After some time away from the Public Cloud Compute Comparison that I did a couple of months ago (which got X hits), I decided to update it based on feedback and new ideas. What follows is a brief walkthrough with instructions on how to use the Calculator.
Before I go any further, a brief disclaimer: I do not warrant the accuracy of this Comparison and Calculator, it may have errors and omissions (all unintentional if they exist). I also take no responsibility if your bill turns out to be something very different than what the Calculator shows. And finally, I’m employed by Dell, which has relationships with Microsoft, Joyent, and Amazon, and possibly the others and I’m just not aware.
First, let’s cover the updated Compute Comparison:
I’ve updated the Compute with Terremark as an additional provider, I would be interested in adding others if people are interested simply add a request by commenting at the bottom of this post. Also added, is the ability to Calculate/Estimate your costs by using the add Quantities fields. To use the Quantities, add the number of each type of Compute instance as you like and get a rough idea of what the cost will be. Please note that there are assumptions, however for the most part I have annotated in the spreadsheet what those assumptions are. Once you are happy with your compute instances, you can go down to the bottom and move to the new Cloud Storage Comparison and Calculator.
Next, The Cloud Storage Comparison and Calculator:
It was quite an ordeal getting the tiered storage pricing models to work correctly as formulas, but it is all in there. The Cloud Storage Comparison and Calculator attempts to cover the other side of the Cloud equation, by taking into account the following:
Monthly Persisten Storage Requirements
Data Transfer (In and Out of the Storage Cloud)
API Calls (In and Out bound requests)
Redundancy Costs
By entering some estimates across the top and choosing a quantity (this would usually be 1, which acts as a trigger to calculate Monthly Cost) you can easily get an idea of what your storage cost would be.
And finally we have the Cost Summary Page. This page combines the Total Monthly Cost from the Compute and Storage sheets into one place.
To switch from the Cloud page to the Storage page and from the Storage page to the Summary page (or worksheet if you want to be precise), go to the bottom of the page an select (as shown below)
In the next post I will cover different results that came out as I used the Calculator.
Data Gravitas 
Hi Dave,
Great tool! A few questions – the Amazon EC2 instances appear to have the Windows cost, not the UNIX/Linux cost – is that intentional? Also, I22 and I26 have the same cost, but I think should be different.
Cheers,
Jason
Hi Jason,
The Windows only cost was an attempt to make it as Apples to Apples as possible from the original comparison that I did. In retrospect, now that it is a calculator, I should go back and update it to offer Linux as well (I will do this soon in a 2.1 update). I will also look at the I22/26 entry (possibly a typo).
Best Regards,
Dave
Hey, I have been trying to do similar analysis. I used performance data instead of clockrate because Terrmark, one example, uses AMD, and you are going to run into trouble if you quote Ghz to compare with Intel. I even designed a web app that can help users do part of the cost-benefit analysis (http://www.cloudsizer.com or http://www.ideasinternational.com/IT-Buyers/Public-Cloud-Comparisons for more info). Right now we are only doing the smallest instance for each vendor, but I have worked out the technology to extend to all instance types. Also the physical server choices for replacement are limited right now,
I also wrote a research paper on this subject (not vendor funded. It was independent analysis) http://www.ideasinternational.com/PDFs/Costs-of-Replacing-Servers-with-Public… I would appreciate feedback. If you don’t want to register for the whitepaper please email me at chrisg [AT] Ideasinternational [DOT] com