1. AWS: Pricing and Billing
AWS User Group Treffen 01/11
Ralph Rebske

2. Agenda
• Pricing and Billing: Basics
• Instance Types, Regions
• Traffic
• S3 Storage
• EBS
• Calculations
• Billing
• Best Practices

3. Pricing & Billing: Basics
• Metrics
– Hourly Based (Instances)
– Volume Based (Transfer)
– Volume and Time Based (Storage)
– Count Based (Requests, IO‐Rates, IP‐Remaps)

4. Instance Types
• Various Instance Types (S3‐/EBS‐backed)
– Standard: Small (32), Large, Extra Large
– Micro: 32/64
– High‐Memory: Extra Large, Double XL, QXL
– High‐CPU: Medium (32), Extra Large
– Cluster Compute: Quadruple Extra Large
– Cluster GPU: Quadruple Extra Large
• Three Ways to Run an Instance
– On‐Demand
– Reserved (1 year / 3 years)
– Spot

5. Regions
• Various Regions
– US
• US East (Virginia)
• US West (California)
– EU West (Ireland)
– AP (Singapore)

6. Traffic EC2
• Within an Availability Zone: $0.00
(Free) when using private IP addresses,
$0.01 otherwise
• Regional Data Transfer: $0.01
• In and Out of EC2: $0.08 … $0.19/GB

7. S3
• Storage ($0.055…0.154 per GB/month)
• Reduced Redundancy Storage
($0.037 … 0.103 per GB/month)
• Transfer
– In ($0.100 per GB)
– Out ($0.080…0.190) per GB
• Requests
– PUT, COPY, POST, LIST: ($0.01/0.011 per 1.000 req)
– GET ($0.01/0.011 per 10.000 req)

8. Elastic Block Storage
• Metrics EBS
– GB/month of provisioned storage ($0.10/0.11)
– Millions of I/O requests ($0.10/0.11 per 1 mil.)
• Metrics EBS  S3 (Snapshots)
– GB/month of data stored ($0.15/0.18)
– PUT requests (saving) ($0.01/0.012) per 1.000 req.
– GET requests (loading) ($0.01/0.012) per 10.000
req.

9. Calculate
• Use the AWS Simple Monthly Calculator in
order to „guess“ costs
• Compare Results of Calculator to Monthly
Statement

10. Billing

11. Consolidated Billing (1)

12. Consolidated Billing (2)

13. Consolidated Billing (3)
• Advantages
– Simplifies per Client Billing
– Common use of Reserved Instances
– Accounts are combined  More likely to qualify
for volume discounts
– Fewer Restrictions (IP‐Addresses)
• Disadvantages
– Sharing of resources gets more complicated

14. Best Practices
• AWS Monthly Calculator
• Choosing the right Instance Type
– 32/64 Bit (Upgrade / Downgrade)
– On‐Demand / Reserved / Spot
• Choosing the right Location
• Choosing the right Storage (S3/EBS)
• Periodic Review

15. Reserved‐ vs. On‐Demand‐Instances
Sample: High‐CPU Instance, Medium ( EU‐Region, On‐Demand: $0.19/h, Reserved: $0.08, 1yr: $455, 3yr: $700
Price, US$
Hours used
On‐Demand‐Instance Reserved Instance, 1yr Reserved Instance, 3yr

16. Thougts on Instance‐Types
• Make sure your application scales
• Benchmark Phoronix
m1.small: $0.085 per hour per EC2 Compute Unit
m1.large: $0.085 per hour per EC2 Compute Unit
m1.xlarge: $0.085 per hour per EC2 Compute Unit
m2.xlarge: $0.076 per hour per EC2 Compute Unit
m2.2xlarge: $0.076 per hour per EC2 Compute Unit
m2.4xlarge: $0.076 per hour per EC2 Compute Unit
c1.medium: $0.034 per hour per EC2 Compute Unit
c1.xlarge: $0.034 per hour per EC2 Compute Unit
• Watch your Activity Report

17. Thank you!