gfunkdave

A bit off topic, again.

I've been playing with Amazon EC2 and considering an EC2 Micro instance connected via VPN as a backup domain controller. When I was done playing around last night, I shut down the instance from within the Windows remote desktop. Imagine my surprise to come back and find the instance gone this morning.

I had the instance set to Stop on shutdown, not Terminate.

Anyone know what might have happened?

BTW, it seems to work fine as a backup domain controller.

gfunkdave

As an update (if anyone cares), I figured out that I probably set the instance to terminate on shutdown.

I was so proud of myself for figuring out the whole solution that I was motivated to start a blog and write down how I did it. Comments always welcome.

http://fromdavideo.blogspot.com/2012...-ec2-with.html

deubster

I hadn't thought of this before, but see its usefulness.

Good job on the blog - it's well written and understandable.

^^

star_world

+1. Good advice there. And a creative use of EC2.

I've tried it a couple of times as a personal proxy service for watching TV from Ireland using an instance in Dublin - works well but a bit expensive compared with a regular commercial service.

joesmoe

Just to throw it out there, i've been using Ec2 for a few months now at three Free Tier to run an Ubuntu VPN server so that I can access Netflix and Hulu while outside of the united states.

Free and easy to setup.

Here's a post on my blog as to exactly how i set it up:
http://www.cheezy.com/?page_id=908

gfunkdave

What do they charge for bandwidth?

Thanks everyone, for the feedback. I'm pretty proud of myself.

star_world

You only pay for bandwidth in one direction, but for a proxy server that still means you need to double the numbers.

For the regular US instances, the first 1Gb is free and then it's 12 cents per Gb after that. 24c per Gb total.

For a 1.5Mbps stream (fairly typical for HD-ish video from Netflix) that would cost about 16 cents per hour.

joesmoe

You are somewhat correct.

From what I understand you only pay for outbound data transfer with amazon EC2, all inbound traffic is free.

In addition, you get 15GB a month free with the free tier.

I have 4 or 5 users who use the VPN that I setup to watch netflix/hulu, and while none of us are heavy users, all of us watch at least 5 hours of TV a month (In HD as well), and I've never gone over the 15GB alottment of freee bandwidth, so I wouldn't worry about that.

So far my bill to amazon for the VPN has never been more than $2 or $3/month and those were in months where I was running torrents over the VPN and thus far exceeding the alotment for bandwidth.

From amazon's EC2 pricing page:

Data Transfer IN
All data transfer in $0.000 per GB
Data Transfer OUT
First 1 GB / month $0.000 per GB
Up to 10 TB / month $0.120 per GB
Next 40 TB / month $0.090 per GB
Next 100 TB / month $0.070 per GB
Next 350 TB / month $0.050 per GB


Here's there detailed description of the free usage tier:

Free Tier*

As part of AWS’s Free Usage Tier, new AWS customers can get started with Amazon EC2 for free. Upon sign-up, new AWS customers receive the following EC2 services each month for one year:

750 hours of EC2 running Linux/Unix Micro instance usage
750 hours of EC2 running Microsoft Windows Server Micro instance usage
750 hours of Elastic Load Balancing plus 15 GB data processing
30 GB of Amazon Elastic Block Storage (EBS) plus 2 million IOs and 1 GB snapshot storage
15 GB of bandwidth out aggregated across all AWS services
1 GB of Regional Data Transfer



------> I believe the 15GB of bandwidth out aggregated across all AWS services includes whatever your EC2 instances are running.

If anybody would like help setting up such an instance, it takes me altogether <5 minutes to setup and I'd be happy to do it for any fellow FT'ers. Feel free to PM me.


Based on my extremely rough, in head calculation, I'm going to say that 1GB of data transfer is equal to 2-3 hours of HD stream via netflix/hulu. So with your included 15GB/month I think you should be able to stream around 30-35 hours of HD a month.

Please do note though that this 'free' instance is only allowed for one year, afterwhich it wil l cost around $10/month. So I recommend terminating it after a year, creating a second amazon account, and setting up a second one at that point.

Happy Travels!

star_world

I'm actually a bit more correct than that

With a proxy server, you have a traffic flow along the following lines:

client -> IN proxy -> OUT to Internet -> IN to proxy -> OUT to client

So all of your bandwidth at the proxy is used twice if you're accessing it over the Internet, as you are in this case.

So you're correct that Amazon only charges for outbound traffic but 1Mbps of traffic being downloaded by the client will result in 2Mbps of OUT bandwidth at the proxy, and will appear on your Amazon usage.

I've conducted some fairly accurate tests of bandwidth utilization when using various Internet streaming services and the figures I quoted above are accurate.

Also, you lose your free tier access a year after you first set it up, regardless of usage - so unless you create a whole new account you only get the first 1Gb free.

joesmoe

I think its 15GB a month free outbound transfer not just 1GB (with the free usage tier)

And in your example, your not using 2mbps to watch a 1mbps stream

1mbps is incoming to the server, all incoming bandwidth is free (all the time, its billed at $0.00000)

1mbps outgoing from server to the client (i.e. you watching the TV), which you are charged for but goes against your monthly free allotment).

So when a 1 megabyte file is downloaded via VPN, only 1 megabyte is charged for transfer.
ee

star_world

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