Ask HN: Cloud computing cheaper or more expensive than other solutions?

satyajit · on March 17, 2009

I am in the same position you are. I considered DreamHost, SliceHost, and few others and went in for a barebone Linux Xen virtualization hoting at vpsfarm.com. Good enough for me to boot up. Why I didn't go for Amazon - though I think EC2 provides way more value for what I am trying to do. BUT - their pricing is very confusing and sucks - while companies like slicehost/engineyard give upfront pricing, and they are scalable too (may not be upto EC2 level). For me, the price plays a big role as we are bootstrapping from our own pocket. EC2 pricing is a huge matrix of upstream, downstream, storage, bunch of other things, which makes it almost impossible to estimate how much you might have to pay! Having said that, I may consider them at a later point of time, where we grow (hopefully) to bigger infrastructure.

spoiledtechie · on March 17, 2009

EXACTLY. Thats exactly where I am. Bootstrapped out of my own pocket and trying to get up and running.

EDIT: Thanks.

ErrantX · on March 17, 2009

Having built a couple of scalable systems of my own (personal project one running on 5 machines currently and 2 works ones running on 50 machines and 17,000+(client)/15(server) machines respectively - though note those last 2 are not websites) I can say safely that the easiest option is to go with a cloud provider. :)

It's a pain to make sure you monitor loads and tweak the availability as things grow. Whereas with Amazon (who I would 100% recommend having recently played with them) it is pretty much all automagical :)

One of the things I used to do when I was a more naive programmer was attempt to reinvent the wheel. Take LiveMeta. I got distracted for at least 2 weeks writing a javascript/php visitor tracking system (and it was damn good :D) . But the thing is - it's not what the site was about, it was an incidental feature (solely for the developers too!) and in the end Google/Clicky provided enough features.

I traded one cut and paste of the Google Analytics code for 2 weeks I should have spent on the other parts of the project.

Same applies here: dont give yourself work. If the project is going to need to scale fast ebough to require cloud computing/scalable architecture pay the bit extra to have Amazon do it for you. 3 years down the line you might decide it is time to invest in your own network - but right now I doubtthat shouldbe your focus. :)

spoiledtechie · on March 17, 2009

If I may ask, what apps have you built that brings all this experience?

So it does cost a little bit more than the regular services. Thats what I gathered, but its also def worth it.

Since I have ASP.net Stack, I would have to go with Windows Azure.

ErrantX · on March 17, 2009

You have to understand that some aspects of the work stuff is covered under NDA :)

HOwever..

The personal project is a social network site (still under development) - I built the scalable back end because we secured some funding and were thinking of launching until other factors caused us to re-evaluate. We built the architecture because it is running an evolved version caching server I wrote at university plus some other parallel applications (my thesis was in these areas) I wrote to load balance the Databases :)

On the work front the smaller cluster is essentially a massive cache cluster (like BigTable) I wrote based on my previous work that we use in office for storing the large fast-access tables we use. We process & access numerous pre-generated hashes daily (upwards of a billion). The software can scale as we add / remove nodes. If it needs extra storage it can temporairily grab one of the other servers used for other purposes. If this happens a lot it notifies us we need a new addition: commodity hardware, 64Bit OS with jack lots of RAM and voila :D

The second setup is the hash generation system. The server side of this is a distributed storage system (again custom written). It does work closely with the hash database too. I cant realy talk about the client side of the above :)

Coding in the scalability was the hardest part of all 3 exercises.

EDIT: and if that sounds cool, well, it is. But it is also a lot of headaches too :)

iamelgringo · on March 17, 2009

My situtation is a bit unique, because I'm using EC2's for Windows server hosting.

I tried using something like Web Faction or Slice host for a while. And, while they were fine, my *nix admin fu < Windows admin fu. So, it was taking me five times longer to set up a Unix server on slicehost that did what I wanted it to.

I was frustrated, so I tried to set up a Windows server on EC2 running a WAMP stack. I had my site up and running within a few hours. I looked around for other Windows hosting solutions, and about my only other options were to get a dedicated box at 2x the price.

It's been running flawlessly for a month. I'm really happy. I really don't see my self using anyone else for hosting right now. If Azure starts looking ready for prime time, I'll check it out, but right now, it's EC2 for me.

So, not only is EC2 more convenient for me, it's actually cheaper than other Windows hosting options that I found.