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Show HN: Get a Server Instantly

instantserver.io

15 pointsFriedPickles8 comments

Nifty - useful for quick testing tasks.

The concerns though are the sustainability - if instances are paid for and not free tier + bandwidth, it could not be around for long, particularly if it gets abused.

Also, privacy/security - there is no guarantee that instances are destroyed/erased after use and won't get assigned to someone else or logged into. Probably don't want to put private code/IPR on there just in case.

For quick commands (eg, testing a firewall setup from the outside or checking something from an external ip) then it's very cool indeed.

I'm a bit confused. Are you not paying for this, somehow? I expect it will add up fairly fast, yes? 35min @ 0.060/hour is $0.35 per user. 100 users/day * 31 days/month = >$1k/month. So even at a small scale this will cost you a fair bit, won't it?

Don't get me wrong, it's pretty slick!

The micro spots I'm using are usually closer to $0.003/hr. Amazon rounds up 35 mins to 1 hour, so typical cost is $0.003 per button click. Least profitable conversion nets ~$3.50, so if I get 0.1% conversion it breaks even.

Of course abuse or market fluctuations could be costly, but there are built in limits. And thanks!

Don't forget bandwidth costs. I could get about 100mbps to an external server. At $0.12/GB, 100mbps * 35 minutes = 25GB = $3. Most clicks won't cost you this much, but you should definitely keep an eye on this. Maybe set a bandwidth cap somehow.

Also, I noticed a public key in ~/.ssh/authorized_keys. Is that intentional or just part of how EC2 APIs work?

Other than that, great job. I would definitely use this service.

Thanks, I'll keep an eye on bandwidth. The authorized key is a leftover from bringing up the server, I'll consider deleting it automatically.

Curious to hear what you and others use this for--I built it because it's cool, but still trying to put my finger on the biggest use case(s). So far people have told me they're having fun with 'rm -rf /', fork bombs, and getting a decent python shell in the browser ;).

I think the bit I missed was the "you can pay to keep it longer" bit. It makes sense now with that critical piece of information :)

Cool. But the flipping/rotating card with the info on it doesn't show very nicely in Chromium on Xubuntu 13.04.

It's transparent, so you can see the text sitting "behind" the front-facing text.

Awesome.

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