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Albeit restricted to only a few places worlwide compared to its peers in the cloud segment, I am yet to find another provider capable of delivering a score over 5000 (Geekbench) in a benchmark on a single CPU machine, and each machine costs $6 a month. For homelab and experienced users who don't need DBaaS or IaaC's, it's a pretty straightforward choice. A more comprehensive review of Vultr's HF machines can be found here.
Our company builds micro saas applications. Based on the application we decide whether to deploy it over one of our shared servers or on a dedicated server.
We decided to Lightsail over EC2.
Lightsail is a lightweight, simplified product offering that has a dramatically simplified console. The instances run in a special VPC, but this aspect is also provisioned automatically, and invisible in the console.
Lightsail supports optionally peering this hidden VPC with your default VPC in the same AWS region, allowing Lightsail instances to access services like EC2 and RDS in the default VPC within the same AWS account.
Bandwidth is unlimited, but of course free bandwidth is not -- however, Lightsail instances do include a significant monthly bandwidth allowance before any bandwidth-related charges apply.
It has predictable pricing with no surprises at the end.
The flexibility of EC2 leads inevitably to complexity. Whereas for Lighsail there is virtually no learning curve, here. You don't even technically need to know how to use SSH with a private key -- the Lightsail console even has a built-in SSH client -- but there is no requirement that you use it. You can access these instances normally, with a standard SSH client.
DigitalOcean was where I began; its USD5/month is extremely competitive and the overall experience as highly user-friendly.
However, their offerings were lacking and integrating with other resources I had on AWS was getting more costly (due to transfer costs on AWS). Eventually I moved the entire project off DO's Droplets and onto AWS's EC2.
One may initially find the cost (w/o free tier) and interface of AWS daunting however with good planning you can achieve highly cost-efficient systems with savings plans, spot instances, etcetera.
Do not dive into AWS head-first! Seriously, don't. Stand back and read pricing documentation thoroughly. You can, not to the fault of AWS, easily go way overbudget. Your first action upon getting your AWS account should be to set up billing alarms for estimated and current bill totals.
We first selected Google Cloud Platform about five years ago, because HIPAA compliance was significantly cheaper and easier on Google compared to AWS. We have stayed with Google Cloud because it provides an excellent command line tool for managing resources, and every resource has a well-designed, well-documented API. SDKs for most of these APIs are available for many popular languages. I have never worked with a cloud platform that's so amenable to automation. Google is also ahead of its competitors in Kubernetes support.
GCE is much more user friendly than EC2, though Amazon has come a very long way since the early days (pre-2010's). This can be seen in how easy it is to edit the storage attached to an instance in GCE: it's under the instance details and is edited inline. In AWS you have to click the instance > click the storage block device (new screen) > click the edit option (new modal) > resize the volume > confirm (new model) then wait a very long time. Google's is nearly instant.
- In both cases, the instance much be shut down.
There also the preference between "user burden-of-security" and automatic security: AWS goes for the former, GCE the latter.
Most bioinformatics shops nowadays are hosting on AWS or Azure, since they have HIPAA tiers and offer enterprise SLA contracts. Meanwhile Heroku hasn't historically supported HIPAA. Rackspace and Google Cloud would be other hosting providers we would consider, but we just don't get requests for them. So, we mostly focus on AWS and Azure support.
Pros of Amazon EC2
- Quick and reliable cloud servers647
- Scalability515
- Easy management393
- Low cost277
- Auto-scaling271
- Market leader89
- Backed by amazon80
- Reliable79
- Free tier67
- Easy management, scalability58
- Flexible13
- Easy to Start10
- Widely used9
- Web-scale9
- Elastic9
- Node.js API7
- Industry Standard5
- Lots of configuration options4
- GPU instances2
- Simpler to understand and learn1
- Extremely simple to use1
- Amazing for individuals1
- All the Open Source CLI tools you could want.1
Pros of Microsoft Azure
- Scales well and quite easy114
- Can use .Net or open source tools96
- Startup friendly81
- Startup plans via BizSpark73
- High performance62
- Wide choice of services38
- Low cost32
- Lots of integrations32
- Reliability31
- Twillio & Github are directly accessible19
- RESTful API13
- PaaS10
- Enterprise Grade10
- Startup support10
- DocumentDB8
- In person support7
- Free for students6
- Service Bus6
- Virtual Machines6
- Redis Cache5
- It rocks5
- Storage, Backup, and Recovery4
- Infrastructure Services4
- SQL Databases4
- CDN4
- Integration3
- Scheduler3
- Preview Portal3
- HDInsight3
- Built on Node.js3
- Big Data3
- BizSpark 60k Azure Benefit3
- IaaS3
- Backup2
- Open cloud2
- Web2
- SaaS2
- Big Compute2
- Mobile2
- Media2
- Dev-Test2
- Storage2
- StorSimple2
- Machine Learning2
- Stream Analytics2
- Data Factory2
- Event Hubs2
- Virtual Network2
- ExpressRoute2
- Traffic Manager2
- Media Services2
- BizTalk Services2
- Site Recovery2
- Active Directory2
- Multi-Factor Authentication2
- Visual Studio Online2
- Application Insights2
- Automation2
- Operational Insights2
- Key Vault2
- Infrastructure near your customers2
- Easy Deployment2
- Enterprise customer preferences1
- Documentation1
- Security1
- Best cloud platfrom1
- Easy and fast to start with1
- Remote Debugging1
Pros of Rackspace Cloud Servers
- Quick and reliable cloud servers42
- Great customer support29
- SSDs20
- Uses OpenStack10
- Windows server 2012 possible2
- Easy integration with Github2
- Ubuntu1
- Ssh access1
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Cons of Amazon EC2
- Ui could use a lot of work13
- High learning curve when compared to PaaS6
- Extremely poor CPU performance3
Cons of Microsoft Azure
- Confusing UI7
- Expensive plesk on Azure2