Amazon just introduced “reserved instances”, likely for disaster-recovery sites, and similar uses.
You’re supposed to pay in advance to reserve instances you likely won’t use in the future.
But there’s an interesting pricing loophole …
Let’s use the linux small instance (1.7 GB of memory, 1 EC2 Compute Unit (1 virtual core with 1 EC2 Compute Unit), 160 GB of instance storage, 32-bit platform) as an example.
If you’re sure need an instance for a year, you can pre-pay a reservation fee ($325/year), then use it at a discounted price ($0.03/hr). Ends up being 1/3 less than regular pricing:
Regular: .10/hour * 24 hours * 365 days = $876.00/year plus bw.
Reserved: $325 + (.03 * 24 * 365)= $587.80/year, $73/month (33% off!) plus bw.
For a 3-year commitment, it ends up being 51% off ($35.79/month) plus bw.
Why is this really interesting? Nobody rents a useful (100 Mbps connection, 1+ GB RAM, 160 GB disk) dedicated server for $36/month.
(EC2 bandwidth is .10/GB in and .17 to .10/GB out.)
Mosso (Rackspace) Pricing
StorageMojo: The Amazon keynote at FAST ‘09
