Pet peeve in case Jeff Barr (or another AWS person) reads this. I purchased multiple 3-year heavy utilization RIs just a few months before the price wars last year. The ROI on those went from "great" to "very modest" overnight. I know there is an RI Marketplace where I could try to sell them, but as the on-demand prices went down so far, I would not be likely to get a decent deal. It felt like the best customers, those who have committed for multiple years, were being left out in the cold. I will not be doing any long-term (over 1 year) RI purchases again unless they make it possible to participate in price drops.
I also had this happen to me too, and I was pretty annoyed. On the bright side, with this announcement, if you can afford to buy the "All Upfront" instances, then at least when you want to resell them, you don't have to worry about the hourly rate dropping on their new announcements so the resale should be pretty easy.
That is the whole point. The price IS going to go down overt time. So by getting you to commit to a price Amazon can more accurately predict their growth and you get a fairly decent discount in trade. 1 year terms are much wiser IMHO because of the constant price lowering.
Agreed, 1 year is the sweet spot here. I didn't appreciate the opportunity cost of getting the 3-year RI, as much as the straw man "savings" against the current on-demand prices.
I've been buying 1-year reserved instances for about 3 years now. I think due to price cuts (which happen fairly regularly), this is economically the best way to go. Maybe someone has done a more rigorous analysis.
Comments
Pet peeve in case Jeff Barr (or another AWS person) reads this. I purchased multiple 3-year heavy utilization RIs just a few months before the price wars last year. The ROI on those went from "great" to "very modest" overnight. I know there is an RI Marketplace where I could try to sell them, but as the on-demand prices went down so far, I would not be likely to get a decent deal. It felt like the best customers, those who have committed for multiple years, were being left out in the cold. I will not be doing any long-term (over 1 year) RI purchases again unless they make it possible to participate in price drops.
I also had this happen to me too, and I was pretty annoyed. On the bright side, with this announcement, if you can afford to buy the "All Upfront" instances, then at least when you want to resell them, you don't have to worry about the hourly rate dropping on their new announcements so the resale should be pretty easy.
That is the whole point. The price IS going to go down overt time. So by getting you to commit to a price Amazon can more accurately predict their growth and you get a fairly decent discount in trade. 1 year terms are much wiser IMHO because of the constant price lowering.
Agreed, 1 year is the sweet spot here. I didn't appreciate the opportunity cost of getting the 3-year RI, as much as the straw man "savings" against the current on-demand prices.
I've been buying 1-year reserved instances for about 3 years now. I think due to price cuts (which happen fairly regularly), this is economically the best way to go. Maybe someone has done a more rigorous analysis.