jasonefrank

Agreed, 1 year is the sweet spot here. I didn't appreciate the opportunity cost of getting the 3-year RI, as much as the straw man "savings" against the current on-demand prices.

I certainly understand that Amazon's interests are different from mine, and they are going to make offerings that are good for them. But the best offers are win-win, and a 3-year RI doesn't meet that bar. It's a bad offer for the customer, but masquerades as a good offer. Not unique in the world of business, "buyer beware" and all that of course. It was my bad for not fully appreciating the lock in and avoiding it.

I would also love to be able to move across instance families. Another reason not to commit for a long period of time. I'm willing to say "I'm committed to using x amount of AWS computing power over the next 3 years" but not if that will prevent me from using any of the new instance families that come out over that time frame.

Pet peeve in case Jeff Barr (or another AWS person) reads this. I purchased multiple 3-year heavy utilization RIs just a few months before the price wars last year. The ROI on those went from "great" to "very modest" overnight. I know there is an RI Marketplace where I could try to sell them, but as the on-demand prices went down so far, I would not be likely to get a decent deal. It felt like the best customers, those who have committed for multiple years, were being left out in the cold. I will not be doing any long-term (over 1 year) RI purchases again unless they make it possible to participate in price drops.