[SGVLUG] Fw: The true cost of evaluating EC2

[Eric Hammond]

This reaction of surprise when Amazon charges for things you forgot to 
stop using on AWS is not uncommon.  I tried to make it clear in the 
SGVLUG EC2 workshop what the repercussions were of starting an EC2 
instance and not terminating it during that session.

The great thing about AWS is that it is super-easy to allocate hardware 
resources.  This is an amazingly useful capability, but it naturally 
comes with the disadvantage that it is super-easy to start recurring 
charges for those resources you have allocated.

The other great thing about AWS is that it is super-easy to de-allocate 
the hardware resources and cut your spending.  You just have to remember 
to do it.

When I write a tutorial about how to do things on EC2, I also describe 
how to tear each piece down so that you don't get recurring charges if 
you're just trying something out.

Amazon makes it very easy to see what your AWS charges are to date and 
breaks them down in detail so you can evaluate cost saving measures. 
You can check this at any point during the month if you're wondering 
what's going on:

   http://ec2activity.notlong.com

For example, my personal AWS charges are $53.15 so far in Jan. I can see 
that $1.95 of that is from 19,502,312 EBS volume I/O requests I have 
made this month, and $0.81 is from 4.781 GB of data transferred out of 
EC2 to the Internet.

I would also point out that Elastic IP addresses are free on AWS if you 
are using them.  Amazon only charges $0.01/hour ($7.30/month) if you 
have reserved an Elastic IP address and are not running an instance with 
it assigned, and you have to take action to allocate an Elastic IP 
address.  (We didn't do this in the SGVLUG EC2 workshop.)

--
Eric Hammond
ehammond at thinksome.com



Emerson, Tom (*IC) wrote:
> I saw this on the OCJUG/LAJUG list, and as we had a recent demo/walkthrough of this in which a few people created accounts right then and there, I thought it worthwhile to point this out...
> 
> ----- Forwarded Message ----
> From: Josh Rehman <josh at joshrehman.com>
> To: OCJUG - Orange County Java User's Group <ocjug at ocjug.org>; LAJUG - Los Angeles Java User's Group <lajug at lajug.org>
> Sent: Tuesday, January 6, 2009 12:34:58 PM
> Subject: [lajug] The true cost of evaluating EC2
> 
> Hi all,
> 
> I thought this would be of some interest to the list. Back in July I
> evaluated EC2 for a few hours, but I discovered that, even after stopping
> all instances and releasing all storage, I was still being charged about
> $7/mo for the last 6 months. These charges were buried in deceptive language
> making me think it was a single bill for 7 bucks, still far too much for a
> few hours of small instance usage (which is $.10/hour), and I kept meaning
> to contact Amazon Web Services customer service about it. I finally did and
> it turns out that a) this was a recurring charge and b) because Amazon has
> my CC on file this was not an invoice, but a receipt! So my one time
> evaluation of EC2 somehow cost me $7/mo for a potentially infinite amount of
> months (in my case, I caught it at 6), and of course because they have my CC
> they have been paid in full each and every month. This is highly disturbing
> to me.
> 
> Questions arise:
> 
> 1. What was this charge even for, given that I had no instances running, and
> no storage?
> 2. How can I stop these charges?
> 3. How can I get a refund?
> 4. How can I help others from suffering this problem?
> 5. What lessons can I learn about my actions as a consumer (and also
> Amazon's action as a service provider)?
> 
> Answers arise:
> 
> 1. Today, I finally figured out where the charges came from. For a while I
> worried that someone had hacked my Amazon account. It took a lot of effort
> to get any response from AWS customer support (two emails, a phone
> conversation, and a 72 hour wait). Apparently EC2 provisioned an IP address
> to me that, if not attached to a running instance, bills $.01/hour. Needless
> to say, I was very surprised. I don't recall provisioning an IP address
> seperately from an instance. In any case, EC2 should have some level of
> sanity checking for items like this - or indeed, eliminate this charge
> entirely as IP addresses are dirt cheap (certainly they are much less
> expensive than $7/mo).
> 
> 2. As for stopping the charges, I went whole hog: I not only cancelled EC2
> and S3, but I removed all of my CC information from Amazon's system.
> Frankly, this whole thing really freaked me out, and I wasn't taking any
> chances. (Interestingly, I feel really good about removing this information
> anyway - I was overdue for a hacking, I think.)
> 
> 3. Getting a refund from Amazon may not be possible, especially given the
> tone of AWS customer support email (the last line assured me that I would be
> billed for Jan 1 and 2 - gee thanks!). However, I have sent another email
> and await a response. We're talking $36.65 total, which isn't a huge amount.
> I feel it would be wrong to allow them to keep the money, however.
> 
> 4. I am trying to help others avoid this suffering by a) sending this email
> to a couple of lists, and b) posting my ongoing experience to my blog:
> 
>   http://javajosh.blogspot.com/2009/01/true-cost-of-evaluating-ec2.html
> 
> 5. There are a lot of lessons to be learned here, starting with the
> importance of clear customer communication. I feel that Amazon's monthly
> billing statement was deceptive, to say the least, because it wasn't really
> a billing statement, it was a reciept, and did not itemize what I was being
> charged for. The billing interface is terrible and also did not itemize my
> bill. Amazon should send two emails: one saying that I have an itemized bill
> due, and another (sent a couple days later) saying that the bill has been
> paid. Others do this, and it makes it clear what is going on. Another lesson
> that I've learned is to be careful when you install software on your machine
> capable of executing commands like the following:
> 
> c:\amazon-web-services.exe "do something that causes me to be billed $7 per
> month forever"
> [substitute arbitrary number for "7"]
> 
> Indeed, in this era of cloud computing and web services, it becomes easier
> than ever to loose track of what you're buying. Once you set up your amazon
> account and install the tools, you can literally incur thousands of dollars
> of charges from your command line by instancing lots of large instances, and
> these charges are relatively hidden from you - and there is no safety net.
> This makes clear feedback from the provider even more essential.
> Specifically for EC2, I think it's terrible that they don't release the IP
> address of your instances and keep billing you for them - that should be an
> opt-in, not an opt-out option.
>