I frequently want quick and easy access to a bunch of instances, but I don't expect to use any single instance for very long. For example, I might partition my data into 30 pieces, and I want to simultaneously operate on each partition for five minutes.) Since Amazon charges a 1 hr minimum for each instance you set up, I'd pay for 30 hours.
I'm experimenting with a switch to PiCloud. PiCloud charges twice as much per hour, but they only charge for the time I use (150 minutes in this example).
PiCloud has the additional advantage of being vastly easier to use than ec2.
There are use cases for ec2 (and elastic map-reduce)...
I frequently want quick and easy access to a bunch of instances, but I don't expect to use any single instance for very long. For example, I might partition my data into 30 pieces, and I want to simultaneously operate on each partition for five minutes.) Since Amazon charges a 1 hr minimum for each instance you set up, I'd pay for 30 hours.
I'm experimenting with a switch to PiCloud. PiCloud charges twice as much per hour, but they only charge for the time I use (150 minutes in this example).
PiCloud has the additional advantage of being vastly easier to use than ec2.
There are use cases for ec2 (and elastic map-reduce)...