[Discuss] AWS Linux server scaling question

[Edward Ned Harvey (blu)]

> From: discuss-bounces+blu=nedharvey.com at blu.org [mailto:discuss-
> bounces+blu=nedharvey.com at blu.org] On Behalf Of Kent Borg
> 
> On 03/21/2013 11:58 AM, Drew Van Zandt wrote:
> > trying to figure out what our cheapest AWS setup to handle things for
> ~3500 users is.
> 
> What do the different options cost per month?

Better yet:  What do the different options cost per year?
(Hint:  Buy dedicated "heavy" instances for any instance that you leave on all the time.)  Amazon bills according to up-time.  Not according to CPU load.  So even if it's idle 100% of the time, you leave it running for 24 hours, you're billed 24 hours.  That's a "heavy" dedicated instance.

Drew, remember, this is Amazon.  You can run a tiny dedicated instance for the DB, you can run a tiny dedicated instance for the web front end.  And then, whenever you're expecting a big surge like this, you spin up three more web front ends and a load balancer that you'll only run for a day.  The DB backend is much lighter demand than the web front end.