It feels like just yesterday we were all marveling at the sheer power of the cloud, and now, here we are, deep in the weeds of comparing instance pricing. It's a sign of maturity, really. The big players – AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud – are offering increasingly similar services, which, while good for us users, makes the price comparison a bit more intricate. And with cloud providers constantly tweaking prices and adding new ways to save, staying on top of it all is a full-time job for many organizations, especially those embracing a multi-cloud strategy.
Looking back over the last six to nine months, a clear trend has emerged: prices are generally going down. It's encouraging to see that a significant chunk of the price points we track have seen reductions. AWS, for instance, dropped prices on a good number of its instances, and Azure was even more aggressive, with a majority of its offerings becoming cheaper. Google also made some adjustments, and IBM, in a move towards more standardized offerings, saw widespread price decreases across its new instance families.
Beyond just price drops, there have been some interesting shifts in the types of instances available. AWS introduced its c5 family, a step up from the c4s. Azure refreshed its Dv3, Ev3, and Fv2 families, with the Dv3 and Ev3 offering hyper-threading and a slightly different performance profile compared to their predecessors. IBM, as mentioned, moved away from fully custom options to more defined instance families.
One of the biggest game-changers, though, is the evolution of discounting. This is where the real savings can be found, and it's become a much more sophisticated landscape. All three major providers now offer significant discounts – sometimes up to 70-75% – if you're willing to commit to using their services for a set period, typically one or three years. These are their Reserved Instance (RI) or Committed Use Discount (CUD) programs. It’s a trade-off: you get a lower price, but you're locking in your usage to some extent.
Google also has a unique offering called the Sustained Use Discount (SUD). This one doesn't require a commitment upfront. If you run an instance in a specific region for more than 25% of a month, you automatically start getting a discount, which can climb up to 30% for instances running 24/7. It’s a nice way to get some savings without the long-term commitment.
And then there's the billing granularity. AWS moved from per-hour to per-second billing for many services, which is great for short-lived workloads. Google, which has always been per-second, tightened its minimum billing time. Azure, however, currently offers per-second billing primarily for container instances, which is a bit of a limitation for general compute.
Local storage is another area where the providers are taking different approaches. It seems the industry is steering us towards attached storage solutions like AWS's EBS. AWS is offering more instances without local storage and is even reducing prices faster on those configurations. Azure still offers local storage on all its families but has reduced the amount in newer generations. Google, on the other hand, makes local storage an optional add-on, which historically made it expensive, though prices have recently come down.
Ultimately, when you're trying to figure out the best price, it's not just about the sticker price of an instance. You really need to dig into the discounting options. Are you comfortable with a 1-year or 3-year commitment? Can you leverage Google's SUD? Understanding these nuances is key to unlocking the most cost-effective cloud strategy for your needs. And remember, for those with significant spend, there are often privately negotiated discounts available too – it never hurts to ask!
