Comments on: Amazon EC2 Billing Discrepancy http://www.architected.info/blog/amazon-ec2-billing-discrepancy How people, practices, and information are transformed into relationships and understanding. Fri, 21 Nov 2008 21:13:22 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.0.6 by: Architected Information » Scripting EC2 http://www.architected.info/blog/amazon-ec2-billing-discrepancy#comment-794 Tue, 31 Oct 2006 04:55:43 +0000 http://www.architected.info/blog/amazon-ec2-billing-discrepancy#comment-794 [...] Every time you run this script you will be charged for at least one hour’s worth of time by Amazon, even if you shut things down immediately. These aren’t my rules, I have complained about them previously. [...] […] Every time you run this script you will be charged for at least one hour’s worth of time by Amazon, even if you shut things down immediately. These aren’t my rules, I have complained about them previously. […]

]]> by: morgan http://www.architected.info/blog/amazon-ec2-billing-discrepancy#comment-658 Tue, 17 Oct 2006 16:20:21 +0000 http://www.architected.info/blog/amazon-ec2-billing-discrepancy#comment-658 Bert, Thanks for your feedback. I wanted to be fair to Amazon, as I understand they are running a business and have to make some baseline assumptions. Overall, I still use the service and think it is a good thing. However, my point is that if we can break the model down to a per hour charge we should be able to divide that by 60. If there are additional costs incurred due to shorter utilization times, then the customer should bear that cost. Still, I think it would make more sense to build it into the per minute/hour charges or provide some sort of discount for longer utilization periods. My $0.02 ... Bert,

Thanks for your feedback. I wanted to be fair to Amazon, as I understand they are running a business and have to make some baseline assumptions. Overall, I still use the service and think it is a good thing.

However, my point is that if we can break the model down to a per hour charge we should be able to divide that by 60. If there are additional costs incurred due to shorter utilization times, then the customer should bear that cost. Still, I think it would make more sense to build it into the per minute/hour charges or provide some sort of discount for longer utilization periods.

My $0.02 …

]]> by: Bert Armijo http://www.architected.info/blog/amazon-ec2-billing-discrepancy#comment-654 Tue, 17 Oct 2006 05:12:35 +0000 http://www.architected.info/blog/amazon-ec2-billing-discrepancy#comment-654 I have to admit upfront that my company, 3tera, equips competitors to EC2. Still, I think you're taking an unfair shot at Amazon. Its just my opinion, but they probably assumed the system would be used more for production runs which, of course, last longer than a few minutes. I can say this with a little confidence because that's exactly what my engineers assumed as well when designing our metering system. In fact, I had the exact conversation with them that you spelled out above, and for exactly the same reason. (fwiw, my team chose 30 minute windows, but we eventually compromised on 12 minutes before release.) IMHO Amazon took an important step in cutting the commitment from a month to an hour. However, we're in the infancy of utility computing and the billing models are going to evolve and mature at a rapid pace for the next few years. I have to admit upfront that my company, 3tera, equips competitors to EC2. Still, I think you’re taking an unfair shot at Amazon. Its just my opinion, but they probably assumed the system would be used more for production runs which, of course, last longer than a few minutes.

I can say this with a little confidence because that’s exactly what my engineers assumed as well when designing our metering system. In fact, I had the exact conversation with them that you spelled out above, and for exactly the same reason. (fwiw, my team chose 30 minute windows, but we eventually compromised on 12 minutes before release.)

IMHO Amazon took an important step in cutting the commitment from a month to an hour. However, we’re in the infancy of utility computing and the billing models are going to evolve and mature at a rapid pace for the next few years.

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