Amazon Hosting EU West in Ireland

paddydub

I have been using Amazon Web Services a lot, they have some really good offerings in Ireland:
A video guide too: http://developer.amazonwebservices.com/connect/entry.jspa?entryID=583
http://www.allthingsdistributed.com/2010/07/cluster_compute_instance_amazon_ec2.html
http://aws.amazon.com/ec2/

Collumbo

Second that. I've been using it a while too. It's excellent and so far, cheap. Very cheap. I'm sure once a site hits certain thresholds though it will become uneconomical, but my guess is that you would have to be hosting an extremely busy site with loads of video before that becomes the case.

mneylon

You can't use it for anything that requires email to be sent out as their IP ranges are blocked / blacklisted by just about everyone

Collumbo

Wasn't aware of that. I should have mentioned it is SimpleDB and S3+Cloudfront that I'm using. I only played around with EC2 just to see if there was any notable benefit (there wasn't). I presume that a virtual hosting plan is more practical unless the reasons for hosting on EC2 are overwhelming.

brendinho

I have just recently signed up for Amazon AWS,
My scenario is as follows:
1. I do not need it for hosting - I only need Amazon AWS for a VPS where I can install software on Windows 2003/2008 Server ("Small" instance on Amazon is sufficient) that will be always have access to the web
2. My software needs to react to database activity on a remote server and will run various batch scripts accordingly.

So all I need is a web connection is a VPS environment. I have looked at all the Irish hosting providers, and they all look far more expensive than what Amazon is offering. Or at least that was what i thought...

I created a new VPS instance on my new Amazon EC2 account, and I copied 450Mb to this area from the web. After that I disconnected, but left the instance running. I did not connect any further, and check my account that the daily activity after this had reached $3. However today I went back and discovered that my account was now telling me I owed $9. In short, I did the sums... this will work out at about $3650 per annum if I continue this way.

Am I doing something wrong on my Amazon account? The instance is Small / Windows 2008 32 Bit Server. There is no other actions on the account (MSSQL or other packages).

I'd prefer to shop locally but not sure about costs either. All the Irish providers offer a price on their site but as you go through the Purchasing page you have to pick additional items, such as the OS and the RAM.

Any suggestions here? All help greatly appreciated. I have heard from many sources and research that Amazon cannot be beaten so I guess I am doing something wrong.

If you are a web hosting provider, can you quote me an end price for?:

• 30gig space
• 99.5% web connectivity
• 1gb of RAM
• Windows 2008 Server, 32Bit
• Ability to connect via Remote Desktop

PM me if you like. Looking to buy soon so (a) need to get the Amazon issue sorted or (b) will buy Irish if the cost falls within reason.

Brendan

fergalr

Blacknight wrote: »

You can't use it for anything that requires email to be sent out as their IP ranges are blocked / blacklisted by just about everyone

On a point of interest, can you typically connect to imap/pop servers from it?

mneylon

fergalr wrote: »

On a point of interest, can you typically connect to imap/pop servers from it?

Probably.

paddydub

Hi
according to the AWS calculator http://calculator.s3.amazonaws.com/calc5.html
A small windows instance with 1.7gb RAM should work out at $87.84 a month

also they just started offering a free Linux Micro Instance with 613mb RAM for 1 year to new customers, Its worth trying out.
http://aws.amazon.com/free/

Sposs

The Trouble with amazon is the unpredictable monthly costs people prefer to know what their fixed bill is every month but avail of the flexibility of burstable resources when needed. Also Amazon is not covered under data protection act which is always a worry.

Evil Phil

http://www.cloudsplit.com/ can help control the costs on AWS. For Irish offerings you need to contact the companies and get quotes for your needs.

And just to remind eveyone, it's against the rules to ask for PMs in thread, as it breaks the flow of the thread. We do this as the forum is indexed by the search engines, so people come to threads long after they've been active looking for a solution. If all they find is a request for a PM it's not very useful.

Collumbo

to answer brendinho,
I don't see much benefit in your case using ec2. A decent spec VPS with any irish provider would do the trick. If you have to store large items like videos and whatnot, use S3/cloudfront. I'd even split out a lot of your graphical content to S3... lots of benefits in doing that if a VPS hosting plan has stringent traffic restrictions.