

Linode: Transfer is $0.10/GB, CPU+RAM+HD is free - arturadib

Here's an interesting way of looking at Linode's pricing scheme, especially if your app is a data transfer hog.<p>With most other services, you pay per GB transfered on top of the instance price.<p>For example, at Rackspace you pay $0.22 (u/l) or $0.08 (d/l) per GB transfered, which goes on top of the instance price, about $44 per GB of RAM.<p>At Linode, you get 400GB of transfer included in a 1GB RAM instance.<p>Or, looking at it from a different angle, at $40 an instance, that's $0.10 per GB transfered, pretty much the same rate as other services (the rate remains at $0.10 if you need more than what's included).<p>If you notice that $0.10/GB is roughly the standard rate for transfers across all cloud hosting services, at Linode you are basically getting the physical instance (CPU, RAM, HD) for "free".<p>DISCLOSURE: I am not by any means affiliated with Linode, Rackspace, or any other cloud hosting service. I'm simply a customer with a probably not-so-exciting epiphany.
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dxjones
Except, if I don't use 400GB of transfer, I still pay $40, right? So then, my
CPU+RAM+HD doesn't seem free anymore.

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arturadib
As I said, the point of view is particularly useful for data transfer hogs.

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jacquesm
That's bickering over pennies though. If $40 scares you you're in 'hobby'
territory. For $150 you can get a flat rate 100 MBit connection, including a
machine. That's 4 times as much dough, but it gives you 32400 Gbit/month, or,
by your math, $3200 worth of 'value'.

Measured traffic is nice for bits & pieces. Flat rate is pretty much the only
way to go if you're using a lot of bandwidth.

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arturadib
The savings scale with transfer, it's not just an overhead. You save $40 _per
400GB transfered_. That affects deployments of any size.

What service offers unlimited 100 MBit connection for $150/mo, including
machine?

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jacquesm
> What service offers unlimited 100 MBit connection for $150/mo, including
> machine?

[http://www.leaseweb.com/en/dedicated-servers/unmetered-
serie...](http://www.leaseweb.com/en/dedicated-servers/unmetered-
series/configurator/924)

Gigabit goes for a bit more, but effectively that's half the price of the
100Mbit connections:

[http://www.leaseweb.com/en/dedicated-servers/unmetered-
serie...](http://www.leaseweb.com/en/dedicated-servers/unmetered-
series/configurator/930)

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cheald
I run a voice chat hosting service on Linode that tends to be quite bandwidth-
heavy, and I noticed this a while ago. I don't need a lot of RAM per machine,
so I've got a whole bunch of 512 instances scattered around their various data
centers; all purchased bandwidth is pooled, so even if a node goes over its
allocation, I don't pay extra unless I exceed 200gb * number of leased nodes
across all nodes in a given billing period. That's made it very easy to make a
decision between horizontal or vertical scaling; they're the same cost, but
horizontal scaling gets me better geographic coverage.

I do wish Linode had some sort of plan for extra bandwidth that was more cost-
effective than just purchasing another node outright, though.

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arturadib
From the FAQ: "If you believe you will have overages consistently, you can
purchase additional transfer or upgrade to the next plan level. Purchasing
additional transfer ahead of time is $0.10/GB, otherwise overages are
$0.15/GB."

<http://www.linode.com/faq.cfm>

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arturadib
My point is though, why would you pay for additional GB only, if you can also
get a node for "free"?

You can improve the performance of your app by deploying more memcached nodes,
for example.

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cheald
Exactly. If I think I'll have overage, I can purchase 200gb of bandwidth for
$20, or I can purchase another node for $20, which includes 200gb of pooled
bandwidth. In my case, whenever, I need more bandwidth, I get more for my
money by just purchasing a whole new node.

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piotrSikora
Your math is wrong on all levels.

Let me take this to the extreme: at 100TB.com you get 100TB of transfer for
$201,15, which according to your math equals to $0.002 per GB plus free
dedicated server. However, if you don't use 100TB, but only 10GB (which is
quite enough for most of the websites) then using Amazon S3 you would pay
$1,50... And even if you would use 1TB (which is quite a lot) then you would
pay $150 for the S3...

...in the end $0.15 turns out cheaper than $0.002 most of the time ;)

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arturadib
Nice to know about 100TB.com.

As I said, the math makes sense if your app is a data transfer hog (> 1TB/mo).

As to Amazon, I suppose you meant EC2? (S3 is a data store). If you use 1TB at
EC2 for $0.15/GB, that's $150 for data transfer _only_ , on top of the
instance usage price.

At Linode, if you use that 1TB, you pay less for that transfer ($100), _and_
you get a free instance.

How's this so "wrong on all levels"?

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chrismiller
What happens if that Linode instance goes down? With Amazon you pay 15cents a
GB but you get a lot more reliability for your money.

