Some thoughts on your comments: I don't think the amount of RAM supplied to a frontend instance is particularly relevant - in most web architectures, frontend instances just shuttle data back and forth between the user and backend data services (datastore, memcache, facebook, etc). So it's really hard to compare $/MB figures between Appengine and, say, EC2.
A better measure for frontend instances is $ per request throughput. For each dollar spent on frontend instances, how many requests can you serve? It's certainly going to be a major issue with single-threaded python, especially if you make urlfetches to latent services. On the other hand, if GAE's Java servers achieve the same levels of concurrency that standard Java appservers achieve, then the limit will be CPU power - and, to my knowledge, nobody has made any comparative $/CPU measurements with GAE. On the other hand, $/MB is a perfectly useful way of measuring GAE *backends* since RAM is often the primary constraint of a backend service. For many applications, comparing GAE backends to Other Cloud backends is apples-to-apples comparison, and GAE's value is extraordinarily poor. I also totally agree with your point about excluding datastore pricing from this comparison, since it is charged separately (as is Amazon's SimpleDB). However, we need to start looking in greater detail at the pricing of datastore operations, because it sounds like this may also be a very significant price hike, and possibly will affect people much more than the instance pricing that everyone has been talking about. Jeff On Tue, May 31, 2011 at 10:02 AM, Ugorji <[email protected]> wrote: > I want to continue to use GAE. I understand the value immensely, and I > invested a whole year into building a significant codebase around it and its > limitations without caring about lock-in. If I can help keep Google honest > and encourage them to revise their pricing so it is more palatable, then I > am a happy camper. The alternative (re-writing my code and taking on some of > the scalability features GAE gives me for free) is very unattractive. > Having said that, I think the datastore in GAE is the biggest selling point > which is hardest to reproduce. This is what is distributed geographically. > However, the price for that is separate from the hosting. The hosting is a > compute instance (with CPU and RAM) running your code on a simplified and > uniform stack. I think there should be a premium for the hosting, but a 4X > to 8X should be explainable to the customers or revised. > To your points (and I am making assumptions here just to respond to your > points): > - HR is charged separately from hosting (so should not be factored into why > the GAE hosting is significantly more expensive) > - simplification of stack to just app code makes operator management and app > scaling easier for the admins, not harder (I worked with BEA/Oracle team > where we created the JVM without OS, and that was a big selling point that > Ops became much cheaper. It makes it cheaper than what u get for managed > hosting.) > - isolated instances (ie the instances don't communicate or know about each > other) makes app scaling easier, not harder. (contrast with your typical > J2EE app server where instances communicate via multicast or unicast and > keep config and stuff in sync and auto deploy in live instances and maintain > sessions in-process, etc). > - I read somewhere that all app instances share the same memcache instance, > and there's no guarantees on anything, so memcache implementation in AE is > pretty simplistic, and can easily be reproduced on a VPS > GAE main expensive piece is in the datastore scalability and features built > on it, and that is charged separately. Most of the other bundled features > which can be charged are charged separately. > In summary, I'm not underestimating the GAE value (at all). I worked at > BEA/Oracle for 10 years with WebLogic in engineering and with customers (I > left last year to focus on some startup ideas) and appreciate the simplicity > of the GAE model. I just think that a 4X or 8X cost against AWS seems like a > high premium, and it would be nice to see some justification/explanation in > Greg's response. > NB. Regarding AWS outage, this was caused by storage problem, not the actual > EC2 instances. The closest analogue in GAE land is the datastore, which is > priced separately from hosting. > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "Google App Engine" group. > To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. > To unsubscribe from this group, send email to > [email protected]. > For more options, visit this group at > http://groups.google.com/group/google-appengine?hl=en. > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Google App Engine" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/google-appengine?hl=en.
