[HECnet] Intro and New User Questions

[Zane Healy]

> On Dec 17, 2017, at 1:25 PM, Mark J. Blair <nf6x at nf6x.net> wrote:
> 
> I just had a potentially dangerous thought. I'm already considering learning about Amazon cloud server stuff and migrating my Wordpress blog from the web service it presently lives on to my own AWS instance, so I can have more control over it.
> 
> Is anybody doing any DECnet/HECnet related stuff on AWS yet? I wonder if it might be hard to spin up something like a HECnet portal on an AWS instance without running up big bills? I'd be willing to burn up to a hundred bucks a year doing something silly like that, assuming that exposing something like an OpenVMS 7.3 instance to the public internet isn't a profoundly bad idea.
> 
> I think y'all need to talk me away from the edge of the cliff now. I'll leave it up to you which direction you talk me. :D

That could be interesting, but it could also be very expensive.  Isn’t some of the AWS pricing based on how much CPU time you use?  The VM I have running on ESXI is using about 57% of the host CPU.  It doesn’t matter to me, but in a situation where you have to pay for the resources you use, I would think this could be a problem.

BTW, as I recently posted on the SIMH mailing list, I had setup that VM to throttle, and forgotten about it.  When I moved from playing with PDP-11 emulation, to actively running Simh/VAX 24/7, it caused major issues, and a Raspberry Pi was performing better.  Since I changed that, it’s my fastest VAX. :-)

Zane