Amazon EC2

[jsun529]

Has any one use Amazon EC2, how is the cost effect vs in house facility?

Thanks

[ffinkernagel]

I've started using EC2 recently after I had my main work horse die on me,
and it works just as expected.

Cost is trivial if all you need is a few hours/days of runtime with lot's of ram, for example.

Otherwise, it's a tradeoff you need to calculate: how much hours do you need, what's the price of an equivalent machine under your desk (including warranty & service contract!).
(On the bonus side, evaluating EC2 isn't expensive - I knew after 2.5 USD that it would do the job).

If you're going to run the system non-stop, buying yourself is probably always cheaper, but Amazon has a whole different level of fault tolerance.

[nilshomer]

I've started using EC2 recently after I had my main work horse die on me,
and it works just as expected.

Cost is trivial if all you need is a few hours/days of runtime with lot's of ram, for example.

Otherwise, it's a tradeoff you need to calculate: how much hours do you need, what's the price of an equivalent machine under your desk (including warranty & service contract!).
(On the bonus side, evaluating EC2 isn't expensive - I knew after 2.5 USD that it would do the job).

If you're going to run the system non-stop, buying yourself is probably always cheaper, but Amazon has a whole different level of fault tolerance.

The main problem I see is that the storage is leased. While you can set an upper limit on the CPU dollars to spend, if you stop paying for storage your data is erased. On the other hand, cloud services are great and not too expensive if you need to some extra processing help.

[ffinkernagel]

Indeed, storage at Amazon isn't cheap - I run a model where the data's usually kept on my (raided, backuped) workstation (you need something to work at, anyhow), and I just transfer over what I need.