Changes between Version 5 and Version 6 of BuildServerSetup

Timestamp:

Dec 19, 2008, 12:00:28 AM (15 years ago)

Author:

Philip Taylor

Comment:

--

BuildServerSetup

@@ -40 +40 @@
 
 == EC2 ==
-Currently (December 2008) the only suitable alternatives to EC2 seem to be [http://www.flexiscale.com/ FlexiScale] and [http://www.gogrid.com/ GoGrid], but they are a bit more expensive. Since all the services provide a plain Windows environment, it should be fairly easy to transition between the services if it becomes necessary.
+Handy tools: [http://developer.amazonwebservices.com/connect/entry.jspa?externalID=609 ElasticFox], [https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/6955 s3://].
 
-Handy tools: [http://developer.amazonwebservices.com/connect/entry.jspa?externalID=609 ElasticFox], [https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/6955 s3://].
+== Alternatives to EC2 ==
+Currently (December 2008) the only suitable alternatives to EC2 I've seen are [http://www.flexiscale.com/ FlexiScale] and [http://www.gogrid.com/ GoGrid]. Since all the services provide a plain Windows environment, it should be fairly easy to transition between them if necessary.
+
+EC2 appears to offer the best value. Comparing the lower-end offerings from each:
+||Service||RAM (GB)||CPU (EC2 units)||Machine per hour||Storage per GB-month||Total per month||
+||EC2||1.7||1||$0.125||$0.15||$4.55||
+||EC2||1.7||5||$0.30||$0.15||$9.88||
+||!FlexiScale||0.5||0.5 (?)||£0.08||£0.30||£3.93||
+||!FlexiScale||0.5||1 (?)||£0.11||£0.30||£4.85||
+||!FlexiScale||1.0||0.5 (?)||£0.13||£0.30||£5.45||
+||!GoGrid||0.5||0.125 (?)||$0.095||$0||$2.90||
+||!GoGrid||1.0||0.25 (?)||$0.190||$0||$5.78||
+(This assumes 5GB of storage, and 1 hour usage per day.)
+
+(£1 UKP = $1.50 USD right now. Tax (15%) is not included for EC2; unsure about others.)
+
+Regarding CPU: "One EC2 Compute Unit provides the equivalent CPU capacity of a 1.0-1.2 GHz 2007 Opteron or 2007 Xeon processor. This is also the equivalent to an early-2006 1.7 GHz Xeon processor". !FlexiScale [http://www.flexiscale.com/forum/showthread.php?p=52 says] "I would expect a typical 2gb virtual server with us to get more CPU resources compared to Amazon", implying that their "2 CPU" offering is roughly comparable to 1 EC2 Compute Unit. !GoGrid [http://wiki.gogrid.com/wiki/index.php/Frequently_Asked_Questions says] "we will always maintain a ratio of 1 Xeon core (equivalent to a P4 2.0 chip) to 4 GB of RAM across our entire grid", which sounds like about 1 EC2 Compute Unit per 4GB.
+
+Builds take somewhere around 20 minutes on 1 EC2 Compute Unit, which is barely adequate. Anything less than that is rubbish.
+
+Turns out that !GoGrid actually charges even when the machine is switched off, since you pay for reserved resources, so that's not acceptable. But they claim they're looking into changing that, in which case they'd be more suitable.