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Re:A Tale of Two Clouds: Amazon vs. Google by raboukhalil on Monday March 13, 2017 @01:30PM (#13860122)
Hi everyone, author here. I wrote this article to summarize my thoughts on using the Google Cloud vs Amazon.

TL;DR: Although AWS has a lot more cloud products, unless you need the additional options, IMHO the Google Cloud is more intuitive, cheaper and offers better cost structure (e.g. by-the-minute pricing instead of by-the-hour).

So if you’re starting a new project, I would highly recommend that you give the Google Cloud a try.

Re:A Tale of Two Clouds: Amazon vs. Google by saurik on Monday March 13, 2017 @04:08PM (#13861857)
Yo! Totally legitimate question, as I don't know the answer to this, and I'm extremely curious: I see a lot of people say that Google is cheaper than Amazon, but I also see a lot of people bemoaning reserved instances and buried in every comment thread about Google vs. Amazon someone points out "wait, this comparison isn't taking into account reserved instances". I thereby don't feel like I actually know which offering is cheaper (though I'm betting it is Google, mostly for the same reasons I don't really want to use their offering, which is maybe unfortunate: that I hate free tiers and artificially low prices, as they either turn into a tax somewhere else or a reason to later scrap a product line). Can you verify that your comparison with 25% cheaper is based on actually paying attention to the pricing structure of the two products? What I'd like to see is "assuming you are going to use a computer for two or three years, and are willing to spend the twenty minutes to save potentially thousands of dollars (as if you aren't, something is wrong with your priorities ;P <- note that I'm willing to admit my priorities are also broken :/...), here is the cost difference between these two offerings".
Re:A Tale of Two Clouds: Amazon vs. Google by raboukhalil on Monday March 13, 2017 @05:44PM (#13862730)
Great question!

Until recently, Google Cloud didn't have reserved instances. Interestingly enough, last week they introduced their version of it called "Committed Use" pricing.

Here's what it looks like for 2 CPUs/8GB RAM (numbers below according to their documentation page):

  AWS
  On-demand = $69/month
  1-year    = $53/month
  3-year    = $47/month

  GCP
  On-demand = $52/month
  1-year    = $31/month
  3-year    = $22/month
So GCP is cheaper even considering the reserved instances!
Re:A Tale of Two Clouds: Amazon vs. Google by user5994461 on Monday March 13, 2017 @07:20PM (#13863491)
Are you talking about this article? https://thehftguy.com/2016/11/18/google-cloud-is-50-cheaper-...

In short. If your infrastructure is so small that it's about reserving 3 instances for a year. You should be running on Digital Ocean. It's much more simple and cheaper. You likely don't need the more advanced features from Google/Amazon.

If your infrastructure is in the hundred of VMs. Reserved instances are basically unusable, it's a NP complete problem to optimize capacity for a moving target. You're as likely to save 10% as to lose 20% on your reservations.

Last but not least. Reserved instances have many tricks and constraints that you'll only find out after you spend 10k on them, and can't go back.