

EC2 now out of limited beta; four-core and eight-core instances now available - dfranke
http://developer.amazonwebservices.com/connect/ann.jspa?annID=241

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ajkates
Some shortcomings that still irk me.

[http://developers.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=329797&th...](http://developers.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=329797&threshold=2&commentsort=0&mode=thread&cid=21000749)

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wmf
Yes, it looks like Amazon has been solving the easy problems (paid AMIs,
bigger instances) first, while the hard problems will be addressed later. But
given that it took a year or so to add large instances, I wonder when load
balancing and storage will be improved.

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dfranke
The 1.7TB drive on the extra-large instance seems strange to me. Who needs
that much non-persistent storage?

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jsjenkins168
Is the instance storage faster? I know there is discernible latency with file
transfer between EC2 and S3. Having faster local storage for each instance
could be very beneficial for swap space or temp tables, if your servers need a
lot of it.

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dfranke
I still can't imagine needing that much temporary space and yet being small
enough that using EC2 is still economical.

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nevinera
Some calculations don't need to be done that often. Recalculating for a
massive data set can often be.. fudged for a period of time, in scientific
computing - accuracy decreases over time, and then a full recalculation is
eventually necessary. If you need major computing power, but only need it
twice a month, this type of plan is economical, whether you're a large company
or a small one.

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darius
Way to go! Really good news.

