Quote:
Originally Posted by TFeldt
Do these virtual systems run on physical hardware? Absolutely. Does the physical hardware require maintenance? Certainly. But does anyone go into the server hall and say "I need to fix the kindle servers"? No. There are no specific systems dedicated to anything, everything is virtual. When a physical system goes down hundreds or even thousands of virtual systems blink off as well, but then they're instantly load-balanced to another virtual instance. That's the whole point of e2c and s3 (for storage).
Thus, there's zero hardware costs for kindle in specific. This is easily verifiable since amazon was doing e2c and s3 long before kindle arrived, and they'd be doing it whether or not kindle existed today. If they fix a physical server then you can't say they're doing it because kindle needs it, they're doing it because e2c needs it. You might argue that "didn't they have to expand when they opened the kindle store" but even that reasoning doesn't work since they're selling surplus resources. If they have a surplus then they don't need all the resources they've already got.
|
Have to disagree with you on this one, precisely because they do sell excess resources.
The physical hardware will be capable of running a certain capacity of virtual machines. The Kindle service will use some of those. Therefore those machines are no longer available, therefore there are less excess resources to be sold, therefore there is a cost (lost revenue) from the Kindle machines.