Setting up AWS cloud-relay - don't reserve expensive storage!
Hi all, I set up an AWS EC2 cloud Tor relay a month ago and made an expensive mistake. Perhaps others may learn from my example! I followed the instructions on the tor-project website, and found that it actually is quite a simple process, as it says. I did notice that the AWS setup screens I was seeing were different from the screenshots on the website, but they were asking me similar questions so I just went with the defaults where the website said "No changes". I didn't look closely enough. Everything went to plan and I watched the relay work for a month. However, on the AWS EC2 Management console I neglected to click on "Services" then "Billing" to see how much they were charging me. At the end of the month I got a bill for 120 dollars. And Amazon were quite right - they were charging me for the 1024 GB of storage I had accidentally asked for by not changing the default when I set up the instance. The first 30 GB were free, the other 994 I was paying for. And I was only actually using 1.5 GB ... There doesn't seem to be any way of shrinking the storage of an existing instance (though it can be expanded, now, with EBS, Elastic Block Storage), so I had to terminate it (which deletes the storage) and create another instance with a more reasonable 10 GB (of which df tells me I'm now using 11%). So ... if you've recently set up an AWS EC2 cloud relay with the Tor AMI, check your storage, and your billing! I think the option to specify your storage amount (with its default of 1024 GB) may have been introduced when AWS introduce EBS instead of just instance-backed storage (which may have defaulted to the size of the AMI??). In any case, I think the tor-project website AWS screenshots urgently need to be changed to reflect the current setup procedure, with a warning not to accept the 1024 GB default and an explicit recommendation about the amount of storage to ask for (was my guess of 10 GB reasonable?). Oh well, I have gained 100 dollars worth of wisdom from the episode. My way of "Don't look too closely, and hope for the best at the end of the month" was *not* a good idea. Nick Sheppard
Nick Sheppard <nshep@attglobal.net> wrote: :Hi all, : :I set up an AWS EC2 cloud Tor relay a month ago and made an expensive :mistake. Perhaps others may learn from my example! : :I followed the instructions on the tor-project website, and found that :it actually is quite a simple process, as it says. I did notice that :the AWS setup screens I was seeing were different from the screenshots :on the website, but they were asking me similar questions so I just :went :with the defaults where the website said "No changes". I didn't look :closely enough. : :Everything went to plan and I watched the relay work for a month. :However, on the AWS EC2 Management console I neglected to click on :"Services" then "Billing" to see how much they were charging me. : :At the end of the month I got a bill for 120 dollars. And Amazon were :quite right - they were charging me for the 1024 GB of storage I had :accidentally asked for by not changing the default when I set up the :instance. The first 30 GB were free, the other 994 I was paying for. :And I was only actually using 1.5 GB ... : :There doesn't seem to be any way of shrinking the storage of an :existing :instance (though it can be expanded, now, with EBS, Elastic Block :Storage), so I had to terminate it (which deletes the storage) and :create another instance with a more reasonable 10 GB (of which df tells : :me I'm now using 11%). : :So ... if you've recently set up an AWS EC2 cloud relay with the Tor :AMI, check your storage, and your billing! : :I think the option to specify your storage amount (with its default of :1024 GB) may have been introduced when AWS introduce EBS instead of :just :instance-backed storage (which may have defaulted to the size of the :AMI??). : :In any case, I think the tor-project website AWS screenshots urgently :need to be changed to reflect the current setup procedure, with a :warning not to accept the 1024 GB default and an explicit :recommendation :about the amount of storage to ask for (was my guess of 10 GB :reasonable?). : :Oh well, I have gained 100 dollars worth of wisdom from the episode. My : :way of "Don't look too closely, and hope for the best at the end of the : :month" was *not* a good idea. : :Nick Sheppard :_______________________________________________ :tor-relays mailing list :tor-relays@lists.torproject.org :https://lists.torproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/tor-relays Thanks for sharing this. I, too, followed the guide on torproject.org; however, at the last page where you review and create the instance there was a warning notifying me that my setup wasn't eligible for the free deal. No matter what I altered, I couldn't get the free offer. So, I decided against creating the instance. I'll have to have another look. I also noticed the images on torproject.org were outdated. It would be good to have that addressed. -- Sent from my Android device with K-9 Mail. Please excuse my brevity.
On Sun, Dec 8, 2013 at 4:59 PM, Mark <mark@bsdbox.co> wrote:
I believe the free tier is only available to new customers/cards. You may qualify if you associate a new card with your account. -- Runa A. Sandvik
"Runa A. Sandvik" <runa.sandvik@gmail.com> wrote: :On Sun, Dec 8, 2013 at 4:59 PM, Mark <mark@bsdbox.co> wrote: :> Thanks for sharing this. I, too, followed the guide on :torproject.org; :> however, at the last page where you review and create the instance :there was :> a warning notifying me that my setup wasn't eligible for the free :deal. No :> matter what I altered, I couldn&# 39;t get the free offer. So, I :decided :> against creating the instance. I'll have to have another look. I also :> noticed the images on torproject.org were outdated. It would be good :to have :> that addressed. : :I believe the free tier is only available to new customers/cards. You :may qualify if you associate a new card with your account. : :-- :Runa A. Sandvik :_______________________________________________ :tor-relays mailing list :tor-relays@lists.torproject.org :https://lists.torproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/tor-relays It was a new AWS account, but with my Amazon credentials. I'll try with new credentials, entirely, and another card. Thanks. -- Sent from my Android device with K-9 Mail. Please excuse my brevity.
On Sun, Dec 08, 2013 at 04:00:06PM +0000, Nick Sheppard wrote:
*Storage*? As in, disk space? Surely you mean bandwidth, but you seem quite clearly to mean disk space, so I'm confused.
So ... if you've recently set up an AWS EC2 cloud relay with the Tor AMI, check your storage, and your billing!
Are you setting up a relay or a bridge? https://www.torproject.org/docs/faq#RelayOrBridge
Yuck. I have worried since the beginning of the 'cloud bridge' project that we were just signing people up for a future bait-and-switch by the enormous uncaring for-profit company. But then, I figured I was just a cloud hater so I should let people move forward with their vision of the future. :) Sorry you got bitten. :( --Roger
On Sun, Dec 8, 2013 at 6:29 PM, Roger Dingledine <arma@mit.edu> wrote:
If Nick does mean bandwidth, then I would say we have a bug in the way Tor handles bandwidth limits.
Tor Cloud instances are bridges by default. -- Runa A. Sandvik
Quoth Roger Dingledine:
Sounds to me like Amazon decided the instance should be given 1024GB of disk space by default, regardless of the fact that it (obviously) remained completely unused. Nick, if Amazon were a reasonable company that certainly ought to be the sort of thing you could say "I didn't realise, it was misleading, and I didn't use the offered space, please refund me". However given their love of automation and robotic offerings I suspect such pleas would be ignored.
On 08/12/13 19:02, Nick wrote:
Nice idea, but I don't think I'd have a case. The 1024 GB is there on the setup screen (at least it is for eu-west-1), there were many ways I could have seen how much unused storage I had, I could have checked my bill more often, I could easily have set up an email alert for when the bill passed a set threshold ... ... I think in the back of my mind I had an idea that this was The Cloud, a sort of ideal elastic resource where you would only pay for what you used. Well, not where AWS EBS storage is concerned! Nick Sheppard
On Sun, Dec 8, 2013 at 10:26 PM, Nick Sheppard <nshep@attglobal.net> wrote:
@AWSSupport replied to my tweet saying they have reached out to you via the AWS Support Center at https://aws.amazon.com/support. -- Runa A. Sandvik
On 08/12/13 23:22, Runa A. Sandvik wrote:
... and not only did they reach out to me, they immediately gave me a full refund. So a big thank-you to Runa for your very effective tweet! :) :) :) Perhaps this will persuade Roger Dingledine that the folks at AWS love kittens and rainbows as much as we do ... However (for there is a "however") I'm now even more puzzled by the default settings. Mickey N at AWS replied that: "It's my understanding that when a Linux/RHEL instances are launched, the default amount of EBS storage in every region is set to 6GB. ... I've attached a screenshot of the Management Console page where the default 6GB is displayed." And the 6 is in exactly the same place where we see 4 (on us-east-1) and 1024 elsewhere. I've pointed this out to AWS. I have no idea what's happening here. All the best, and thanks again Runa and AWS, Nick Sheppard
On Mon, Dec 9, 2013 at 1:49 AM, Nick Sheppard <nshep@attglobal.net> wrote:
Great, glad I could help!
I have a support ticket open and have been talking to Mickey about this. It seems all the instances, excluding us-east-1, were created with storage space set to 1024 GB. This is interesting because I only ever created one instance, us-east-1, and then used the AMI copy function [1] to copy the instance to the other regions. I will write an update when I hear back/when this issue has been resolved. [1]: http://aws.amazon.com/about-aws/whats-new/2013/03/12/announcing-ami-copy-for... -- Runa A. Sandvik
On 09/12/13 02:28, Runa A. Sandvik wrote:
Hi Runa (and AWS users), Did we ever get to the bottom of the default storage/AMI copying issue? I'd like to have another go at setting up a Tor relay on AWS eu-west-1. Many thanks again for your help back in December. Nick Sheppard
On Sun, Mar 30, 2014 at 3:29 PM, Nick Sheppard <nshep@attglobal.net> wrote:
Hi Runa (and AWS users),
Hi Nick,
Did we ever get to the bottom of the default storage/AMI copying issue? I'd like to have another go at setting up a Tor relay on AWS eu-west-1.
I haven't had the time to look into this, unfortunately. If you want an eu-west-1 bridge, then you can set up an Ubuntu instance and follow the steps in the ec2-prep.sh [1] script to turn it into a Tor Cloud bridge. [1]: https://gitweb.torproject.org/tor-cloud.git/blob_plain/HEAD:/ec2-prep.sh -- Runa A. Sandvik
Hey Nick, Is there a particular reason you want to use AWS? Unless you are still on the free tier, I think you could find far a more economical VPS provider. I currently run a tor relay for 5 euros a month using http://www.edis.at/en/home/. http://lowendbox.com/ is a good resource to find cheap VPS providers. Cheers! Dan On 2014-03-30 17:34, Nick Sheppard wrote:
On 30/03/14 17:02, Runa A. Sandvik wrote: On Sun, Mar 30, 2014 at 3:29 PM, Nick Sheppard <nshep@attglobal.net> wrote: Hi Runa (and AWS users), Hi Nick, Did we ever get to the bottom of the default storage/AMI copying issue? I'd like to have another go at setting up a Tor relay on AWS eu-west-1. I haven't had the time to look into this, unfortunately. If you want an eu-west-1 bridge, then you can set up an Ubuntu instance and follow the steps in the ec2-prep.sh [1] script to turn it into a Tor Cloud bridge. [1]: https://gitweb.torproject.org/tor-cloud.git/blob_plain/HEAD:/ec2-prep.sh [1]
Many thanks! Nick _______________________________________________ tor-relays mailing list tor-relays@lists.torproject.org https://lists.torproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/tor-relays [2] -- Dan Rogers +44 7539 552349 skype: dan.j.rogers gpg key [3] linkedin [4] | songkick [5] | twitter [6] | spotify [7] | music [8] Links: ------ [1] https://gitweb.torproject.org/tor-cloud.git/blob_plain/HEAD:/ec2-prep.sh [2] https://lists.torproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/tor-relays [3] https://secure.techwang.com/gpg/public_key.txt [4] http://www.linkedin.com/in/danrogerslondon [5] http://www.songkick.com/users/music-is-math [6] http://twitter.com/danjrog [7] http://open.spotify.com/user/bonkbonkonk [8] http://holdingitwrong.com
Hi Roger, Thanks for responding so quickly! On 08/12/13 18:29, Roger Dingledine wrote:
I did indeed mean storage. At least on eu-west-1 (Ireland), you get a free disk space allocation of 30GB-months for each month. With my 1024 GB, I had used that up in 30/1024 of a month, or about 21 hours. After that I started being charged. Everything else I used was within the free allowance (eg I used about 900,000 io requests out of an allowance of 2 million). My bill was quite clearly itemized!
I left it as the default AMI loaded by the tor-project website. The only torrc changes I made were to change the nickname and to put in some ContactInfo.
Well, we know the free offer only lasts for a year after you first open your AWS account. And I might well consider paying after that, if the first year goes well.
Sorry you got bitten. :(
Worth it for the experience, I say. And more worth it if I can share that experience ... Thanks again, Nick
I too found there was a variation from the Tor instructions and the Amazon offer depending on where you opted to have the 'instance'. It appeared that they were offering free instances in some places only. You can set billing alerts so you know when it goes into charging e.g. $1. Robert ____________________________________________________________ FREE 3D EARTH SCREENSAVER - Watch the Earth right on your desktop! Check it out at http://www.inbox.com/earth
On Sun, Dec 8, 2013 at 4:00 PM, Nick Sheppard <nshep@attglobal.net> wrote:
Hi all,
Hi Nick,
I just went through the setup process for a Tor Cloud instance in us-east-1 (Virginia) without finding the 1024 GB of storage you say is the new default value. Under "Storage" on the "Review Instance Launch"-page, I see storage is set to 4 GB. Could you please go through the setup process again and see if you can figure out where this value was set? Thanks! -- Runa A. Sandvik
On 08/12/13 18:54, Runa A. Sandvik wrote:
Interesting ... I was using eu-west-1 (Ireland). And comparing the two, I see that us-east-1 does indeed have 4 exactly where eu-west-1 has 1024. It had never occurred to me that the setup defaults might be different. I wonder if the usage limits and charges might be different too? I'll investigate. Thanks everyone for responding so promptly! Nick Sheppard
On Sun, Dec 8, 2013 at 7:29 PM, Nick Sheppard <nshep@attglobal.net> wrote:
Looks like you're right; the default value for storage when selecting an eu-west-1 instance is 1024 GB. Seems like this is also the case for us-west-1, us-west-2, ap-northeast-1, ap-southeast-1, sa-east-1, ap-southeast-2. I wonder why that is?
I know the charges are different across the various regions. The cheapest location has always been us-east-1 (Virginia). -- Runa A. Sandvik
participants (7)
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Runa A. Sandvik