Linode: Transfer is $0.10/GB, CPU+RAM+HD is free

Except, if I don't use 400GB of transfer, I still pay $40, right? So then, my CPU+RAM+HD doesn't seem free anymore.

As I said, the point of view is particularly useful for data transfer hogs.

That's bickering over pennies though. If $40 scares you you're in 'hobby' territory. For $150 you can get a flat rate 100 MBit connection, including a machine. That's 4 times as much dough, but it gives you 32400 Gbit/month, or, by your math, $3200 worth of 'value'.

Measured traffic is nice for bits & pieces. Flat rate is pretty much the only way to go if you're using a lot of bandwidth.

The savings scale with transfer, it's not just an overhead. You save $40 per 400GB transfered. That affects deployments of any size.

What service offers unlimited 100 MBit connection for $150/mo, including machine?

> What service offers unlimited 100 MBit connection for $150/mo, including machine?

http://www.leaseweb.com/en/dedicated-servers/unmetered-serie...

Gigabit goes for a bit more, but effectively that's half the price of the 100Mbit connections:

http://www.leaseweb.com/en/dedicated-servers/unmetered-serie...

> Measured traffic is nice for bits & pieces. Flat rate is pretty much the only way to go if you're using a lot of bandwidth.

This used to be advice nearly everyone followed, but I'm seeing an increasing number of high-traffic sites serving from per-GB-billed providers like EC2. (It could be that it's still good advice, but the other benefits of EC2 outweigh that downside?)

I run a voice chat hosting service on Linode that tends to be quite bandwidth-heavy, and I noticed this a while ago. I don't need a lot of RAM per machine, so I've got a whole bunch of 512 instances scattered around their various data centers; all purchased bandwidth is pooled, so even if a node goes over its allocation, I don't pay extra unless I exceed 200gb * number of leased nodes across all nodes in a given billing period. That's made it very easy to make a decision between horizontal or vertical scaling; they're the same cost, but horizontal scaling gets me better geographic coverage.

I do wish Linode had some sort of plan for extra bandwidth that was more cost-effective than just purchasing another node outright, though.

Lighter users are subsidising you :-)

From the FAQ: "If you believe you will have overages consistently, you can purchase additional transfer or upgrade to the next plan level. Purchasing additional transfer ahead of time is $0.10/GB, otherwise overages are $0.15/GB."

http://www.linode.com/faq.cfm

My point is though, why would you pay for additional GB only, if you can also get a node for "free"?

You can improve the performance of your app by deploying more memcached nodes, for example.

Exactly. If I think I'll have overage, I can purchase 200gb of bandwidth for $20, or I can purchase another node for $20, which includes 200gb of pooled bandwidth. In my case, whenever, I need more bandwidth, I get more for my money by just purchasing a whole new node.

Your math is wrong on all levels.

Let me take this to the extreme: at 100TB.com you get 100TB of transfer for $201,15, which according to your math equals to $0.002 per GB plus free dedicated server. However, if you don't use 100TB, but only 10GB (which is quite enough for most of the websites) then using Amazon S3 you would pay $1,50... And even if you would use 1TB (which is quite a lot) then you would pay $150 for the S3...

...in the end $0.15 turns out cheaper than $0.002 most of the time ;)

Nice to know about 100TB.com.

As I said, the math makes sense if your app is a data transfer hog (> 1TB/mo).

As to Amazon, I suppose you meant EC2? (S3 is a data store). If you use 1TB at EC2 for $0.15/GB, that's $150 for data transfer only, on top of the instance usage price.

At Linode, if you use that 1TB, you pay less for that transfer ($100), and you get a free instance.

How's this so "wrong on all levels"?

What happens if that Linode instance goes down? With Amazon you pay 15cents a GB but you get a lot more reliability for your money.