Amazon EC2 prices for Windows Instance?

I want to ask from some Amazon cloud technology Experts , that is it profitable to deploy our web application on amazon cloud as compared to normal server?

Currently there are micro,small, large and other types of instances available , if we start from micro instance then we realize that our app needs some more CPU cycle and Ram then how can we dynamically move to next more powerful instance automatically at runtime.

What is the approx minimum yearly cost for a single EC2 windows small instance?

I wnat to deploy a simple Online quiz application (ASP.net based) on Amazon Cloud which at a time 开发者_开发百科can have maximum of 500 users only.

Please suggest me as I m very new to Cloud .Should I go for Azure or Amazon?

This is quite a wide ranging question!

There are some fairly up to date price comparisons for Azure versus Amazon on: http://compositecode.com/2010/11/01/cloudthrowdown-part1/ http://compositecode.com/2010/11/03/cloudthrowdown-part2/ http://compositecode.com/2010/11/08/cloudthrowdown-part3-2/

For small deployments, the costs are quite similar - especially after you take into account special offers (e.g. annual purchasing)

It's also worth noting that for ASP.Net MVC there are a few new "cloud" players arriving - deployfu, appharbor, etc.

In general, you can find "conventional" windows hosting cheaper than cloud offerings - but then you can also find more expensive options too. Sometimes, you get what you pay for - sometimes you don't - ask around about individual hosts.

Whether you should move to Azure or Amazon? There's a lot to consider - in general now I'm aiming to move my sites to Azure or AppHarbor in an attempt to reduce operational overheads - my operational overheads cost way more than my hosting - but I don't know if this will really work for me - will know more later.

Finally, on your question about changing instance sizes dynamically - this isn't seamless - you can't just push a button and get larger instantly - but it's not that hard to do.

In a nutshell, the cost is about the same for both, you're looking at around $90 per CPU per month.

You can get free usage on both, but on Amazon it's linux/UNIX only. With azure there's the introductory offer that gives you a monthly micro and a bit of a small, or if you're a startup you can join Bizspark and get a months worth of a small.

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsazure/free-trial/

http://www.microsoft.com/bizspark/

You cannot automatically move to a different server type. Each instance in a separate virtual machine, so you will have to:

• Create the new instance
• Deploy your website to the new instance
• Make sure your website points to the new instance. (this is made simpler by Amazon's elastic ip address service - you can move an IP address to a different server)

For pricing, use the AWS Calculator

@Stuart I have played with elastichosts.com and their instances can be scaled dynamically. They have images for numerous OS including WS2008. However, licensing cost for WS2008 is $30/month which was a little steep for me. I did like that they offered VNC integration at the BIOS on all instances which meant that you had full access to the machine even when it was booting. Their base configuration performed really well compared to micro instances on Amazon. The disks were also not coupled to instances meaning that deleting an instance would not get rid of your drive like it happens in EC2 which is quite annoying to be honest. EC2 also has limited support for certain "canned" windows images that they offer - i picked WS 2008 R2 64bit version with IIS, SQL only to find out later that I could not get a small instance with this image but rather only a Micro or a Large - which made no sense at all.