So, right now we’re using an Open Source VPN server on AWS EC2 AMI2 Image with t3a.micro instance & 8 GB root volume which cost us ~$5 per month which is fine. But the Bandwidth Traffic of In-Out can be around 1 TB each per month. This converts into ~$100 per month in billing alone which is quite high.
Recently I came across on of the AWS service named AWS LightSail. The plans for the instances starts from $3.50 per month and give 512 GB In-Out transfer bandwidth. I was thinking the $10 one with 1.5 TB transfer bandwidth per month is good for my use case.
https://i.postimg.cc/bJJCTXFy/Light-Sail-Plans.png
The only thing which I’m in doubt is that is it good idea to use LightSail for Network Intensive task because sometime the network bandwidth goes high which result in high CPU usage also. For e.g. here is the 1 week of metrics from the EC2 VPN server t3a.micro instance.
Also there is no such information available about the Network Speed of these LightSail instances. I tried speedtest-cli on $3.5 instance and the max In-out speed i got was around ~800Mb/s max. Is the higher price also means higher speed network too??
https://i.postimg.cc/VNcPDNjY/VPN-Server-Metrics-1-Week.png
As you can see in the last 1 week the max CPU usage was ~13% and Network Bytes In-Out was ~80M.
Right now the user load on VPN server goes to around 30-50 users max at a time.
I’ve no experience with LightSail that’s why looking for suggestions,
So guys, What do you suggest??
Thank you!
As compared with EC2, Lightsail instances are not supported to be auto scaled when the bandwidth your instance receives is abnormal which in fact, can raise CPU usage high as you know. For network intensive task, it is highly considered for not only network bandwidth but CPU and memory also.
As stated in the comparison below, Lightsail configuration is quite limited when compared to EC2 in terms of CPU and memory. Besides that, it is also limitedly supported in integrated with other services. Though Lightsail is really cheap because it is a bundle of a solution for small web app, but if we’re really serious, it is not a good deal, IMO.
Personally I’d use something like digital ocean for this. A $12 instance gives you 2TB traffic for free
The Lightsail TOS prohibits using the service as you propose.
51.3. You may not use Amazon Lightsail in a manner
intended to avoid incurring data fees from other Services (e.g.,
proxying network traffic from Services to the public internet or other
destinations or excessive data processing through load balancing or
content delivery network (CDN) Services as described in the technical
documentation), and if you do, we may throttle or suspend your data
services or suspend your account.
Oh okhe. Thanks for the suggestions. Need to check Digital Ocean.
That’s not what this is though. Those terms are talking about using lightsail to for instance proxy network to S3 to avoid service traffic charges.
VPN should be fine.
Oh, that i was not aware of. Thanks for the information!
Check out oracle. I believe you could run this completely free with their always free tier. If memory serves you can get up to 10Tb transfer for free too.
You are correct. But this highlights where Lightsail really sucks.
Lets say someone builds an application where video files are hosted in S3, and then preloaded onto a lightsail instance upon request by customers and then served to customers.
Is this “using lightsail to proxy traffic out from other services” or is this
“Using Lightsail in combination with other services to deliver an application”
Long story short, if they feel like you are getting “too smart” with your outbound bandwidth, they can just invoke this clause and charge you for it.
So it basically means that you either aren’t allowed to use other AWS services with Lightsail. Or it means that you just can’t do anything too useful with it.
Which is absolute dogshit.
That being said. I would never use Lightsail. This is all based on principal
Okhe, sure man. I’ll check this out also. Thanks!
