
The serverless Internet company - shayan
http://scobleizer.com/2007/11/16/the-serverless-internet-company/
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jbyers
Maybe I'm reading this article wrong, but it strikes me that Scoble is unaware
that lots of sizable startups don't own servers. What's the difference in this
case between using ec2 instances and renting servers from a provider like
LayeredTech, SoftLayer, ServerBeach, Rackspace, etc.? I understand there's a
huge difference if you're bringing up -- and especially down -- ec2 instances
in real time as demand changes, but beyond that, it's renting a server for $70
a month. So, for by his definition, Wordpress.com is a server-less company
with 300+ servers in three colos.

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michaelneale
Dreamhost etc.

Ssshhhhh... lets keep the mystery for the suckers that read scoble.

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gibsonf1
We were considering using EC2 & S3 for our upcoming launch, but we did some
calculations, and found the minimum cost for 24/7 service comes to about $70
per month not including data or bandwidth charges. Once a site has greater
usage and needs to scale, it seems hard to beat, but for the early days it
doesn't seem to make financial sense.

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davidw
Not to mention the fact that you have to do a lot of work up front if you want
to make the thing work right without taking big risks.

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edw519
Such as...

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davidw
Basically, any storage on the machine itself could go _poof_ from one minute
to the next - or at least you have to think of it that way, because once it
goes down, it's gone.

Therefore, you need to have some kind of distributed storage architecture, and
automated recovery for said system.

For extra points, do the whole thing with no external server with a stable IP.

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dfranke
> For extra points, do the whole thing with no external server with a stable
> IP.

Should be doable. In principle, ARP over SQS.

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nkohari
If you're considering "cloud computing", you should also check out Joyent.
(<http://www.joyent.com/>) They're different than Amazon EC2, though... rather
than just being able to scale up by adding additional virtual servers, your
servers are also "burstable" up to the maximum physical capabilities of the
physical machines. Pretty cool stuff. I just got an Accelerator for my in-
progress Facebook-powered site, so we'll see how it turns out. (By the way,
Facebook applications get free entry-level Accelerators...)

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optimal
I'm interested in hearing more about this, too. It sounds like the two
offerings combined (service plus storage) make for a complete hosted solution.
Is this correct? And how are domain services handled? By a third party?

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michaelbuckbee
EC2 on its own is pretty comparable to a "standard" hosting setup.

This is their "small instance" setup.

1.7 GB of memory, 1 EC2 Compute Unit (1 virtual core with 1 EC2 Compute Unit),
160 GB of instance storage, 32-bit platform

The usual thought is to use dynamic dns to point to a server you have setup in
an EC2 instance, so yeah a third party.

However, this isn't really an all or nothing proposition. You can certainly
plug and play different components in to complement your existing setup and
still save money / increase reliability.

If you have a solid setup, but are exceeding bandwidth limits you can move
static files to S3.

Want better testing rigs, you can make EC2 instances for each and just turn
them off when you're done.

EC2 and S3 are great tools, but you still have to do the homework to make them
fit your needs.

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izak30
Has anyone here done this for their web app? I am considering some grid-server
space from MT, but if EC2 is good, it seems like it's cheap; is this a viable
option?

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kirubakaran
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=56825>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=73791>

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shayan
If I am not mistaking HotOrNot is also running on Amazon's S3, and they get
some serious page views

