AWS announced new EC2 Micro Instances. Micro Instances are geared towards lower traffic sites and low throughput applications. EC2 Micro is available in 32 and 64 bit versions with 613 MB of RAM. And here’s the clincher, the price: $.02 per hour for a Linux/Unix instance and $.03 per hour for Windows.
The Micro Instances can be monitored with CloudWatch to judge the CPU utilization – important because these instances are really not designed for any substantial volume of requests (only about ten requests per minute). But as AWS Evangelist Jeff Barr notes, “at this low a price you could run CloudWatch configured for Auto Scaling with two Micro Instances behind an Elastic Load Balancer for just under the price of one CloudWatch-monitored Standard Small instance.”
It runs a little under $90 per month for Windows and $60 for Linux. For many small businesses with minimal usage, that’s probably more than they’re willing to budget, and Amazon’s Micro Instances may come at a price that makes the move to the cloud more affordable.
