Amazon EC2 Bandwidth

[AngelRO]

Hello, guys...

 

I'm planning to move my server to the Amazon Cloud (EC2) but the outbound traffict is a a bid expensive, comparing the the other regions available in Amazon.

 

Outbound traffic costs $0.25 per gb in Brazil, while in the US it costs $0.12.

 

My server has around 120-180 people online, including auto vendors, and using Asura's estimatives 100 active players will use an average of 267.84gb/month, in Brazil this traffic will cost 100-15gb (the first 15gb is free, for one year) = 21,25 dollars, while in the US it will cost 10,2 dollars.

 

I have had more than 1000 active players in the past, but I let my server shrink when I moved to Canada, because I was studying and didn't have much time to take care of my server, but now I have and I plan to have 200-300 active players in the near future, and using Asura's estimatives again, 800GB of outbound traffic will cost 199.75 dollars in Brazil, while in the US it would cost 95.88.

 

For this reason, I would like to know your opinion...

 

Do you think it is worth it to host a database and patch files in the US and map/char/login in Brazil?

 

Dedicated servers are very expensive down here, and I don't trust national companies with cheap services, because I'm afraid the quality of their services is bad.

 

I currently host my server in the US, but the latency is a bid high (180ms, compared to 20ms from national datacenters) and most Brazilian RO servers are alread hosted in Brazil.

 

Here is the website I used for Amazon EC2 calculation: http://calculator.s3.amazonaws.com/calc5.html

 

I will start with the m1.medium plan and reserve it for 3 years, the monthly price will drop from $117.12 (on-demand) to $26.36.

 

Adding 300gb of outbound traffic, my monthy bill will be $ 110.68, this is half of what I already pay for my dedicated server.
 

If I choose to host my Databases in the US, and add 100gb of outbound traffic to the database instance, the monthly bill will be $ 48.62 USD for the game servers, and $ 40.86 for the database, including 300gb of outbound traffic, a total of 400gb per month, for 97,48 USD.

 

The above calculation includes 2 Amazon EC2 instances, one in the US and one in Brazil, which means more computing power.

 

If I host everything in Brazil in the same instance and add the 400gb of outbound traffic, the total would be $142.49 per month, $ 45,01 more expensive.

 

I know bandwidth depends on many factors, that is why I will try the on-demand amazon service for one or two months, to have accurate data for calculating the costs.

 

PS:

 

Inbound traffic to an Amazon instance is free.

 

Inbound/Outbound traffic between 2 amazon instances is also free.

Edited August 19, 2013 by AngelRO

[Asura]

Hi AngelRO,

 

Host your patch files on a webhost which provides you with a better deal on bandwidth. Keep your MySQL database on the same server as your emulator, it's much more efficient and cuts down on bandwidth. Why do you want to host your SQL database elsewhere anyway?

 

Having a MySQL server away from your emulator's server, is not a good idea since large quantity of transactions may cause a delay during game play due to processing time.

[AngelRO]

Thanks Asura, I also realized that hosting the database on another server wouldn't have a big impact on the outbound traffic, I will keep the DB in the same machine.

Edited August 20, 2013 by AngelRO

[furqanpanjwani]

Amazon Cloud hosting requires not just server and database optimization, but one has to make sure that the cloud server is fully secure. Small businesses must look out for managed server to look after their servers.

[Asura]

Amazon Cloud hosting requires not just server and database optimization, but one has to make sure that the cloud server is fully secure. Small businesses must look out for managed server to look after their servers.

Hi furqanpanjwani,

 

I believe that managed hosting is a waste of money; there's tons of other services which provide you support even when on an un-managed service. And there's really no need to have management for your hosting unless you absolutely have no idea what you are doing.