I do not need the cores. I need enough ECU so that I an not locked out of the core or two that I actually use. I need the memory for large intermediate results. I had been looking at 30 gig memory models (including c3.4xlarge and m3.2xlarge) because my main laptop has 32 gigs ram and (a) the code had been running fine on my laptop except (b) it tied up the machine too much and (3) bandwidth to s3 matters for what I am currently working on - I'm getting abut a thousand times faster within EC2 than outside of it.
So, working under a deadline, using EC2 was a no-brainer for me. And now that I am past that deadline the radical efficiency of working within EC2 instead of outside for this project is looking seriously attractive - if only because I want to be done with it, and on to something else. Thanks, -- Raul On Wed, Aug 20, 2014 at 5:39 AM, Joe Bogner <[email protected]> wrote: > I ran a m2.2xlarge for some periodic processing. My last major > invoice was from January > > $1.020 per High Memory Two Extra Large (m2.2xlarge) Windows > instance-hour (or partial hour) * 335 = $341 > > It had 34 gb of ram and 4 cores. It was enough for what I was doing. > Being on windows was nice too so I could just RDP (remote desktop) in > and not mess around with XWindows > > Do you need the extra RAM and extra cores? I was mostly using 2 cores > since R / J are single threaded. I did have a routine where I spun up > 8 instances to process chunks of 57 billion rows of data. I may have > switched the instance type for the job. > > It's fairly easy to re-provision your image on a different instance > type when things get real heavy and run a more moderate instance type > for regular processing. > > Here's the actual charges. I agree that Amazon sometimes feels a bit > difficult to determine what you'll actually pay: > http://pasteboard.co/2q7Mxjvx.png > > On Wed, Aug 20, 2014 at 2:55 AM, Raul Miller <[email protected]> > wrote: > > Ick. Actually it looks more like a dollar an hour. > > > > Still cheap, but not as cheap as the pricing page indicated. There's many > > billing options and it actually costs quite a lot to study them (in terms > > of people time). > > > > Hmm... > > > > -- > > Raul > > > > > > > > On Wed, Aug 20, 2014 at 2:48 AM, Raul Miller <[email protected]> > wrote: > > > >> An m2.4xlarge EC2 machine running linux currently costs $0.0712 per > hour. > >> This has 64 gigabytes of ram, which makes for a fairly capable J > platform. > >> > >> Note also that if you install x windows on your local computer (it's a > >> free part of cygwin if you are running windows), you can run jqt on the > >> linux machine and it looks just like it's running as an application on > your > >> windows machine (albeit with occasional network issues). > >> > >> Now, it is true that that kind of money adds up, and you are taxed on > your > >> income also. But for some tasks it's worth spinning up a machine like > this > >> - if you value your time at minimum wage, your big cost here is mostly > >> trying it out for the first time. Once you are set up, if you value your > >> time at minimum wage, it would take quite a lot of computation to add > up to > >> the cost of an hour of your own time. > >> > >> (That said, some things do take quite a lot of computation...) > >> > >> Note that you do need to be able to set up ssh and xwindows, though, to > >> make this work. (ssh has a feature which supports tunneling of xwindows > >> traffic. xwindows is a gui designed back in the "bad old days" which was > >> designed to let your graphics come from a different machine than your > local > >> one. (At one point it looked like the advancement of game systems would > >> make that practice obsolete, but that was assuming that prices would > make > >> sense, and they do not.) > >> > >> Thanks, > >> > >> -- > >> Raul > >> > > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- > > For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- > For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm
