[tor-relays] Setting up AWS cloud-relay - don't reserve expensive storage!

[Mark]

Nick Sheppard <nshep at 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 at 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.
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