Re:Amazon EC2 M1 Mac Instances
by mcphage on Thursday December 02, 2021 @12:14PM
(#29419065)
You don't need to leave the machine running (and billing) 24/7/365—turning it on for a few hours a day when you're building for it, or testing builds, should be enough.
[ Parent
| on HN ]
From https://aws.amazon.com/ec2/instance-types/mac/#Pricing:
"Amazon EC2 Mac instances are available for purchase as Dedicated Hosts through On Demand and Savings Plans pricing models. Billing for EC2 Mac instances is per second with a 24-hour minimum allocation period to comply with the Apple macOS Software License Agreement"
...well, poop. That sucks.
Re:Amazon EC2 M1 Mac Instances
by plorkyeran on Thursday December 02, 2021 @12:18PM
(#29419138)
There's a minimum charge of 24 hours. macOS's license only permits renting the machine to a single buyer per day, so if you use it for five minutes then turn it off that machine is idle for the rest of the day.
Re:Amazon EC2 M1 Mac Instances
by banana_giraffe on Thursday December 02, 2021 @12:19PM
(#29419146)
Unlike other EC2 instances, you have to "reserve" a host, and the MAC instances require a minimum of a 24 hour reservation, that you pay for regardless of the instance state.
It can be hard to justify $15.60 every time I want to test some random thing. Not to mention I seem to recall you can't actually cancel a reservation till the 24 hour window is up, so you need to remember to stop it the next day, or automate that action somehow.