I've personally found running 3-4 micro instances behind a load balancer offers more RAM, more CPU power (in short bursts), and fail over than 1 Small instance at the same price or cheaper. However, it doesn't always make sense for every application.
Yeah but the 3 click process of using my Google account to log in wasn't really a hassle. With Reddit being down and all I guess it was time for me to create an account here.
Awesome job powdahound, and I support this comment. You could show the cost units for reserved instances as a range.
For example a small reserved instance's base cost is $227.50 per year so that's a lower bound of $.0263/hour. Then adding $.03 per hour used the upper bound is $.0563/hour.
So over the course of a year you'd pay within the range $.0263/hour - $.0563/hour depending on your usage.
Great work! Could you please add the Ec2 Suse instance types to the table, for comparison? I haven't been able to compare the Cpu performance of the Suse instance type compared to the standard types.
The raw CPU performance of the SUSE and regular Linux instances is identical. The difference is purely the Operating System. On the SUSE instances, SUSE Linux Enterprise Server is preinstalled and all updates are automatically available. You do not need a separate subscription from Novell. With the base instances you need to provide your own OS license/subscription as applicable.
(Disclaimer: I'm responsible for the AMIs for SUSE)
Hoping this helps people compare and choose new instances following yesterday's troubles.