Skip to content

Cost Reference

This article provides cost data to help you evaluate self-hosted Pigsty, cloud RDS costs, and typical DBA salaries.

Overview

The cost data below is intended to illustrate order-of-magnitude differences. Cloud vendor pricing and discounts vary over time, region, instance size, and purchase model.

EC2 Core·Month RDS Core·Month
DHH Self-Hosted Core-Month Price (192C 384G) 25.32 Junior Open Source DB DBA Reference Salary ¥15K/person·month
IDC Self-Hosted (Dedicated Physical: 64C384G) 19.53 Mid-Level Open Source DB DBA Reference Salary ¥30K/person·month
IDC Self-Hosted (Container, 500% Oversold) 7 Senior Open Source DB DBA Reference Salary ¥60K/person·month
UCloud Elastic VM (8C16G, Oversold) 25 ORACLE Database License 10000
Aliyun ECS 2x Memory (Dedicated, No Oversold) 107 Aliyun RDS PG 2x Memory (Dedicated) 260
Aliyun ECS 4x Memory (Dedicated, No Oversold) 138 Aliyun RDS PG 4x Memory (Dedicated) 320
Aliyun ECS 8x Memory (Dedicated, No Oversold) 180 Aliyun RDS PG 8x Memory (Dedicated) 410
AWS C5D.METAL 96C 200G (Monthly No Prepaid) 100 AWS RDS PostgreSQL db.T2 (2x) 440
AWS C5D.METAL 96C 200G (3-Year Prepaid) 80 AWS RDS PostgreSQL db.M5 (4x) 611
AWS C7A.METAL 192C 384G (3-Year Prepaid) 104.8 AWS RDS PostgreSQL db.R6G (8x) 786

RDS Cost Reference

Payment Model Price Annualized (¥10K)
IDC Self-Hosted (Single Physical Machine) ¥75K / 5 years 1.5
IDC Self-Hosted (2-3 Machines for HA) ¥150K / 5 years 3.0 ~ 4.5
Aliyun RDS On-Demand ¥87.36/hour 76.5
Aliyun RDS Monthly (Baseline) ¥42K / month 50
Aliyun RDS Annual (85% off) ¥425,095 / year 42.5
Aliyun RDS 3-Year Prepaid (50% off) ¥750,168 / 3 years 25
AWS On-Demand $25,817 / month 217
AWS 1-Year No Prepaid $22,827 / month 191.7
AWS 3-Year Full Prepaid $120K + $17.5K/month 175
AWS China/Ningxia On-Demand ¥197,489 / month 237
AWS China/Ningxia 1-Year No Prepaid ¥143,176 / month 171
AWS China/Ningxia 3-Year Full Prepaid ¥647K + ¥116K/month 160.6

Here’s a comparison of self-hosted vs cloud database costs:

Method Annualized (¥10K)
IDC Hosted Server 64C / 384G / 3.2TB NVME SSD 660K IOPS (2-3 Machines) 3.0 ~ 4.5
Aliyun RDS PG HA Edition pg.x4m.8xlarge.2c, 64C / 256GB / 3.2TB ESSD PL3 25 ~ 50
AWS RDS PG HA Edition db.m5.16xlarge, 64C / 256GB / 3.2TB io1 x 80k IOPS 160 ~ 217

ECS Cost Reference

Pure Compute Price Comparison (Excluding NVMe SSD / ESSD PL3)

Using Aliyun as an example, the monthly pure compute price is 5-7x the self-hosted baseline, while 5-year prepaid is 2x self-hosted

Payment Model Unit Price (¥/Core·Month) Relative to Standard Self-Hosted Premium Multiple
On-Demand (1.5x) ¥ 202 160 % 9.2 ~ 11.2
Monthly (Standard) ¥ 126 100 % 5.7 ~ 7.0
1-Year Prepaid (65% off) ¥ 83.7 66 % 3.8 ~ 4.7
2-Year Prepaid (55% off) ¥ 70.6 56 % 3.2 ~ 3.9
3-Year Prepaid (44% off) ¥ 55.1 44 % 2.5 ~ 3.1
4-Year Prepaid (35% off) ¥ 45 35 % 2.0 ~ 2.5
5-Year Prepaid (30% off) ¥ 38.5 30 % 1.8 ~ 2.1
DHH @ 2023 ¥ 22.0
Tantan IDC Self-Hosted ¥ 18.0

Equivalent Price Comparison Including NVMe SSD / ESSD PL3

Including common NVMe SSD specs, the monthly pure compute price is 11-14x the self-hosted baseline, while 5-year prepaid is about 9x.

Payment Model Unit Price (¥/Core·Month) + 40GB ESSD PL3 Self-Hosted Premium Multiple
On-Demand (1.5x) ¥ 202 ¥ 362 14.3 ~ 18.6
Monthly (Standard) ¥ 126 ¥ 286 11.3 ~ 14.7
1-Year Prepaid (65% off) ¥ 83.7 ¥ 244 9.6 ~ 12.5
2-Year Prepaid (55% off) ¥ 70.6 ¥ 230 9.1 ~ 11.8
3-Year Prepaid (44% off) ¥ 55.1 ¥ 215 8.5 ~ 11.0
4-Year Prepaid (35% off) ¥ 45 ¥ 205 8.1 ~ 10.5
5-Year Prepaid (30% off) ¥ 38.5 ¥ 199 7.9 ~ 10.2
DHH @ 2023 ¥ 25.3
Tantan IDC Self-Hosted ¥ 19.5

DHH Case: 192 cores with 12.8TB Gen4 SSD (1c:66); Tantan Case: 64 cores with 3.2T Gen3 MLC SSD (1c:50).

Cloud prices calculated at 40GB ESSD PL3 per core (1 core:4x RAM:40x disk).

EBS Cost Reference

Evaluation Factor Local PCI-E NVME SSD Aliyun ESSD PL3 AWS io2 Block Express
Capacity 32TB 32 TB 64 TB
IOPS 4K Random Read: 600K ~ 1.1M, 4K Random Write: 200K ~ 350K 4K Random Read: Max 1M 16K Random IOPS: 256K
Latency 4K Random Read: 75µs, 4K Random Write: 15µs 4K Random Read: 200µs Random IO: ~500µs (contextually inferred as 16K)
Reliability UBER < 1e-18, equivalent to 18 nines, MTBF: 2M hours, 5DWPD for 3 years Data Reliability 9 nines Storage and Data Reliability Durability: 99.999%, 5 nines (0.001% annual failure rate) io2 Specification
Cost ¥16/TB·month (5-year amortized / 3.2T MLC), 5-year warranty, ¥3000 retail ¥3200/TB·month (original ¥6400, monthly ¥4000), 50% off with 3-year full prepaid ¥1900/TB·month using max spec 65536GB 256K IOPS best discount
SLA 5-year warranty, replacement on failure Aliyun RDS SLA Availability 99.99%: 15% monthly fee, 99%: 30% monthly fee, 95%: 100% monthly fee Amazon RDS SLA Availability 99.95%: 15% monthly fee, 99%: 25% monthly fee, 95%: 100% monthly fee

S3 Cost Reference

Date $/GB·Month ¥/TB·5Years HDD ¥/TB SSD ¥/TB
2006.03 0.150 63000 2800
2010.11 0.140 58800 1680
2012.12 0.095 39900 420 15400
2014.04 0.030 12600 371 9051
2016.12 0.023 9660 245 3766
2023.12 0.023 9660 105 280
Other References High-Perf Storage Top-Tier Discounted vs Purchased NVMe SSD Price Ref
S3 Express 0.160 67200 DHH 12T 1400
EBS io2 0.125 + IOPS 114000 Shannon 3.2T 900

Cloud Exit Collection

There was a time when “moving to the cloud” was almost politically correct in tech circles, and an entire generation of app developers had their vision obscured by the cloud. Let’s use real data analysis and firsthand experience to explain the value and pitfalls of the public cloud rental model — for your reference in this era of cost reduction and efficiency improvement — please see “Cloud Computing Mudslide: Collection”

Cloud Infrastructure Basics

Cloud Business Model

Cloud Exit Odyssey

Cloud Failure Post-Mortems

RDS Failures

Cloud Vendor Profiles