
AWS cuts in half the price of most of its Lightsail virtual private servers - Elect2
https://techcrunch.com/2018/08/23/aws-cuts-the-price-of-most-of-its-lightsail-virtual-private-servers-in-half/
======
scarface74
Hopefully this won't be taken as an anti-MS rant. I've been developing
exclusively on Microsoft's platforms for over 20 years.

But, if developing and hosting in a cloud environment doesn't convince you to
go Linux, nothing will.

While for the most part as far as feature parity and development tools, AWS
treats Windows developers like first class citizens. The "Windows Tax" is
clear in AWS when you can see the cost difference between running the same
instance size with Linux as Windows.

Even worse, realistically, running any Windows instance with less than 8GB of
RAM is painful. Your minimum cost is $70 a month.

Being in the Windows world so long, I was amazed when I started using AWS and
found how much you could do with relatively few resources in the Linux world.

I never cared before, I was using other people's money.

But I'm not leaving .Net Core, its made transistioning to Linux hosted
development less painful.

[https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/aws/amazon-lightsail-update-
mor...](https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/aws/amazon-lightsail-update-more-
instance-sizes-and-price-reductions/)

------
Outpox
I would suggest adding Scaleway[0] to the list. I've used their server a bit
and it worked well. I know them because of their parent company (Online) which
I've been a custom for quite a few years now.

[0] [https://www.scaleway.com/pricing/](https://www.scaleway.com/pricing/)

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sudhirj
This is probably based on the new T3 release.
[https://www.marketwatch.com/press-release/aws-announces-
avai...](https://www.marketwatch.com/press-release/aws-announces-availability-
of-t3-instances-for-amazon-ec2-2018-08-21)

I'm guessing they're able to do burstable offerings with better baseline and
burst at a lower cost than before.

~~~
ksec
That would make sense. But T3 are comparatively speaking, much slower than DO
and Linode. When Lightsail were first released those benchmarks won't any good
at all.

The only reason for using Lightsail is you want all those Amazon Services,
which your LightSail can hook up free of transfer using Private Network.

~~~
sitkack
Wait, so you can read from an S3 bucket for free using LightSail but egress at
LightSail prices?

~~~
sudhirj
Yes, but I think lightsail egress is more expensive than s3 egress. On my
phone, but isn’t lightsail 9 cents a GB to S3 being 8 cents? Think regular ec2
is 8 cents as well, or is that 12?

~~~
extra88
Lightsail includes a data transfer allowance, starting at 1TB, though
importantly both data in and out is counted against the allowance. In the vast
majority of cases, the allowance is enough. If you do use all the allowance,
data transfer out charges are $.09/GB in most regions, the same as EC2 and S3,
at least for the first 10TB.

------
aepiepaey
On the far low end, BuyVM has a $15/year plan (1 core, 128M ram, 15G disk,
500G bandwidth).

Has been working well so far (a few years), though haven't really been close
to any resource limits (yet).

~~~
hyperfekt
Depending what core that is, you get more on the Google Cloud free tier (600MB
RAM, 30GB disk). But: only 30GB outgoing bandwidth.

~~~
indigodaddy
Thought it was 1G transfer max (not sure which direction or both)

------
andy_ppp
Can I have everything be as simple as Digital Ocean but still use their
Managed Services like RDS?

~~~
krn
OVH provides Cloud Database[1], but only up to 4 GB RAM / 64 GB storage.

[1] [https://www.ovh.co.uk/cloud/cloud-
databases/](https://www.ovh.co.uk/cloud/cloud-databases/)

~~~
blunte
OVH is a horrible company if anything goes wrong or if you have a billing
issue.

Their tech and pricing may be good, but if there's any problem you'll spend a
lot of time trying to deal with them or you'll just give up a let your wasted
payment fly away...

~~~
krn
OVH is dirty cheap, because it is a fully automated service, and if you are
using it for anything serious, you need to order a VIP support package[1].
People complain about their terrible support without realizing, that they only
paid for the infrastructure, which costs 10x less than AWS.

[1] [https://www.ovh.co.uk/support/](https://www.ovh.co.uk/support/)

------
tnolet
So a regular EC2 T2.medium with 4GB RAM is $39 while a LightSail 4GB is $20.
Damn. Need to switch some EC2 workload to LightSail.

------
grezql
great news, I love spinning up Lightsail instances for new projects!! my
current running instances are not updated, I suppose I have to recreate them
then..

Edit: It seems they have added new instance types. My current instances are
now 3.50$

[https://snag.gy/3Q1fL0.jpg](https://snag.gy/3Q1fL0.jpg)

~~~
omgtehlion
Wow, tree fiddy.

How is cpu usage on these nodes? Aren't they oversubscribed as hell?

~~~
grezql
I havent noticed it any. I deploy .net core application + loadbalancers and
db.

------
patd
Why is there only 3 providers there ? This should probably include others like
OVH, Scaleway, Vultr,

~~~
zython
Also hetzner cloud

I dont know about the cores that hetzner provides and how they compare to the
competitors, but ~3$ for a somewhat usable VPS is damn competetive

(not affiliated with hetzner in any way, other than I have one of those 3$
instances)

~~~
foepys
I'm a Hetzner customer, too, but I'm quite sad that Hetzner doesn't really
allow DNS configuration via a centralized REST(-like) API. You can configure
DNS via an email interface but there are no officially supported libraries
available and it's very clunky [1]. You effectively have to roll your own DNS
servers or chose another DNS provider if you want to manage a lot of servers
dynamically.

1: [https://wiki.hetzner.de/index.php/E-Mail-
Schnittstelle_Domai...](https://wiki.hetzner.de/index.php/E-Mail-
Schnittstelle_Domain_Registration_Robot/en)

~~~
afandian
The feature I would really like is some kind of virtual networking. Even a
basic VPC would be welcome, with access rules and a virtual address space. It
wouldn't have to be as comprehensive as AWS. Then again, it's cheap.

------
pritambarhate
One quick question about LightSail Load Balancers: Is the outbound traffic
from the Load Balancer to the Internet is charged separately or it is taken
from the instances quota?

Scanned through the FAQ but couldn't find a clear answer.

------
dna_polymerase
Wouldn't use Digital Ocean for shit, there are multiple stories of users were
they cancelled accounts (actual production systems) because of sustained use
or bogus DMCA claims.

~~~
zaarn
I wouldn't use a service for VPS either if they reacted to DMCA/Takedown
Notice claims. As the operator of the server on that VPS the DMCA/Takedown
Notice is _my business_ not the providers.

Otherwise it's a way to convenient method to cripple the competition or shut
someone's personal website down for shits and giggles.

~~~
chomp
Yeah but that's not how the law works. A service provider risks losing its
safe harbor status if it delegates a DMCA complaint to a party and then that
DMCA complaint is ignored. Providers have an incentive to shut down services
on the terms of the DMCA to protect their business. And even if you have a
registered copyright agent for your business and a form on your site to report
infringement, lawyers love to blast out DMCA claims to you, your agent, and
your provider, as high in the chain as they can go. It's a huge headache.

Do you colo, or use non-US based providers?

~~~
zaarn
I'm not in the US and use a non-US based provider.

The EU notice&takedown procedure does not entail that you loose protection for
simply forwarding such notices, all that matters if someone responsible is
actually reading the contents. If I don't give a shit about the notice then
you can send a C&D and if I still don't give a shit, you can sue me. Or you
make someone at my provider somehow care.

------
candiodari
Kimsufi has dedicated servers starting at 5$ per month. Yes, it's an atom, but
it's yours alone, and is going to beat these on performance, memory and
riskspace.

~~~
cbg0
No ECC RAM, also their network isn't exactly top tier and many complain about
support. You will get what you pay for.

~~~
minimaul
Kimsufi gets de-prioritised compared to other services on OVH’s network and
there are capacity issues.

This is probably due to the fact that a lot of people use them for cheap 24x7
torrent boxes rather than the cheap personal VPS alternative they were
intended as.

------
romanovcode
What does "Consistent 100% CPU usage" means? Does it mean that if I get the
instance and use CPU on 100% it will shut it down?

~~~
ZiiS
No, lightsail is less well documented; but are based on EC2 burstable
instances. These have a baseline performance where you can use 5%-30% of the
CPU, and accrue credits to burst up to using 100% for short periods.

[https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AWSEC2/latest/UserGuide/t2-credi...](https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AWSEC2/latest/UserGuide/t2-credits-
baseline-concepts.html)

If you are out of credits your CPU is just slower, you don't get turned off.

------
ernsheong
Wish Google Cloud could have this kind of price point. 1vCPU + 1GB RAM on GCP
is $19.22

~~~
majewsky
wtf

2 vCPU + 2 GB RAM is about € 2,50 ($3.00) on
[https://hetzner.cloud](https://hetzner.cloud). (Not affiliated, just a happy
customer.)

~~~
olavgg
I have one of these too, run a PostgreSQL server. You get fantastic fsync
performance for that price too. Not Optane level, but almost at the same
performance as a dedicated Intel S3700.

------
jayonsoftware
LightSail is the only vendor in this space to offer Windows hosting.

~~~
adventured
I know they're not listed in the comparison, however Vultr has superior
Windows Server hosting as compared to LightSail. Their network is a lot faster
and their servers are better. I aggressively recommend Vultr over LightSail if
you're using Windows for something.

~~~
amanzi
I have nothing but good things to say about Vultr. Plus they're one of the few
providers with a Sydney datacentre presence.

------
askaboutit
Meh. Look at the bandwidth pricing. If bandwidth is the Soda. DO is coke and
lights sail is McDonald’s selling coke. You can get it direct at wholesale or
buy it in a bottle for 5x more.

------
0x7f800000
Still no IPv6.

------
eahman09
DO and Linode are very expensive compared to OVH, Scaleway or Hetzner. So this
reads as "Lightsail announces 50% price drop, will still be very expensive"

(From another comment:
[https://snag.gy/3Q1fL0.jpg](https://snag.gy/3Q1fL0.jpg)) -> $3.50 for 512 MB
of RAM is a fucking rip-off compared to this:
[https://www.scaleway.com/](https://www.scaleway.com/)

~~~
adventured
Scaleaway is meaningless unless you're located in Europe.

If you're in the developed world, $2 vs $5 etc does not matter in most cases.
The most important factor is that your host does what you need it to do, that
the network is excellent and your servers are located where you need them to
be.

If you're an American business you'd be foolish to host your servers in the
EU. Locating your servers in the EU opens you up to their jurisdiction, which
is a mistake, you'd be unnecessarily exposing yourself to multiple
jurisdiction compliance. That problem is only going to get dramatically worse
in the coming years. It's not worth worrying about saving a couple of dollars
over.

~~~
eahman09
I am European and it's 11 here; I'm talking to an European audience.

OVH has got a datacenter in Canada with good prices, compared to the rip-off
Linode is.

~~~
adventured
Your point about OVH still falls flat for a US audience, unless saving a few
dollars is a critical concern.

$20 for 4gb of ram, 4tb of bandwidth and 2 cpus at Linode is a rip-off? I
guess if someone were quite lacking in funds and needed the absolute most cut-
rate VPS prices they can get, it might be viewed as a rip-off. That's a
legitimate issue if so, sure. By all counts Linode in fact provides a
tremendous service at a low cost, as with DigitalOcean. I'm guessing that for
most people, $3 vs $7 (or a similar ratio) simply doesn't matter very much,
especially when you consider laws and latency.

To compete fully, Scaleaway and OVH will eventually need multiple US data
centers, otherwise the price gap by itself isn't going to be enough and the
world's largest economy will remain the domain of DO/Linode/Amazon/etc. Those
companies already know they'll have to charge more for service in the US,
which is why they don't already have lots of US data centers after all these
years, they have no competitive advantage to bring to the table.

Again, if you locate in Canada you're opening yourself up to multiple
jurisdiction compliance. You're going to have to comply with both Canadian and
US laws in that case if you're a US business. The complexity and burden of
doing so will only continue to expand.

Saving a few dollars by locating with OVH in Canada might be fine if you're
just running a test setup and have no intentions of running a real business on
it.

