[Computer-go] Shodan Go Bet: Amazon EC2

[Darren Cook]

> Do you think a micro-instance would be capable of running the reference
> bots?  Amazon are offering 750 hours free to anyone who signs up.

I don't personally know, though as others have said I think they are
just for getting up to speed with.

I just updated Appendix I of my article
(http://dcook.org/gobet/using_amazon_ec2.html) with a link to this page
benchmarking each EC2 instance:

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=amazon_ec2_exhaustive&num=1

(I also corrected the hardware for the m2.4xlarge instance, Xeon X5550
not X5570, which means a CPU mark of 10,633 not 11,415.)

Their conclusion is the the c1.medium (5 ECU) and c1.xlarge (20 ECU) are
the sweet points, at least for scaling applications. But EC2 is best for
applications that:
  a) have variable requirements;
  b) can scale over a cluster.

E.g. a website where the traffic peaks at certain times of day, or just
after promotions. Or for a go bot needing extra power for the KGS
competition.

For applications with steady demand such as a go bot on CGOS, or running
a many-CPU-month offline analysis program, renting a server by the month
at a normal ISP is (apparently) more cost-effective. Or buy your own
hardware.

Or, for an offline analysis program that runs less than a calendar
month, also consider EC2 spot instances. They appear to be about 1/2 to
1/4 the cost of a normal EC2 instance.

Darren


-- 
Darren Cook, Software Researcher/Developer

http://dcook.org/work/ (About me and my work)
http://dcook.org/blogs.html (My blogs and articles)