Matthew Palmer
asked on
AWS Hosting Costs
Hi, I just got caught out with a major bill from using Amazon AWS and I'm trying to work out why.
It seems AWS is very popular, and the headlines of their advertisements consists of multiple free tiers allowing free website and database hosting, or at a reduced cost.
I setup my first AWS account and created a single Windows Server 2008 RC2 instance, and a single SQL Database (less then 2GB), then got hit with a $970 bill at the end of the month.
Surely this is not a sustainable pricing model if they are charging almost a grand a month for hosting a simple database that I can host anywhere else for $50 a month. There must be something I'm missing here, I keep looking at Amazon's pricing model, but it doesn't make sense, why would they put emphasis on the hours you would run your server for, wouldn't most business want to keep their servers running 24/7.
I'm just posting this here to get some clear answers as I'm a complete novice at this, and this was a cost I couldn't afford.
Technical details are here if my setup
--------------------------
Amazn RDS
- SQL Server Standard Edition
- Location: ap-southeast-2b
- db.m4.xlarge (20GB)
Bill Breakdown
Location: Asia Pacific (Sydney)
Amazon RDS for SQL Server Standard Edition (License Included)
USD 1.367 per hour running SQL Server SE (LI) - 710hrs ($970.57)
It seems AWS is very popular, and the headlines of their advertisements consists of multiple free tiers allowing free website and database hosting, or at a reduced cost.
I setup my first AWS account and created a single Windows Server 2008 RC2 instance, and a single SQL Database (less then 2GB), then got hit with a $970 bill at the end of the month.
Surely this is not a sustainable pricing model if they are charging almost a grand a month for hosting a simple database that I can host anywhere else for $50 a month. There must be something I'm missing here, I keep looking at Amazon's pricing model, but it doesn't make sense, why would they put emphasis on the hours you would run your server for, wouldn't most business want to keep their servers running 24/7.
I'm just posting this here to get some clear answers as I'm a complete novice at this, and this was a cost I couldn't afford.
Technical details are here if my setup
--------------------------
Amazn RDS
- SQL Server Standard Edition
- Location: ap-southeast-2b
- db.m4.xlarge (20GB)
Bill Breakdown
Location: Asia Pacific (Sydney)
Amazon RDS for SQL Server Standard Edition (License Included)
USD 1.367 per hour running SQL Server SE (LI) - 710hrs ($970.57)
CompProbSolv
I would think that the question would be better directed to Amazon. They are the ones that set the rates.
I believe AWS has always been a pay for compute model.
First line on the EC2 page is:
https://aws.amazon.com/ec2/pricing/
First line on the EC2 page is:
https://aws.amazon.com/ec2/pricing/
you pay for compute capacity by the hour or the second depending on which instances you run.
Amazon's SQL Instances are very overpriced. The billing will be for each minute that it exists whether or not it is used or nor. The $970 is about right for 1 SQL Instance and 1 Virtual Machine ($900 for the SQL Instance and $70 for the VM)
I believe my experience was $450 for a half month for a SQL Instance.
I believe my experience was $450 for a half month for a SQL Instance.
Also search EE for the phrase "surprise bills", as there have been several EE discussions about this type of AWS billing over the past few years.
If you're looking for fixed bills (never any surprises), then use OVH or some other provisioning company which provides fast + cheap hardware, with unlimited bandwidth access.
If you're looking for fixed bills (never any surprises), then use OVH or some other provisioning company which provides fast + cheap hardware, with unlimited bandwidth access.
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Thanks, I ended up moving off Amazon and migrated the SQL Database to an Azure VM running SQL Express which is a fraction of the price