Low-end providers have steadily adapted features that were once the exclusive province of big companies. For example:
- Reverse DNS configuration by the user
- Anycast configuration
- Block storage
But one feature that hasn’t made it is hourly instances. If you go to Linode, Amazon AWS, or Azure, you can spin up an instance for 5 minutes, spin it down, and only pay for those 5 minutes. But if you go to LowEnd providers, you can only pay by the month.
Why?
We discussed this in a LowEndTalk thread and several reasons were mentioned:
- Low-end provider margins are so razor thin that they need to lock in subscribers for a month.
- Abuse is higher with ephemeral instances, which means increased support costs.
- Provider panels don’t support hourly billing.
Do you use hourly instances? For everything or only occasionally? Let us know in the poll and comments below!
raindog308 is a longtime community LETizen, technical writer, and self-described techno polymath. With deep roots in the *nix world, he has a passion for systems both modern and vintage, ranging from Unix, Perl, Python, and Golang to shell scripting and mainframe-era operating systems like MVS. He’s equally comfortable with relational database systems, having spent years working with Oracle, PostgreSQL, and MySQL.
As an avid user of LowEndBox providers, raindog308 runs an empire of LEBs, from tiny boxes for VPNs, to mid-sized instances for application hosting, and heavyweight servers for data storage and complex databases. He brings both technical rigor and real-world experience to every piece he writes.
Beyond the command line, raindog308 has a life-long love of German Shepherd Dogs, high-quality knives, target shooting, theology, tabletop RPGs, playing guitar, and hiking in deep, quiet forests.
His goal with every article is to help users, from beginners to seasoned sysadmins, get more value, performance, and enjoyment out of their infrastructure.
You can find him daily in the forums at LowEndTalk under the handle @raindog308.
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