That's one way of looking at it. But, if you configure your app properly, and design your system properly, you pay $60 a month for that 600Mhz instance only if you actually use it at 100% utilization 24 hours a day, for the entire month. Here's how I can illustrate that point: My app has a Max-Idle-Instance=1, but the actual number of active instances is anywhere between 5 and 30 at any given time. And it responds to changes in demand - number of requests that have to be served. So, I'm paying for only one instance, but I'm getting the right to spawn many more. I could easily set my Max-Idle-Instances to 30 in anticipation for worst case load, but most of those 30 instances will be idle most of the time, and yet I'd be paying $60/mo for each of them. In other words, $60/mo buys me the right to use that instance whenever I want, at a moment's notice (no initialization latency). I think that's justified, given that it gives you uptime guarantees, redundancy, scalability, and you can work around it so easily (by making conscious latency-vs-cost trade-offs). Basically, Google is incentivizing you to optimize your app so that you have instances running only if and when you need to.
On Wed, Dec 14, 2011 at 6:50 AM, John <[email protected]> wrote: > Just started thinking about this... but now that we are basically paying > for all the datastore reads/writes, and bandwidth separately... > > Isn't paying $60 a month for a 600 MHZ instance with only 128 MB ram a > little expensive? > > Just taking a quick glance at EBAY, I can buy a > 2 GHZ machines with over > a GB of memory all day long. > I can buy BRAND NEW Intel Atom Dual-Core D525 Processor(1.8GHz, 1MB L2 > Cache), Support Intel Hyper-Threading technology, > with 1GB memory for ~ $160 all day long > > http://www.amazon.com/SHUTTLE-XS35V2-PC-Barebone-System/dp/B004XJCCQO/ref=sr_1_2?m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&s=pc&ie=UTF8&qid=1323866320&sr=1-2 > > Call me crazy, but I still have my 1 GHZ pc I bought back in 1999 (12 > years ago) sitting in the garage and I would have a problem giving it away > (It also has a lot more memory than 128 MB ram). > > A standard (small) SAME PRICEd Amazon EC2 instance comes with 1.7 GB of > memory and even their FREE micro instance gives you 613 MB of memory. > > I understand computers were a lot more expensive back in 1999, but they > have gotten a lot cheaper over the past few years. > > Please justify what I am paying for because right now I am trying to > justify upgrading to the F2 instance class for twice the price ($120/month) > just so I can double up and get a whopping 256MB ram! > > -- > 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/-/U8nQaYwxQr8J. > 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.
