It’s also likely more storage and far more bandwidth than I’d actually use, but it’s what I get with the dedicated server (plus the extra performance). So, how about just 40GB of storage (after all, the OS and apps can be on the instance storage) and 200GB of transfer? That reduces the cost down to $107.  That’s not bad, especially considering the flexibility. But what if I don’t need that for this use? Well, I’d save money in my use case. And, I could always bring up an instance or use S3 to host some data if I needed.

Anyway, once again, I chose to go with a dedicated server rather than switch over to Amazon AWS. I still like the concept of AWS, but it still doesn’t make sense for our web servers.

What would it have needed for me to switch? The first thing it would need is a lower base price and more EC2 units. A two EC2 (ideally two cores) unit instance for 5 cents a month would be a start. With EBS, the instance storage doesn’t need to be 160GB; it could now be just a boot and application drive of just 60GB. A “hobbyist” tier for bandwidth and storage of under 100GB that’s half price. With the tiers they talk about, they’re looking at dozens of terabytes (and more) for both bandwidth and storage. That’s great and all, but only companies and a small hand full of individuals really need that. Finally, multiple static IPs would be useful for multiple domain hosting without the potential SEO impact. With the above stats and prices, the cost would be just about $56 at the 100GB limit. (Above that costs for the storage and transfer would be at normal rates.) It also means a base price of just $36 (well, $42 with the EBS fixed amount). That would be great because you could still burst up to a high end unit during heavy load periods, as needed, but have a much lower base cost for your idling machine. That flexibility is valuable, but less so at the low end. There are other benefits, too, such as higher real bandwidth (250 Mbps where most single dedicated servers have only 100 Mbps), no worry about hardware failing, and self service plus programmatic abilities to modify things.

Side note: Today, though, an email came out with a new pricing structure for Amazon S3. I thought, “Great, maybe the pricing will be cheaper for me!” And, sure enough, it would be. If, of course, I needed more than 50 TB of storage. Wait, what?! That’s right. If you store under a mere 50 TB, the cost is the same. And the cheapest tier is now for 500 TB and over. I seriously have to wonder how many folks will end up saving money in that tier. I also wonder if there’s a market for a pool of users using one account and passing on exact costs to the user and trying to bring the pool up to a large enough amount to take advantage of the lower costs? That said, savings 3 cents a month on a GB when you’re using maybe 5GB (or even 50GB) isn’t really that much money.

As for other hobbyist options around, Google App Engine in it’s current preview release is a good candidate for that if you just need to serve up some stuff and provide some functionality with python. Anything beyond that, though, is pretty limited. You certainly can’t bring up a short term, high performance compute cluster for a few bucks an hour.