We created a "free" t2.micro instance in order to test remote backups. I fully understand there may be limitations due to the "free" and "small" nature of the instance, but where can I find some details regarding the expected network bandwidth?
In our tests so-far, we are only getting about 7 MByte/sec throughput, which is well below what we expected.
Ive poked around on the AWS website, but I can't seem to locate any documentation on network bandwidth as it relates to the "price" and "size" of the instance.
Any pointers would be appreciated.

It would probably be more reliable if you would ask Amazon directly - tested there once an EC2 instance and their support had always been very quick and precise (maybe things have changed now ).
Saying this because there might be multiple factors involved - maybe the geographic location in which your instance is based has some problems or limitations, maybe the way that you're running the test hits some other limitations (CPU/disk/RAM), etc... or maybe your expectations are just too high.

Yes, we did ask amazon support, but never got a response. We fully understand that we are at the mercy of any networking equipment between the source and target sites and can't do anything about that, but as for expectations, I think our goal is to try and find out what kind of cost would meet our performance needs. That said, 7MB/sec is just too slow, but we don't need full gigabit connectivity either. The goal would be to be able to take backups over several hours, so something in the neighborhood of 100-200 MB/sec is closer to what we need.

Ok, well that's weird that you never got any response.
In any case if I remember correctly, when testing the bandwidth of amazon EC2 vs. "ovh.de" (I used to have a VM there), I used to get 25MB/s.
That was great for me so I did not investigate if the 25MB/s were limited by amazon or by ovh.de.

You want some kind of Service Level Agreement => really really wrong to define it here => again, you (your company or whatever) should ask Amazon.

Free Tier* says
Documentation

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Even if you got good network performance out of one, it is temporary. t2.micros are alloted "credits" for cpu useage and a I guarantee they get lowest priority on the network. They're really for just testing.


google "amazon ec2 instance types" for more info on t2 instances.

If you can still launch an m1.small, that's about as low as you want to go, but they're being phased out. Other than that, m3.medium, and those are about $100/mo; additional storage extra. You could use s3, but if you already have an instance, you may as well use EBS.

One of the basic isses is that I don't fully understand all the different services and how they interact with each other and with my hosts at the data center.
Ive tried several times to get hold of someone at Amazon, but they are not very responsive.
Ideally, I would just prefer to be able to access a cloud filesystem or cloud iSCSI storage directly from my hosts, as that would seem to be the simplest approach.
Using iSCSI would also allow me to perform block-level incremental dumps from the database, meaning I would only update changed blocks when re-syncing the primary to the cloud. That should minimize the amount of traffic generated. Using a filesystem, I can still perform incremental dumps, but would need a periodic full-dump. The incremental dumps to filesystem would also be additive (requiring additional storage on top of the full dump) where-as iSCSI would allow me to "replace" the existing changed blocks thus keeping the iSCSI luns consistent.

Finally got hold of Sales team at Amazon. Getting them to forward some details on how AWS works and what my storage options may be.
Im not sure that iSCSI will work though, it sounds like the interface may be a bit different than im use to from a SAN storage background.

Anyhow, if anyone knows of any iSCSI cloud providers, that would be good to get as a fall-back option.

@usao, Amazon doesn't really fit in this case. It's fine for integrating certain kinds of resources into your local environment, but it doesn't give any way to directly interface with arbitrary storage other than S3 (possibly glacier). And S3 has voodoo involved with regard to it's pricing; better to find someone who'll give you plain storage with an iscsi interface to connect to. Costs will be more deterministic as well, and fixed price usually better than "should be cheaper". But you might do better looking at storage services rather than specifically cloud services.

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