On Sat, Jul 30, 2011 at 11:44 PM, Robert Kluin <[email protected]> wrote: > This whole thread is an excellent example of why I'm not at all enthusiastic > about the new pricing. > > Mike is 100% correct, this behavior is amazing unintuative and confusing. > If we will be paying around $60 per month per instance, why would we ever > want one to sit idle? Shouldn't App Engine serve the incoming request with > an idle instance and spin up a new instance to be in reserve, if needed?
To that last question, that's precisely what its doing. It sends requests to available instances, and if after having done that there are no longer N Min-Idle-Instances, it will spin up new ones to meet that invariant. Also, if you set Max-Idle-Instances, then you are not charged for these extra instances. By setting Max-Idle-Instances, to say 3, then you are never charged for more than three idle instances. This works whether or not you have configured Min-Idle-Instances. > Also, if I understand correctly, if I set min idle instances to, say, 5. It > will nearly always have 5 instance sitting there doing nothing. If one does > get used, it will spin up another immediately. Is the point of min idle > instances to handle bursts of traffic (though it isn't clear ut does that > either since it may well send requests to new instances)? Otherwise I can > hardly see the point in ever having more than 1 idle instance. It depends on the app and the developer. In the most extreme case, of an app with very high request latency, that is not concurrent, and for whom loading request latency is even worse, then the only way it can handle additional load is to have idle instances ready to take the additional requests. Some apps share properties with this extreme app, and have asked for more than 3 idle instances as such. Another example is that of a load test. By using this feature, you get as many instances turned up as you'd like, without having to wait for the scheduler to turn them up for you. For apps that run at hundreds or thousands of instances, having more control over this can be useful. > > > Robert > > > > On Jul 29, 2011 10:24 AM, "Ikai Lan (Google)" <[email protected]> wrote: >> >> Mike, you aren't being charged for these instances in the current billing >> scheme. Because you're being charged for CPU hours, if you use 5 CPU hours, >> whether those CPU hours are served by 100 instances or 10 instances - you >> pay the same. You would only pay more under the new (as of yet to be >> launched) pricing scheme where you would pay per instance. We're working on >> solutions that should make this both more transparent and configurable by >> then. >> >> Ikai Lan >> Developer Programs Engineer, Google App Engine >> Blog: http://googleappengine.blogspot.com >> Twitter: http://twitter.com/app_engine >> Reddit: http://www.reddit.com/r/appengine >> >> >> >> On Fri, Jul 29, 2011 at 10:14 AM, Mike Lawrence <[email protected]> >> wrote: >>> >>> thanks for clearing that up. >>> I'm sure a lot of people will be confused by this. >>> Maybe add a $ next to instances that we are being charged for so it's >>> obvious? >>> Thanks for your excellent support >>> >>> -- >>> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups >>> "Google App Engine" group. >>> To view this discussion on the web visit >>> https://groups.google.com/d/msg/google-appengine/-/4x8OnZt-sSUJ. >>> >>> 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. > > -- > 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.
