1.0OTAVAhttps://www.otava.comrich600338<blockquote class="wp-embedded-content" data-secret="25clpz7DDI"><a href="https://www.otava.com/blog/999hour-for-an-amazon-cloud-server/">$999/Hour for An Amazon Cloud Server?</a></blockquote><iframe sandbox="allow-scripts" security="restricted" src="https://www.otava.com/blog/999hour-for-an-amazon-cloud-server/embed/#?secret=25clpz7DDI" width="600" height="338" title="“$999/Hour for An Amazon Cloud Server?” — OTAVA" data-secret="25clpz7DDI" frameborder="0" marginwidth="0" marginheight="0" scrolling="no" class="wp-embedded-content"></iframe><script type="text/javascript"> /* <![CDATA[ */ /*! This file is auto-generated */ !function(d,l){"use strict";l.querySelector&&d.addEventListener&&"undefined"!=typeof URL&&(d.wp=d.wp||{},d.wp.receiveEmbedMessage||(d.wp.receiveEmbedMessage=function(e){var t=e.data;if((t||t.secret||t.message||t.value)&&!/[^a-zA-Z0-9]/.test(t.secret)){for(var s,r,n,a=l.querySelectorAll('iframe[data-secret="'+t.secret+'"]'),o=l.querySelectorAll('blockquote[data-secret="'+t.secret+'"]'),c=new RegExp("^https?:$","i"),i=0;i<o.length;i++)o[i].style.display="none";for(i=0;i<a.length;i++)s=a[i],e.source===s.contentWindow&&(s.removeAttribute("style"),"height"===t.message?(1e3<(r=parseInt(t.value,10))?r=1e3:~~r<200&&(r=200),s.height=r):"link"===t.message&&(r=new URL(s.getAttribute("src")),n=new URL(t.value),c.test(n.protocol))&&n.host===r.host&&l.activeElement===s&&(d.top.location.href=t.value))}},d.addEventListener("message",d.wp.receiveEmbedMessage,!1),l.addEventListener("DOMContentLoaded",function(){for(var e,t,s=l.querySelectorAll("iframe.wp-embedded-content"),r=0;r<s.length;r++)(t=(e=s[r]).getAttribute("data-secret"))||(t=Math.random().toString(36).substring(2,12),e.src+="#?secret="+t,e.setAttribute("data-secret",t)),e.contentWindow.postMessage({message:"ready",secret:t},"*")},!1)))}(window,document); //# sourceURL=https://www.otava.com/wp-includes/js/wp-embed.min.js /* ]]> */ </script> Would you pay $999 per hour for a cloud server? Apparently, Amazon’s EC2 cloud servers spiked to $999.99 per hour when their supply was recently constrained.  The high bidder paid close to $1000 per hour and others got bumped off of their servers. One month’s use of the server at this price would cost a ridiculous $729,992.70 – more than the cost to purchase an entire mainframe and host it in a high-end data center for 5 years. Admittedly, it is a far-fetched scenario for the spot demand for Amazon cloud servers to stay that high for an entire month, but it raises some interesting questions about the predictability and usability of the Amazon cloud. I found this discussion thread on the Amazon Cloud forum to be both informative and puzzling. This left me with a couple of takeaway points: The Amazon cloud isn’t as straight-forward to use as mission critical cloud servers that companies like Online Tech offer.  To use Amazon, you have to design your software around their architecture, availability zones, etc. The basic on-demand model charges by a complex set of computation factors such as CPU clock hours, I/O requests, API requests and others – all of...