Author Topic: On optimizing cloud hosting expenses  (Read 1628 times)

Syonyk

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On optimizing cloud hosting expenses
« on: December 26, 2017, 05:16:33 PM »
I've got a bit of time on my hands this winter, and one of the things I finally have time for is optimizing my cloud hosting expenses.

I hadn't really kept close track on it, but it turns out I was spending in the range of $130-$150/mo in various "cloud hosting" expenses.  Most of it was legacy stuff that I simply didn't use much, and a lot of it had been functionally static for a long while, but I was still hosting it on full Linux boxes in the cloud, which aren't the cheapest things to run - especially for static content.

That said, I don't want to just drop the servers offline entirely.  The content is still occasionally useful, just... isn't being updated.

So, I've moved the bulk of my content from virtual Linux boxes to Google Cloud Storage, going from $20-$30/mo/server to about $0.25/mo for the lot of it.

If you want to mirror a server, 'wget -mkEpnp http://www.example.com' is your friend.  This will collect all the content/required files, and convert the links for static viewing.

Then, Google Static Hosting: https://cloud.google.com/storage/docs/hosting-static-website

If you have little enough content, you can fit in the "Always Free" tier (fairly recent): https://cloud.google.com/free/docs/always-free-usage-limits

This gets you a bit of storage, a bit of App Engine, and a micro Linux VM (tiny CPU, 600MB RAM) for free, at least for now.

So, a few afternoons of work, and I'll have reduced my hosting costs from in the ballpark of $150/mo down to about $10/mo, with no actual loss of functionality, and a bit of time savings in the process too. :)

Rubic

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Re: On optimizing cloud hosting expenses
« Reply #1 on: December 27, 2017, 12:35:53 PM »
For work I mostly use AWS and have recently explored Alibaba Cloud, but we're
processing large amounts of clinical data.

I have a single AWS t1 micro instance for personal use, to sync my home directory
with git and keep multiple laptops configured identically.  With reserved instances,
it costs a bit over $1 per month for t1 plus whatever extra for ~20GB storage.  The
new t2 instances cost $0.013/hour or under $10/month.

Digital Ocean is slightly more expensive, but compares favorably with AWS for
my use case.  I've also had great luck with Linode in the past.

Syonyk

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Re: On optimizing cloud hosting expenses
« Reply #2 on: December 27, 2017, 07:16:29 PM »
For work I mostly use AWS and have recently explored Alibaba Cloud, but we're
processing large amounts of clinical data.

Alibaba Cloud is a thing?  Not for anything I connect to...

Quote
I have a single AWS t1 micro instance for personal use, to sync my home directory
with git and keep multiple laptops configured identically.  With reserved instances,
it costs a bit over $1 per month for t1 plus whatever extra for ~20GB storage.  The
new t2 instances cost $0.013/hour or under $10/month.

You can get a GCE Micro (0.2 VCPU, 0.6GB RAM) with 30GB disk instance for free, though you usually end up paying a bit for bandwidth.  I prefer the flexibility of GCE over the rigidness of prebuying reserved instances.

In any case, I turned down several servers over the past few days, and should be dropping $120-$130/mo in cloud costs starting in Jan. :)

Rubic

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Re: On optimizing cloud hosting expenses
« Reply #3 on: December 28, 2017, 06:48:11 AM »
For work I mostly use AWS and have recently explored Alibaba Cloud, but we're
processing large amounts of clinical data.

Alibaba Cloud is a thing?  Not for anything I connect to...

Yes, and pretty much de rigueur for cloud computing in mainland China.  Their
service offering are comparable to AWS, and Alicloud is aggressively going
after Amazon's market.