(WEB HOST INDUSTRY REVIEW) — Web hosting provider Amazon Web Services announced on Monday that it has launched a public beta of Cluster Compute Eight Extra Large in an effort to attract a more high-performance customer.
This announcement was made a couple days before web hosting provider Logicworks launched its infiniCloud PowerCluster designed for large-scale cloud customers. Logicworks says it hopes to attract AWS customers who want to spend less without sacrificing scalability.
According to a blog post, cc2.8xlarge instances give customers high CPU capabilities and the ability to launch instances within a high bandwidth, low latency bandwidth network.
AWS says its new cloud is designed for applications like physics simulations, seismic analysis, drug design, genome analysis, aircraft design and a variety of business and analytics applications.
Each cc2.8xlarge instance comes with 60.5GB of RAM and 3.37TB of storage, and communicates with other instances in a cluster using 10 gigabit ethernet, according to a report by NetworkWorld.
The service is priced at $2.40 per hour for an on-demand instance and users can choose between Linux or Windows Server 2008 R2 as their operating system.
Amazon says users can also purchase a reserved instance priced at $4,146 plus $0.54 per hour when signing a one-year contract, or bid for time on the EC2 Spot Market, where costs are lower. The cluster instances are only available in Amazon’s Norther Virginia region, but there are plans to expand the offering to other regions next year.
