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Estimating the 'Amazon Web Services' costs for running your backup service on the Amazon Cloud

The 'Amazon Costs' associated with using StoreGrid Cloud AMIs is clearly explained in the following URL from the Amazon Web Services website: http://aws.amazon.com/ec2/#pricing

We recommend that you visit the above URL for the latest pricing as Amazon may revise its pricing model from time to time.

As per our understanding (and the prevalent Amazon pricing model in March 2009), the Amazon Web Services costs will be as follows:

S. No.	Cost	Description	Units
1.	Compute-Usage	Price of running the EC2 instance using the AMI (based on the type of instance)	Instance-Hours
2.	Data Transfer (In / Out)	Data Transfer (Inward and Outward) in EC2	GB
3.	EBS Storage Provisioned	StoreGrid would use this storage to store the backup data temporarily before uploading to Amazon S3, and to store MySQL Database data.	GB-months
4.	Number of I/O Request to EBS	Number of I/O Request to EBS	Million requests
5.	Primary Storage in S3 & Request charges to S3	Primary Storage for backup data in S3 & Request charges to S3	GB-months & number of requests
6.	EBS Snapshot Storage in S3	The snapshot to S3 is required for redundancy of MySQL Database Data & the temporary cache of backup data in EBS.	GB-months
7.	Other costs	Additional charges based on other EC2 features used (like Elastic IP etc)	as applicable

Each of the above 'cost heads' is explained below...

1. Compute Usage: Price of running the EC2 instance using the AMI (based on the type of instance)

   Amazon Instance Type	Instance Code	Linux/Unix	Windows
   Standard Instances
   Small [32 bit]	m1.small	$0.10 per hour	$0.125 per hour
   Large [64 bit]	m1.large	$0.40 per hour	$0.50 per hour
   Extra Large [64 bit]	m1.xlarge	$0.80 per hour	$1.00 per hour
   High CPU Instances
   Medium	c1.medium	$0.20 per hour	$0.30 per hour
   Extra Large	c1.xlarge	$0.80 per hour	$1.20 per hour

   
   

2. Data Transfer (Inward and Outward).

   Data Transfer In
   All Data Transfer	$0.10 per GB

   
   

   Data Transfer Out
   First 10 TB per Month	$0.17 per GB
   Next 40 TB per Month	$0.13 per GB
   Next 100 TB per Month	$0.11 per GB
   Over 150 TB per Month	$0.10 per GB

   
   

3. EBS Storage Provisioned. (StoreGrid would use this storage to store the backup data temporarily before uploading to Amazon S3, and to store MySQL Database data)

   • $0.10 per GB-month of provisioned storage

4. Number of I/O Request to EBS

   • $0.10 per 1 million I/O requests

5. Primary Storage in S3

   • $0.15 per GB-month of data stored

   • $0.01 per 1,000 PUT requests (when saving backup data)

   • $0.01 per 10,000 GET requests (when loading backup data for restore)

6. EBS Snapshot Storage in S3. (The snapshot to S3 is required for redundancy of MySQL Database Data & the temporary cache of backup data in EBS)

   • $0.15 per GB-month of data stored

   • $0.01 per 1,000 PUT requests (when saving a snapshot)

   • $0.01 per 10,000 GET requests (when loading a snapshot)

7. Additional charges based on other EC2 features used (like Elastic IP etc)

The above pricing model is further explained below - with the help of a specific example (and underlying assumptions).

Amazon Costs: An Example

The calculations below demonstrate how AWS costs are calculated and are meant to help users in estimating their AWS costs.

Monthly recurring costs for Amazon EC2

1. For the EC2 instance, let us assume a Standard CPU 32 bit Small EC2 Linux Instance (Amazon cost: $0.10 per hour)

   • For 1 month it is $0.10 * 24 (hrs) * 30 (days) = $72.00 per month

2. For the EBS Storage, let us assume that an EBS Storage is provisioned to mount 10 GB (for a total backup storage requirement of 100 GB Storage) (Amazon cost: $0.10 per GB provisioned per month). The size of the EBS Storage Provisioned is as per requirement of the user, as StoreGrid uses the EBS storage for local cache of the backed up data and the MySQL Database data. This enables even a lesser sized volume to be able to backup larger volumes of data.

   • For 10 GB it is $0.10 * 10 = $1.00 per month

For the Backup Server and 10 GB of storage provisioned, the 'fixed' investment is hence $72 + $1 = $73 per month

One time 'data transfer cost' assuming 100 GB data transfer

3. Data Transfer: 100 GB data transfer in (Amazon cost: $0.10 per GB) and 1 GB data transfer out (Amazon cost: $0.17 per GB); 'Data transferred out' is simply assumed as a percentage of 'Data In'.

   • Data In: 100 GB -> $0.10 * 100 = $10.00 (only one time)

   • Data Out: 1 GB -> $0.17 * 1 = $0.17 (only one time)

4. Assuming a worst case wherein the I/O is executed at a 4K block size, 100 GB of data will have 100GB/4K of I/O request. (Amazon Cost: $0.10 per 1 million I/O Request)

   • $0.10 * (100 GB/4K)/1,000,000= $2.62 (only one time)

The total one time 'data transfer cost' is hence $10 + $0.17 + $2.62 = $12.79

Monthly recurring costs for Amazon S3 for 100 GB Data Storage and 5 days worth of EBS volume snapshots stored in S3

5. 100 GB of the backed up data is stored in Amazon S3.

   The cost of S3 Storage for 100 GB is 100*0.15 = $15 per month

   Assuming a nominal number of over a million S3 requests to process the backups

   The cost of S3 Requests for (1,000,000 / 1000) * $0.01 = $10 per month

   Hence, the recurring monthly cost for $15 + $10 = $25 per month

6. One snapshot is taken every day. Furthermore, we have assumed that we have 5 days of Snapshots stored in Amazon S3. Since snapshots are incremental, for 5 days of snapshots we can assume about 10 GB of S3 usage (10 GB for the first snapshot and 1 GB of incremental data for the rest). The Amazon 'storage cost' is $0.15 per GB per month.

   Hence, the recurring monthly cost for Snapshot storage in S3 of 10 GB-months is 10 * 0.15 = $1.5 per month

7. Assumption: None of the additional EC2 features are used.

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