps there is the Fun in the
> SAN.
>
> > As sysadmin using it in a real web company it is very good, has a
> > learning curve like everything else.
>
> yeah, only he's expecting definite answers from me, and Now I have to
> talk him into doing a pilot because I don't have all the correct
> answers. But that's the way the Internet works, right? :-)
>
> Cheers,
> Ira.
>
> --
> Santa's little helper
> Ira Abramov
> http://ira.abramov.org/email/
>
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>



-- 
Constant change is here to stay!
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