All sorts of problems there. It means that you can't spin up a stack for an hour if the system calculates that leaving it online for a whole month would breach your limit. If the original author had a $100/month limit he wouldn't have been able to spin up the stack even once.
Also you have variable costs (like s3 traffic) that could put you over your limit half way through the month. Then how does AWS stop you breaching your limit?
On a more practical level I don't think AWS keeps tracks of bills on a minute-by-minute basis.
> It means that you can't spin up a stack for an hour if the system calculates that leaving it online for a whole month would breach your limit.
Sort of related, another wishlist feature I have is a way to start an EC2 instance with a deadline up front, and have the machine automatically suspended or terminated if it exceeds the deadline. I have some programs that start an EC2 instance, do some work, and shut it down (e.g. AMI building), and I would sleep a tiny bit better at night if AWS could deadline the instance as a backstop in case my script unexpectedly died before it could.
> Also you have variable costs (like s3 traffic)
Yeah, that's what I mean by it wouldn't solve the problem of usage-based billing. There they could just cut you off, and I think that's the bargain that people who want hard caps are asking for (there is always a spend cap at which I'd assume something had gone horribly wrong and would rather not keep spending), but I agree that the lack of real-time billing data is probably what stops them there.
Also you have variable costs (like s3 traffic) that could put you over your limit half way through the month. Then how does AWS stop you breaching your limit?
On a more practical level I don't think AWS keeps tracks of bills on a minute-by-minute basis.